Best card for an Athlon XP 2000?

[DragonMaster]

What would be the best video card to put on an Athlon XP 2000 system with an AGP 4x bus?

I guess that the X1600 Pro AGP isn't because it supports so much extensions that bus speed will be a problem?

What about an used 9800 Pro / XT? Do they tend to die after a while?

And on the nVidia side? (Our last nV card was a GF4)

[sushrukh]

I prefer a 7600GS which is based on AGP 8X but will scale down to fit ur 4X slot easily.

A good one :- http://www.asus.com.tw/products4.aspx?l1=2&l2=7&l3=320&model=1479&modelmenu=1

[PP Mguire]

Really there is little difference between 4x and 8x on AGP systems. Back in the day it made no difference. If your going to be (or somebody else) gaming on it a 9800XT/pro or 6800GT will be fine without hastle. The onyl problem you will run into then is a 266 or 333mhz FSB speed.

[Kougar]

Actually I like Sushrukh's idea. A 7600GT compares almost exactly to a 6800 Ultra, which easily trumps the x1600 and 9800 of old. So a AGP 7600GS would be a good match.

[PP Mguire]

With the fater gpu you will have bigger bandwidth troubles in the northbridge area.

[DragonMaster]

With the fater gpu you will have bigger bandwidth troubles in the northbridge area.

I have a KT266A chipset, so it's not dual-channel DDR, but only single channel. So I might run into bandwidth problem and that's why I wonder if a 7600GS would run better than a 9800.

[PP Mguire]

Im guessing this is for a friend or somebody close to play games on a cheap skale? Dont waste the extra monies on a 7600 cause the 266mhz FSB, 4xAGP, processor, and single channel ram will really bottleneck it. A 9800 or 6600GT will be about the most you could put in there and still get decent performance. I had a 2600+, 9800XT, and 1.5gig of DC ram on an nF2 ultra chipset and it ran most l games maxed but i had little to nothing bottlenecking me.

[DragonMaster]

Nope, that's for the main computer (The one my brother plays on) at my mother's home (At my father's it's an X2 3800/X1600Pro)

The computer is the following:
Athlon XP 2000 Palomino
MSI K7T266Pro2
MSI GeForce 4 Ti4200
2x 256MB DDR266 sticks / 3 slots
D-Link DFE-538TX
Adaptec 1205SA SATA Controller
Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB SATA I
LG 12x DVD-ROM
Standard 300W PSU

An Antec case with a SmartPower PSU is probably the next upgrade it's going to have, the computer is still in the minimum specs for most games, except for the GPU.

[Kougar]

The AGP 7600GS is only $20 more than the AGP 6600GT, but comes with twice the onboard RAM and can offer much better performance. If anything I would think the 256mb onboard RAM would help lower bandwidth needs to the system's main RAM.

The rest of the system would likely hold it back some, but I don't believe it would be enough to justify getting the older cards.

[DragonMaster]

The thing is that maybe the 7600GS would perform slower than the older cards.

The 7600 supports more graphic instructions, so it requires more bandwidth and speed from the whole computer than the GF6 / ATI9K. Unless there's a way to disable these instructions, then, that's an other story.

[PP Mguire]

Exactly what i was saying. It would require more bandwidth in general just for the extra capabilities and would actualy slow it down more than a 6600GT or 9800XT would. If it was on an 8x port with some dual channel PC2700/3200 i would say go for the 7600 by all means. But the rest of the system would slow it down to much to justify buying a 7600.

[DragonMaster]

Also, a 9800XT should not be too bad with 256MB RAM, and is easier to find at less than $150 ;) than a 7600.

[PP Mguire]

Are you talking about 256 main RAM or card RAM?

[DragonMaster]

Card RAM.

Hey, I thought, there's the X800 between the X1Ks and the 9000s. As far as I see, they're cheaper to get than the 9800XT 256MB.

[PP Mguire]

Get a 128mb 9800pro with an R360 chipset and flash it to XT. Cheapest way.

[DragonMaster]

How do I know the chipset used?

Also, a lot of people around here sell used AIW 9800Pro cards, worth it?

[darkorb]

for how much?

[Kougar]

The thing is that maybe the 7600GS would perform slower than the older cards.

The 7600 supports more graphic instructions, so it requires more bandwidth and speed from the whole computer than the GF6 / ATI9K. Unless there's a way to disable these instructions, then, that's an other story.

