VOGONS


First post, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I am wanting to upgrade the video card in my Athlon 64 X2 4400+ system, but it is an AGP motherboard. I am running the MSI K8N Neo2 motherboard. While browsing eBay, I did find 3 or 4 cards that I was thinking might be decent upgrade. Of course they happen to be in Russia, but the sellers have very good feedback...

I was look at Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro 512MB 256bit AGP (CAD$135 w/ shipping), Powercolor Radeon HD 4650 1GB AGP (CAD$130 w/ shipping), has heatsink, but no fan, or a Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP (CAD$75 w/ shipping)

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 2 of 45, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-04-27, 00:41:

What you have not mentioned is target OS used. None of these will run on win 98SE.

Cheers,

It is going to be XP, as I have a few games that would do good from a better video card.

Going to be building a Win 98SE/ME system around a P3 1.4GHz eventually, when I can afford a motherboard.

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 3 of 45, by cyclone3d

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

What video card do you currently have?

What games are you wanting to play in XP?

Fastest AGP cards are:
ATI : 3850 / 4670
Nvidia : 7950GT

Last edited by cyclone3d on 2021-06-03, 20:45. Edited 1 time in total.

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 4 of 45, by winuser_pl

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I would suggest to go with AMD cards like 3850 or 3650 instead GeForce 7 series. The main reason is because you get with more recent card, but also more energy efficient, better support for hardware video decoding. 3d performance etc.

PC1: Highscreen => FIC PA-2005, 64 MB EDO RAM, Pentium MMX 200, S3 Virge + Voodoo 2 8 MB
PC2: AOpen => GA-586SG, 512 MB SDRAM, AMD K6-2 400 MHz, Geforce 2 MX 400

Reply 5 of 45, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
cyclone3d wrote on 2021-04-27, 01:31:
What video card do you currently have? […]
Show full quote

What video card do you currently have?

What games are you wanting to play I'm XP?

Fastest AGP cards are:
ATI : 3850 / 4670
Nvidia : 7950GT

I currently have a Radeon 9700 128MB video card in the system right now.

I've got RCT3, C&C 3, C&C Generals, SimCity 4, UT 3, UT 2004, GTA: San Andreas, NfS: Underground 1 & 2. Just a bunch of games that I want to have the details turned to the max

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 6 of 45, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
winuser_pl wrote on 2021-04-27, 09:26:

I would suggest to go with AMD cards like 3850 or 3650 instead GeForce 7 series. The main reason is because you get with more recent card, but also more energy efficient, better support for hardware video decoding. 3d performance etc.

Ya, I was looking more towards the ATI cards as that what I basically had during. I've only had one nVidia card, otherwise I've always gone ATI/AMD video cards.

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 7 of 45, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Oh, I should also mention that I am using a BenQ FP93G S 19" monitor that has a resolution of 1280 x 1024. And the system has 2GB DDR-400 Dual Channel memory.

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 8 of 45, by matze79

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

if you go HD3650 watch for (G)DDR3 VRAM, DDR2 Cards suck.

https://www.retrokits.de - blog, retro projects, hdd clicker, diy soundcards etc
https://www.retroianer.de - german retro computer board

Reply 10 of 45, by pentiumspeed

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

Don't go with HD3650 video cards, I have not seen any that were GDDR3 or GDDR5. I had 3 as they were cheap and just right for the needs (daily use) at work and home but they work well but set the details on low. Was two PCIe and one AGP.

Go with 3850, 3870, 5850, 5870. I skipped 4870 was high failure, I received 4870 and it died minutes later few years ago.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 11 of 45, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-04-27, 13:14:

How period correct do you want it or do you want best performance / bang for buck?

I was going to try and go somewhat period correct. It is running Windows XP, The motherboard was released July of 2004, the CPU was released May 2005. So could say that the motherboard and CPU were bought mid 2005. Of course my HDD is a 150GB Velociraptor and has a date of Jan 2010 on it. The monitor has a date of Dec 2006.

I was thinking something between mid-2005 to end of 2006 would probably be good for a video card...

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 12 of 45, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-04-27, 22:45:

Don't go with HD3650 video cards, I have not seen any that were GDDR3 or GDDR5. I had 3 as they were cheap and just right for the needs (daily use) at work and home but they work well but set the details on low. Was two PCIe and one AGP.

Go with 3850, 3870, 5850, 5870. I skipped 4870 was high failure, I received 4870 and it died minutes later few years ago.

Cheers,

In the listing I am watching, they show a picture of the back of the card and the sticker says HD3650 512M GDDR3 AGP TVO/VGA/DVI-I. It is AGP but requires a 6-pin PCI-E power connector.

