Best AGP Video Card to Use?

What are the best AGP video cards for use in SL? Will a very expensive one make a difference? I am running XP Pro, Pentium 4, 2G RAM. I already have an NVidia GeForce 5200 but if I can get a better picture here and more speed, would like to get a better card.

One opinion is depending on your setup, you can get an Nvidia 6600GT for pretty cheap nowadays, and it's a great AGP graphics card for the price. Yes, it will be faster, especially with things like ripple water.

I'm going to move this to Technical Issues, however, as I haven't personally being keeping up with the forefront of GPU development lately! Hope you get more opinions.

Would a radeon X1600 Pro be any good?

(repostring due to forum outage)

The very best AGP card for Second Life is probably the NVidia 7800GS. (Workstation graphics cards like NVidia Quadro and ATI FireGL might be even faster, but they're unsupported by LL and outrageously expensive.) You get all the latest features, and it's very fast. But it will cost around $300, which is probably more than you want to invest in most AGP-based systems. A late-model Atlhon 64 system, especially one with a Socket 939 motherboard, might be an exception. (Any Intel Pentium 4 system with AGP is certainly too old to throw a $300 video card into.)

The next step down is the NVidia 6800XT. The AGP versions seem to run around $150 (PCI Express can be less expensive.) Nice and fast, but no Shader 3.0 support; this isn't an issue with current versions of SL, but might exclude some future eye candy.

Slightly below that in speed is the ATI X1600. These cards can be bought for around $110, making them an appealing choice, and you get Shader 3.0 support. Historically, NVidia cards worked better than ATI with Second Life, but the current drivers seem to have closed the gap, at least for the X-series Radeon cards. I think this is the current sweet spot for upgrades of AGP systems, but YMMV.

The NVidia 6600 falls below all of these in speed, and you don't get the new shaders. The 6600LE is under $100, though, so if you need to stay below that price point and prefer an NVidia card, it's worth a look. The non-LE versions cost nearly as much as the 6800XT, so I'd stay away from those, though I would love to see an SL performance comparison of the 6800XT and 6600GT.

There are still a few Radeon X800 and X850 cards around; They might be worth a look if the price is right. They would probably be a bit faster than the X1600, but no Shader 3.0 support.

If you're planning to spend time and money upgrading, that's pretty much all the cards worth considering. Anything less probably wouldn't be a large enough improvement to justify the effort. In particular, avoid the NVidia 6200, the Radeon X1300, and all NVidia 5xxx and non X-series Radeon cards.

The 6600GT is a nice cheap card(I got the PCIE version)

Theres supposed to be a 7600GT AGP version out soon.
This should be a nice card. On the Nvidia side, stay away from cards that use turbo cache or use the letters GS.

The 7800GS is a nice card, despite the letters. It just costs too much. Presumably it's a "GS" card because the AGP version is a bit slower than the "GT" version for PCIE -- in part because it actually uses a PCIE chipset plus an AGP to PCIE bridge chip!

I hadn't heard that a 7600 for AGP was coming. That will be a card to watch for.

I've been running SL with an NVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra. Works so wonderfuly. From what I understand from a friend of mine who actually knows something about computers (for I do not as much).. that's the best AGP card that you can get to run SL hands down.

They're expensive though, new they sell for around $400 still I think. You could probably eBay one for half that if you don't mind eBay.

If you can afford a Geforce 6800 then go for it, They are fairly cheap these days, if money is not an issue then go for a 7600 GT or 7800/7900 GT/GTX by Nvidia.

Definately stick with Nvidia if you plan to play SL smoothly.

Hi!

I just upgraded from one nvidia 6600GT to two nvidia 7900GT cards. My fps performance in 2L hasn't improved that much in congested areas, it ranges from 6-12fps in crowds but gets up in the 30s for relatively empty spaces. This is about the same as it was before I upgraded.

I think this is because the game is more cpu-constrained than gpu-constrained, at least above a certain level of video card. I have an amd FX-53 cpu which is supposed to be decent, but it is pinned at 100% when running 2L. My machine is 100% virus/adware/spyware free, and I kill off unnecessary background stuff so I know it is due to either 2L or some config problem, possibly. would be nice if 2L was written for multi-processor, then i would try to upgrade to dual core. anything to feed the beast...

would anyone agree that they see this kind of thing too? If so, then I would recommend against over-spending on a video card(s).

does anyone have recommended settings for nvidia card's 'advanced settings' section?

Went from a 6800 to a 7800GTX, saw now improvements in FPS for SL, other games however, MUCH better. You are correct SL is more CPU bound. Went from a 3500+ to a 4400+ X2. Big improvement in multitasking since SL only will use 50% of the CPU instead of 100% on a single core. After upgrading my CPU drivers I did see a slight increase in FPS also.

Went from a 6800 to a 7800GTX, saw no improvements in FPS for SL, other games however, MUCH better. You are correct SL is more CPU bound. Went from a 3500+ to a 4400+ X2. Big improvement in multitasking since SL only will use 50% of the CPU instead of 100% on a single core. After upgrading my CPU drivers I did see a slight increase in FPS also.

Big improvement in multi-tasking but not in overall 2L performance, right?

Correct, a sligh FPS increase only after I updated my drivers.