WRT to *the* fastest, I concur with the poster above that argues for the 9500GT. I know newer cards are out and there may be a few feature sets that are in them that weren't in the 9500GT, but for pure gruntpower, I don't think the newer "cut down" cards can match the 9500. They are usually pretty crippled. Now at one point I recall reading there was a 9600GT released in PCI, but I've never seen any evidence of that. As for ATI...I think they made an HD 2400 PCI but the 9500GT trashes it. I'm not sure if ATI/AMD ever had anything newer put out on PCI. I sort of doubt it.

Now, any of those are probably overkill. So as to the 6200 PCI - if you can - get one that uses a 128-bit memory bus. I recall a lot of the 6200's using the 64-bit bus and it shows in that card. (Similar problem with the "new" PCI cards)

These are images sourced from the nice hwbot.org website. How wonderful it would have been, had they included some benchmarks from real games. I agree these are synthetic benchmarks and the graphics cards have been overclocked like hell, but these should mean something. CPU or platform bottlenecks should not be a factor as higher end processors have been used (except may be in the case of GT610 PCI, though I seriously doubt it would be bottlenecked by a P4 Northwood running at 3.7GHz). What I mean to say is that these figures are probably the maximum you can squeeze out of these cards.

GeForce 9500GT PCI:

GeForce GT610 PCI:

GeForce GT430 PCI:

9500GT has a higher pixel fill rate and 128 bit bus width and that might count for something in some games, other than that it is advantage(slight if not more) GT430. Again it all depends on the game, but in general GT430 PCI should be faster than a 9500 GT.

gandhig wrote:

CPU or platform bottlenecks should not be a factor as higher end processors have been used (except may be in the case of GT610 PCI, though I seriously doubt it would be bottlenecked by a P4 Northwood running at 3.7GHz)

I'd rather say the PCI bus is going to bottleneck all of them. 😉 Also the narrower 64-bit bus is offset by those later cards having DDR3 so they still have similar memory bandwidth.

Not entirely sure why the GT430 scored worst in that Wings of Fury test btw. But anyway I'd rather look at anything with heavy SM3/DX9.0c usage. Provided the PCI bus allows for it I'd expect the GT430 to pull ahead there simply because it has the most shader units.

Shaders have minimal demands for bus traffic. Should be no surprise that ~20% of Geforce GTX 480 can beat ~20% of GeForce 8800 GTX.

d1stortion wrote:

I'd rather say the PCI bus is going to bottleneck all of them.

Don't make fun of us, we who are in the minority 😢 😢 😢 😉.
Yeah the wings of fury score for the GT 430 PCI was sub-optimal as I saw it scoring 240 FPS in another system.

Just a temptation to the OP to forget about PCI gaming and go buy a system with PCI-E,
GT 610 PCI Bus being zoomed past by the GT 520 PCI-Express Bullet Train 🤣

GT520 PCI-Express:

GT610 PCI:

Putas wrote:

Shaders have minimal demands for bus traffic. Should be no surprise that ~20% of Geforce GTX 480 can beat ~20% of GeForce 8800 GTX.

25% of 8800 GTX to be exact. 😉 But yeah another catch with these cards is that they use DDR2/3 instead of GDDR3/5. Not good news for running MSAA.

What PCI card would you guys recommend for a Pentium 4 2.66?

AlexDroog wrote:

What PCI card would you guys recommend for a Pentium 4 2.66?

If you are not in a hurry and can wait till this weekend, I may be able to test my GT 520 PCI on a P4 Northwood 2.8GHz. I already have the 3dMark01SE score for it (9526), but if you want some real game benchmarks then you have to wait. Which brings us to the main question, 'What games you want to play the most?' Then again I should have them to test it or else those demos with inbuilt benchmarks might have to do.
Otherwise, you can buy a 9500GT or GT430 and it would not matter either way as the performance would be dependent on the balance of all the important system components rather than a single factor i.e the fastest PCI 3D card.

I might have to upgrade my GX1's again now. I have 9500GT PCI's in them since they came down in price faster than the GT430 PCI. I'll have to look into current pricing for used GT430's now.

sliderider wrote:

I might have to upgrade my GX1's again now. I have 9500GT PCI's in them since they came down in price faster than the GT430 PCI. I'll have to look into current pricing for used GT430's now.

Sliderider, can you share some gaming benchmarks on your 9500 GT PCI?

I would prefer to get AGP 8X motherboard-graphics card combination for a fast P4 system.

I prefer to keep the fastest PCI-based graphics cards for up until a PII based system. Or maybe spill over to a PIII too.

What would be the best PCI card under the following conditions:

* Will use Win98SE and DOS
* Games like Quake 2, Duke 3D
* CPU range from Slot 1 PII 333 through PIII 700 Coppermine
* Only have a 200W PS

Thanks!

boxpressed wrote:

What would be the best PCI card under the following conditions: […]
Show full quote

What would be the best PCI card under the following conditions:

* Will use Win98SE and DOS
* Games like Quake 2, Duke 3D
* CPU range from Slot 1 PII 333 through PIII 700 Coppermine
* Only have a 200W PS

Thanks!

GeForce 2/4 MX, Radeon 7000, or maybe a VSA-100 card (if you don't mind the prices). GeForce/Radeon would be easiest/cheapest answer.