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 13 of 45, by stef80

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

For the listed games X800/X850 native AGP should be ok. My go-to card is usually Connect3D X850Pro Vivo, because it's relatively cheap and there's good chance to unlock additional quad pipes.
X1650Pro/XT AGP with 256MB GDDR3 is also good choice. Runs FarCry (shader heavy game) much smoother then X800 series. I was surprised.
Only card that dissapointed me was HD2600XT with 512MB GDDR3. I did not expect it to suck so much being high-clocked DX10 piece of hardware. (HD3650 is about the same spec-wise. If with GDDR3! If not, then worse.)
X1950Pro is a killer, not sure if it's needed here.

I did not have any experience with AGP HD4670 or HD3850, so can't comment on that.

It may also be good idea to search for Asrock 939Dual-Sata2 / 939Dual-VSTA MBO for the given CPU. It offers both, native AGP and PCI-E 16x. Not easy to find, and they had problems with caps (fixable).

Reply 14 of 45, by candle_86

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

so the only issue game i really see is NFS:U2 its slow on cards from 2004, even the mighty x800 is slow with it, id look at an x1900GT AGP minimum

Reply 15 of 45, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
candle_86 wrote on 2021-05-02, 00:55:

so the only issue game i really see is NFS:U2 its slow on cards from 2004, even the mighty x800 is slow with it, id look at an x1900GT AGP minimum

I ended up buying the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP GDDR3 card on ebay as it was the more reasonably priced card. Was CAD$70 shipped. Hopefully it will be here before the end of the month.

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 16 of 45, by johnvosh

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Thank you everyone for the help! I decided to go with the 3650 GDDR3 512MB AGP card. I'm going to do some benchmarks with the 9700 Pro 128MB card, then again with the new card and I'll post my results!

Sys1: Athlon64 X2 4400+, 2GB DDR400, 150GB WD Velociraptor, Radeon HD 3650 512MB AGP, MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum, XP
Sys2: XP 2500+, 2GB/256MB DDR400, Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2, Radeon X800 XL 256MB, SB Audigy SB1394 SB0090, 80GB HDD, ME/XP
Have 3 more systems...

Reply 17 of 45, by pentiumspeed

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t

HD3650 GDDR3 will edge out the 9700 Pro some. 9700 Pro is around 19 GB/s memory bandwidth, and HD3650 GDDR3 around 25 GB/s, not much difference. Keep in mind this is directx 10.1 vs directx 9.0 especially if gaming in XP with games that is fussy. Also pixel per second is not that much also 9700 pro is 2.6 GP/s versus HD3650 2.9 GP/s.

Honestly, should had gotten x1800 or x1900 and easier to find in AGP favor and powerful 9.0c GPU, and HD3850 or HD3870 in PCIe is so inexpensive but they are directx 10.1

Checked the ebay and i find lack of AGP cards within your budget would push me to switch out the motherboard for PCIe with socket 939 motherboard and pick up, easy to get x1900 t0 keep with 9.0c support for XP. XP never had ventured beyond 9.0c. Well chosen socket 939 with PCle motherboard should not be that expensive.

When back in the day, I was not aware how hobbled the HD3650 were and the performance was only twice of what low end HD3000 series was, should had saved up some more and got PCIe HD3850 instead. Was because I was upgrading from Geforce2 MX and was still disappointed back in the day. Live and learn.

High end video card pushes out AA better vs low end would at any resolution.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 18 of 45, by pixelatedscraps

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
johnvosh wrote on 2021-04-27, 23:26:
pixelatedscraps wrote on 2021-04-27, 13:14:

How period correct do you want it or do you want best performance / bang for buck?

I was going to try and go somewhat period correct. It is running Windows XP, The motherboard was released July of 2004, the CPU was released May 2005. So could say that the motherboard and CPU were bought mid 2005. Of course my HDD is a 150GB Velociraptor and has a date of Jan 2010 on it. The monitor has a date of Dec 2006.

I was thinking something between mid-2005 to end of 2006 would probably be good for a video card...

Man, then I'd go for an X1950XTX - pretty much the best single GPU card you could get in 2006. Also pretty cheap on eBay - I had my eye on one a couple of months ago for $40...

My ultimate dual 440LX / Voodoo2 SLI build

Reply 19 of 45, by vad4r

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Maybe it's better to switch to a board with PCIe and a PCIe GPU, because the latest AGP cards are more expensive than the first PCIe cards with the same chips.

vae victis!