Need AGP Graphic Card Help

Hello all I am searching a week now for a card for this pc that works with SL. the one i have now is a Radeon 9200 which is really killing me in SL i have had my computer for almost 4 years now and I am strapped tight on purchasing a new system right now. so i opt to upgrade this one for the time being. The motherboard supports 1 AGP Slot (2X/4X/8X) video cards. . Please help.

It is a crying shame that we can't search for three letter terms in this forum. There are so many three letter terms we need to be able to search for. "AGP" is one of them.

There have been a number of threads on this topic lately, but you find the darned things because you can't search for AGP.

To cut to the chase, nVidia's offerings for AGP are slim and high priced, so ATI wins out. Here's the ATI AGP cards at newegg.com:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1069609639+1305520549&Configurator=&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

They start at 50 bucks.

The one that ended up being bought in one of the other AGP threads was the Radeon HD 2600XT , one of which is there at newegg for 60 bucks.

Check to see if your power supply is adequate before you buy the card if you are on a budget.

There's a Radeon HD 3650 for 78 dollars and a HD 3850 for 115.

There are also some H1650 models at the low price end of things, and I'm not sure offhand whether a 1650 is better worse or equal to a 2600.

go on ebay and search for AGP 6800. There's a guy selling them for $65 "buy it now". I just got one for an old computer here, and it works like a champ. It has 512MB on it, so plenty for SL's cubic buttload of textures being loaded up all at once. I used to be able to run SL AND a second game on that card, back when it was my primary computer and I had that card.

Geforce 7600GS 512 works like a champ. Used it prior to upgrading my m.b

i try to be fair

the nvidia 6600 and 7600 mentioned above work well, for agp based systems

i had a overclocked (well i still do, just in the older computer) 6600GT and it did quite well, even on my ~2004 athalon xp

i have a 7600GS, that ive reworked and overclocked to a 7600GT on my newer single core athalon 64 (but its still a old machine, my wife got the arse kicker this x-mass) and it does quite well, given the computer

tween those 2 i would lean twards the 7600GT, its more refined, sucks less power (which loosens your power supply requirements), and its cooler (temp wise, not omg jimmy just did a backflip while chuggin a beer)

now im a bit of a nvidia fanboy, i really only use ATI when theres not another option, i dont like their video quality, i dont like their bad drivers, and i dont like the screwball "features" that tends to bork games, including SL

having said that, ive never had 1 single issue with an ati card and SL

ATI does offer a bigger bang for the buck in the AGP market right now, and altho i do feel its a gamble to use one, its not a huge gamble, most people that have issues are running state of the art cards with "rigged up" drivers from ati and they kinda have to wait until whatever issue ati caused by trying to "march to their own drum" is cleared up

What wattage power supply does this machine have?

currently i am running on a 300 watt power supply but i know i will have to kick that up some as well . so whats with this 512MB nVidia GeForce 6800XT AGP Video Card w/TVO

does any one use that with SL and how does it work with it if you do . Thanks for the help

The two 6800 machines I've put together, one for sister in law, and now brother inherits my old one, have 450 and 550 PSU's respectively

The 550(my previous computer until a couple weeks ago) I did a marathon session of Fallout 3, and managed to cook a fanless 7600GS w/256 that had given me about a year of reliable service.

That 7600 was originally intended for a different computer, but the CPU in that computer was so slow, that throwing more video memory at it was better. So, my 6800w/512 went there, and I took the 7600 w/256.

Now, comparing the two in performance...

The 6800GT w/512, I could be running City of Heroes, and alt+tab to run Second Life as well. Malls, clubs, and driving on racing sims, no problem. I saw some slowdown and the occasional stutter, and had to turn down a couple settings on some (at the time) newer games, like Tomb Raider Legend, to make them playable.

The 7600GS w/256, no more dual games. Trying to launch one after the other, and it just wouldn't load the whole thing. if City of Heroes came second, I'd have a GUI and the rest of the screen would be black. If SL came second, it was a screen full of grey, except for maybe me, and a couple of the avatars closest to me. Driving on racing sims, still fine. RP sims, where folks are walking around with over 1000 prims attached to themselves, in packs of up to 50 avatars, very choppy. "New" games I could enable all the pretties and play, but sometimes had to turn off shadows, when timing jumps was tricky and essential.

Now, after frying that 7600, I found that 6800 on ebay, which I honestly missed my old one at times, but got used to just keeping view distance down and the like. The main things to consider between those cards...

The 6800 is actually the faster/more powerful of the two, noted by the 6, versus the 8. Their generational difference just made a difference of the high end content you could enable, which SL doesn't use the first bit of anyway.

The memory on the cards. The more you can give SL to work with, the smoother it will run. Curse of SL's player uploaded textures. Way too many 1024x1024 32 bit textures that don't need to be that big, and could have been done as 16 bit, really.

The fanless design.... just not a good idea, unless your computer case is a wind tunnel. The case I burned that one up in, was not a "modern case" with fan mounts all over the place. It has an auxiliary exhaust fan on the back, and while I could mount a fan on the front, it wasn't actually designed for one, so the air was sort of being sucked through the gaps in the front of the case. Fanless is of course silent, but only a consideration if you already have other fans helping cool the computer, over all.

One of my older office computers has an Nvidia 7900 GTX which works more than adequately with SL.... and I have read that many technically minded people still prefer this to the 8 series. Pretty sure this is an AGP?

I believe the 7900 series is PCIe only. I'm not sure if the preference for the 7900GTX is realistic. The 8800GT is faster by every benchmark. It's probably a moot point, since there are no AGP 8000 series cards.

They need an AGP card, which nVidia side, caps out at the 7600. As I was attempting to illustrate in my long winded post there, a 6800 w/512, is going to outperform(and effectively outlast) a 7600 w/256MB(which are pretty much the only two configurations you're going to be able to track down, AGP, without going with some wierdo off brand, that the entire heatsink and fan just drops off the card after a couple weeks of running(I'm looking at you, Chaintech *grumbles*). Even with the wierdo off brands, it will be a hunt to find anything stocked in any major seller like newegg or tiger direct. It was pure luck I stumbled across the person selling 6800's on ebay, so figured I'd point them that direction.