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connnnn · 14-09-2007, 01:54 PM

I don't get how anyone could say the 8800's suck... they're the leaders in raw performance AND price/performance break down almost across the board (for high end, value, and budget builds). Depending on price the ATI 2X's are sometimes contenders in specific brackets, and the 1950pro is decent if you can find it on sale for around $150, but for the most part the 8X's have the market on lock right now. I haven't heard of any consistent problems with 8800's, and I know many people who work in tech support including one who does it for one of the biggest GPU manufacturers (point being, if tons of people were calling in with 8800 issues, he'd know because he'd be talking to them). The biggest issues lately have been with chipset problems, particularly the nvidia 680i, although they're supposedly getting all of those kinks worked out now.

As far as AGP vs PCIE, most motherboards that support AGP are so outdated they generally (I'm sure there's probably exceptions, but even then you're almost always paying more for the fact that it has twice the slots) only support older CPU and RAM standards, so ultimately the odds are the bottleneck would be outside of the video card in the first place. Even the best AGP card can't help you if you're running a Barton 2500+ and DDR1-400 :P

Of course, the future pretty much always brings better performance per dollar in PC hardware, so if you wait 6 months you will always get more for your money. It's up to you to decide if you'll be missing anything worthwhile in those hypothetical 6 months.

14-09-2007, 01:54 PM	#14 (permalink)
connnnn Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: TX, USA Posts: 425	Re: Upgrade Suggestions. I don't get how anyone could say the 8800's suck... they're the leaders in raw performance AND price/performance break down almost across the board (for high end, value, and budget builds). Depending on price the ATI 2X's are sometimes contenders in specific brackets, and the 1950pro is decent if you can find it on sale for around $150, but for the most part the 8X's have the market on lock right now. I haven't heard of any consistent problems with 8800's, and I know many people who work in tech support including one who does it for one of the biggest GPU manufacturers (point being, if tons of people were calling in with 8800 issues, he'd know because he'd be talking to them). The biggest issues lately have been with chipset problems, particularly the nvidia 680i, although they're supposedly getting all of those kinks worked out now. As far as AGP vs PCIE, most motherboards that support AGP are so outdated they generally (I'm sure there's probably exceptions, but even then you're almost always paying more for the fact that it has twice the slots) only support older CPU and RAM standards, so ultimately the odds are the bottleneck would be outside of the video card in the first place. Even the best AGP card can't help you if you're running a Barton 2500+ and DDR1-400 :P Of course, the future pretty much always brings better performance per dollar in PC hardware, so if you wait 6 months you will always get more for your money. It's up to you to decide if you'll be missing anything worthwhile in those hypothetical 6 months.