The ATi 9700 Pro AIW AGP graphics card which I was running in my Asus A8V + AMD Athlon 64 Dual core rig has finally given up the ghost after exhibiting a number of faults over the last year - Loss of red and blue, randon atificats on overlays, partial loss of 3-d rendering. Worryingly, this all seemed to occur after I swapped-out the Athlon 64 processor for an Athlon 64 dual core !

I now runing an S3 savage PCI card on a temporary basis with no problems - it won't play some of my self-recorded video files and in other respects is sooo slowwwwww !

So, I've been thinking along the lines of a relatively cheap replacment for the AGP card. Something which will tied me over the next two or three years and be able to run at HD resolutions but without costing the arm and leg that the principal alternative would i.e. a PCI-express card, which would mean replacing the Motherboard, memory and probably the power supply.

I found this:-

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-162-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=

Has anybody here had experience of using this card. ? If so, are there any problems

I must say I'm a little concerned with the size of the heat sink and wonder if this is merely an implementation of old technology where the designer has turned-up the wick to maximum in an attempt to compete with the more capable PCI - Express boards. Invariably that will mean a shorter life.

I note that the on-board memory is double-data rate ? Can this be run with my current system which is single data rate main memory.

Nick

Any of the mid range NVidia or ATI cards should see you good, just make sure you properly clean up the drivers for the old car and removed the registry entries etc for it if they are not cleaned up by the uninstaller.

Bin the MB and get a PCiE one, £60 for an AGP card is a lot of money for a defunct standard.

If you are just using your PC for 2D aps and not playing modern 3D games then you could quite easily spend half that and get yourself a 3450 for £25 such as this:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-171-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=

HTH,

Ben.

a little confused as the card you linked too is a PCI-e card, not agp

personally i would look at ebay for a cheap 2nd hand agp card

the agp cards here http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=56&subid=403 are not much less that a 4850 pcie card which is in a whole different league

suggest you spend peanuts now and put the money into a new midrange rig (phenom or core 2 duo)

There are plenty of AGP cards going for not much out there and if you don't need more CPU/RAM don't waste the £200-300 to buy yourself a starter rig.

Lower end, but should be ok, nothing fast though:

Novatech GeForce 6200 256MB TV-Out/DVI 8xAGP - OEM : novatech.co.uk : NOV-GF6225

More money, but faster:

Novatech ATI Radeon HD 3650 Pro 512MB GDDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI 8xAGP - Retail : novatech.c : NOV-36505A

Even more money, but again faster:

Novatech ATI Radeon HD 3850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI 8xAGP - Retail : novatech.co. : NOV-38505A

Hi,

just recently had the same quandry here. Upgrade from a perfectly

respectable pc Intel P4@3GHZ Hyper Threading to a new pc just because

the graphics card I had could not cut the mustard playing COD WAW.

I chose the buy a replacement card route 7800 GS. Top of the line in its

day. Best AGP card you can get ? although they do not sell them new

anymore, always on E-Bay. Just checked and there aren`t any for now

anyway. Generally sell for around £50-£70. Super card if like me you just

want to make the PC last another few years.

I still have a 9700pro powering my sisters PC (This worked on my PC133 system before i upgraded to a DDR system)

TBH if you really really want an AGP card then the nVidia 7xxx series is worth hunting, otherwise look for the 9800pro (as powerful as the 6600GT) get one cheap off Ebay and save the rest for a new PC.

Unless you want an excuse for a new PC in which case this is it!!!!

My mate has an ATI card which does HD res and it's AGP. Not sure what series it is.

My dad has an AGP ATi 1650 card, this won't run a lot of games such as COD4 etc, so if this is your aim look to go PCiE, and go Nvidia, the 9800 is a good card, or an 8800 if you can get one, the 9600 is a fair card for not a lot of money as well.

I notice you mentioned memory, if you did do what I said and got a new MB you will need DDR2 at least, it's not expensive 4gig of Corsair can be had for £50, but if you just want basic memory the slower stuff is cheaper, have a look at the Novatech bundles as well as you may need a new power supply if you upgrade.

To the OP yes that will run with your system as the DDR2 is just on the card.

Also no the reason the heatsink is huge ius because it is a passive heatsink rather than an active one with a fan which generates noise.

That card will be just fine. Be aware that most graphics cards out there don't use the bandwidth available from PCIe x16 never mind PCIe 2 x16 and that AGP 8x actually has enough to do most jobs.

PCIe is just cheaper to implement.