Help me upgrade my video card, please

My current card is Nvidia Geforce FX 5600 - which uses an AGP 8x bus slot.

Which of the Second Life supported cards for WinXP can I use that would work with this slot (and that are not too expensive, at least on Ebay?)

Help.

thanks, XoXo

I just built a system for a friend to run SL and put this in it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130075

cant beat the price.

for a few bucks more you can get a 512MB version. I run 512 personally, i dont know if its helping but i figure the extra few bucks buys me some future headroom.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130285

if you have a big monitor and like to run at high res, go with the 512. if you have a monitor thats 19" or under, the 256MB version will be just fine.

Ive had better luck with nvidia than ATI. nvidia seems more hip with driver updates. however ATI runs cooler if your system runs in a cramped box.


* all of this IMO.

oops just noticed youre running AGP. so those cards wont work. sorry it seems your card you have is pretty modern, what problemsare you runnign into?

Hi

I just want something a little better. I'm playing Dreamfall as well and that card is not supported... it's been making things slow and messy.

if nVidia has been good to you, stay with it. the best i can recommend is to look for the best reviews on cards in that newegg site (a lot of professional geeks shop there). Theres a lot of brands that use the nvidia chipsets, so the price and quality can vary greatly.

updating your motherboard (yeah im a geek too) to pci express will boost your performance by quite a bit-- you might be better off planning for that instead. if you can pick up the knowledge, the costs of PC parts these days is unbelievably cheap.... im talking $60 for a motherboard, $80 for a dual-core CPU....

also check your ram. adding more ram always makes a computer happier. SL does quite a dance between CPU and GPU for performance.

good luck,

Court

Court, thanks I think my only option is to go for a new AGP card. I can't change my motherboard because I have a Vaio computer... plus my husband won't like that at all (it's his computer)

I was wondering though, when on the SL System requirements you see something like this:

"Nvidia graphics 6000 series: 6700, 6800" etc.

... do they mean that out of the 6000 series only those two are compatible with SL? Or any of the 6000 series?

(I'm thinking of getting the Nvidia Geforce 6200, which seems to be AGP. But I'm wondering whether SL will run on it?)

those are the cards they have tested on. It doesnt mean theyre the only ones that will work. However if you dont want to get too tinkery, its best to go with one of those.

a 6000 or 7000-series with 256MB or more should make you pretty darn happy for the rest of the computer's life.

but also check also to see that you have enough ram on your system--its amazing the dance that the SL client does with the GPU, the GPU's ram, the CPU and the CPU's ram. you should have at least a gig of RAM on the motherboard. Ram is one of the cheapest performance upgrades you can do.

you can find geforce 6600GT's 6800GT 6900's ect really cheap

want to really max out your video performance look for a 7900GT or GTX and atleast 256mb of ram

(i use 128mb no problem but theres plenty of time more would be nice)

and yea look at your ram, way back when i went from 512mb to 1.5gb and almost tripled my performance

it was the best upgrade for sl i ever did to that machine and that included video cpu and ram

All of you are preaching the importance of upgrading ram How is it done? Is it expensive?

you need to know what kind your system takes, being an older agp based board it probally takes DDR (1) .... 1gb of that stuff will run about 60 bucks

and to install any of it all you have to do is take off the side of the pc, find the slot sockets, get the stick of ram going the right way (it will only go in 1 way) and push it down to snap it in

thats it

The best AGP video card you can buy is Nvidia 7900 GS 8x AGP.
Not sure of you're budget but if you want the best, that is the one to go for.
I would recommend at least 7800 model, any lower would not be economically worth it.
7600 at the least.

The card I would recommend for the bottom side would be the 6600GT and they run SL well enough and the price used is cheap. The performance difference between your old card and this will be like night and day. The 7600 is about the same card performance wise but it supports more modern shaders and other goodies. You would be a lot happier with a 7800 but they aren't cheap. Stay away from that has LE, SE etc on the end of the model number as they are recycled reject bin cards and will suck.

The 6600GT sounds good and within my budget. I was looking for one on Ebay and one of them says that it goes into an AGP 3.0 slot. Is that the same slot that my old FX 5600 went into?

yea they switched over sometime in the geforce 3000 or 4000 series

if its 2-4x you would be screwed but 8x is 3.0

*smooches Osgeld* Thanks hun, you made my day!

oh yea and check this out ...

/111/73/225393/2.html#post1781943

Thanks Osgeld, that looks super.

Now I can't decide between the 6600 or the 7600.

The difference in price seems to be about $20, after everything is said and done - which is not that much I guess.

So what kind of "goodies" does the 7600 have that the 6600 doesn't? And do they make a difference in a gaming environment such as Second life?

(God, I'm crazy.)

There isn't a huge difference between the two other than it supports the improvements made in the entire 7000 series of cards. Real world difference, not much other than Windlight will look better because it handles shaders better. The 7600 is the choice I'd make.

aye i would too, i think the 6600 is a tad faster in the mhz but the 7600 has more shaders (light shadows water ect pretty stuff) which is the way the world is going (just make shure its a G model)

recently someone on here wanted to upgrade their 6600 to a 7600 and i couldnt find enugh of a reason to blow almost 100$ but 20, yea why not get the newer model

I replaced a 6600 by a 7600 some weeks ago.

Framerate raised about 70-100%

Graphic looks much better. More brilliance in colors.

*sigh* Peer pressure.

Well folks you made me do it.

I purchased the 7600 from circuit city. I did my calculations and that means I worked six hours for the card.

You're all crazy, you realize that?

I just picked up a 7600 GS and it works great, very little lag experienced except in busy sims. Windlight renders extremely well. Good luck

Here is a "best for graphics cards for the money" article from Tom's Hardware. It has a section on AGP cards.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/03/best_graphics_card/

Well look at it this way, buying the 7 series card, you wont need to come back into the forums and ask 'is there a better card for a AGP x8 slot? It doesn't get any better for a AGP..

hehe, thanks Mars.

Thanks Heather, too. Judging by this article: [/url]http://www.techspot.com/review/24-radeon-x1650pro-vs-geforce-7600gs/page4.html[/url]
which compares the Nvidia 7600 to ATI Radeon X1650 Pro - both in the same range money-wise and performance-wise, the ATI wins. BUT judging by people's reviews on Amazon regarding the ATI, it's a risky card. It's rare to see a full five-stars review - most of them are 3 stars or less!

Anyway, I got my new Nvidia card today (Circuit City sells them for $80!!) and will see how it goes.

Smooches to all.