Nvidia

I have been told that Nvidia graphics cards are best with SL, is that true?

All video cards suck, but yeah, Nvidia does seem to take more care than AMD to make sure that OpenGL works in its drivers.

Nvidia and ATI are the two big players. Its a constant game of 'who is best' with hardware and software releases happening often. There is no hard and fast rules as to who makes the 'best'.. its whatever works best for your particular motherboard and software situation. Try them both and pick the one that works best for you.

That having been said Nvidia seems to have better open gl support.. your mileage may vary.. offer not valid on days with an R.

As far as second life is concerned and i'm sure your question pertains to it alot of people have issues with ATI drivers and second life

I personally can only speak from my own experience and that being always using Nvidia cards and drivers and i have no issues

I"ve seen multiple posts on the forums about people having issues with ATI like i said your experience might be different

what would people suggest as the best AGP card to get for SL, I've been looking at the Nvidia 7800 GS or the 7950 GT

First and foremost check to see what your motherboard can accommodate. The 7950 is NOT an AGP part.

In general, if your motherboard cannot support a PCIE video card you will not be able to experience SL at its best. AGP is an orphaned standard with no further development taking place (no new drivers). This may be your biggest hurdle as SL depends on up to date Open GL drivers for your card to display SL properly (or at all).

The two cards you mentioned are both on the minimum supported hardware list from two years ago https://secure-web6.secondlife.com/my/support/system-requirements/

While either card _may_ work they will not work very well. Expect very low frame rates and minimal draw distance. You will not be able to use most of the nicer graphics features.

If you have an available PCIE slot, there is no reason not to get a much newer card. For example newegg has 9800GT cards for less than a hundred bucks that provide excellent performance in SL.

Rocky's correct, I just upgraded to a 9800GT 1GB ($100 from Amazon) and it's really a different experience.

I believe that the 7000 series GPUs were the last NVidia ones that had AGP versions. (In any case, they're the last ones you can buy from Newegg now; if there ever were AGP 8600 or 8800 cards you can't get them anymore unless you find one on eBay. Newegg doesn't have any AGP 7800s any more either, though they do list one solitary 7600.) If you're looking for an NVidia card for an AGP system, the 7800GS is as good as it gets. That card is 3 GPU generations out of date now, but NVidia is still doing updated drivers for them.

ATI has continued to offer AGP versions of newer cards. Newegg lists AGP versions of the HD 4650 and 4670, which are only one generation out of date. (ATI very recently introduced the HD 5000 series; no AGP versions of those yet and there probably never will be any.) If you have an AGP system that is otherwise modern enough to be worth spending $100 on, those should work well. Don't buy any ATI card older than the HD 3000 series; they stopped doing driver upgrades for the older ones earlier this year.

Most AGP systems won't justify a $100 investment; they don't have enough memory or a fast enough CPU to get full benefit out of the new graphics card. A comparable card for a PCI Express system will be less expensive, taking a bit of the sting out of upgrading.

The AGP versions of HD series cards are not officially supported by ATI, so you're dependent on the manufacturer for driver updates. This can be problematic.

A computer sporting an AGP slot is also likely to have a very old and slow CPU that will prove to be a bottleneck with a fast graphics adapter. If your PC has a Pentium 4 and AGP graphics, the best choice is to replace it.

Avoid ATI AGP cards, I got the HD 3850 supposed to be the best AGP card out was horriblely slow for me, put the Nvidia Geforce 7600 back in it runs a lot better.

Nvidia keeps well on top with Driver updates, ATI not interested.