I respectfully beg to disagree. 4x AGP shouldn't be an issue even with a 7600GS. Consider that a full x1950XTX can run in a mere "x4" PCIe slot with only a slight performance loss, or that a 7300GT can run in a PCIe x1 slot with only half it's performance lost. If you want to talk about features, then the 7300GT would have all that the 7600 would. I'll add that XFX even sells "4x/8x" AGP 7600GT's.

That processor should have the same effect on any GPU used. Any GPU will still require the same underlying driver overhead from the CPU no matter if it's a 9800XT or x1800, I don't think the difference would be more than negligible.

Considering those cards haven't been produced for a long time, what is out there is what is leftover supply that has been stashed away or never bought. The lower the supply the higher the price on it, which is why I figued $112 for an AGP 7600GS 256mb was the best bet unless you go for used cards. Going for a 128mb card will definitely incur extra overhead to the system's memory for paging.

Either way, this article might interest you. http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2814 (http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2814)

[PP Mguire]

I respectfully beg to disagree. 4x AGP shouldn't be an issue even with a 7600GS. Consider that a full x1950XTX can run in a mere "x4" PCIe slot with only a slight performance loss, or that a 7300GT can run in a PCIe x1 slot with only half it's performance lost. If you want to talk about features, then the 7300GT would have all that the 7600 would. I'll add that XFX even sells "4x/8x" AGP 7600GT's.Your missing the key point here. With loss of port bandwidth you need the headroom (FSB, ram, cpu) to back it up to make up for loss of bandwidth. If you had an X1950XTX on a PCI-E 4x slot youd surely have a C2D and 2gig DDR2 to back it up with. Not only that, the northbridge handles everything on a SocketA system and the 7000 series and up where meant for S939 and 754 systems with AGP slots. You can also get like a 6800GT on eBAY for 40 bucks. Beats the 100 somethin for 7600.

[sushrukh]

If money is an issue,then going for the older card is worth but if u need performance,i don't think going for old GPUs will be a smarter choice.I've understood ur point but 7600GS isn't that high end which will be bottlenecked by ur system.It's not a 8800 on a AGP.

I've seen many people upgrading their older AGP cards to 7600GS & even 7800GS & they r getting a hell lot of performance gains.Many of them r also using 266 Mhz memories but upgrading to newer cards didn't affect their 3D subsystem.

Do, remember one thing.In the case of older generation cards,CPU has to do many calculations by using their instructions.So, if u do have older cards that means more headache for ur CPU coz CPU needs to involve in most graphical tasks.But newer cards(7 series & up) has the ability to perform those calculations by themself keeping the CPU free.That means low CPU overhead.Today's cards have taken most of the responsibility of calculating graphics tasks from the CPU on their own shoulder.These cards r capable to do most of the number crunching that the CPU would have to do in case of older cards.

[PP Mguire]

I speak with experience though. I had 7800GS on an AthlonXP 2600+, 1.5gig DC 2700, and mobo with 8xAGP slot. I had to upgrade my system cause i wasnt getting everything i could have with the 7800GS. Before that, i had a 6800GT i had OCed and flashed to ultra which i got better frames and better 3dmark score out of. Soooo....yea. I can only imagine how much worse it would be on a much slower scaled system than that.

[Kougar]

It took long enough to find one, but here's a good article that should dispell any AGP 4x myths. Infact they used a 512mb x1950 Pro AGP card, which is easily a step or three above a 7600GS. http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rlid=143828 Note they used a Pentium M CPU, which is a closer match to a K7 system than a K8 chip would be. Dothan chips made for very poor gaming processors, almost as bad as Netburst chips.

A 7800GS is at best a step above a 6800 Ultra, it does not perform close to the orignal PCIe 7800GT card. In the above review, the AGP card not only soundly beats the original 7800GT but also an x850 XT PE. ;)

[PP Mguire]

Here again like ive been saying and saying its not just the AGP slot man. Ive said before that with older AGP systems the 4x/8x difference didnt matter. Its all in the hardware around it. This chip, northbridge, and ram are considerately faster than what hes using so there for something like that would be completely bottlenecked by the whole system around the video card. Making anything faster than a 6800GT renderd useless. Were talking 2000+ and 266mhz RAM on an already overstuffed northbridge. This is like trying to put a gigabit ethernet card in a Pentium1 machine and saying its going to make a great server just cause the card.

[Kougar]

I think you are overestimating the load I fair bit. K7 systems weren't exactly hobbled by their northbridge back in their day, and the lack of dual-channel memory support isn't going to amount to very much anyway.

In their test they used a very old 855 GME chipset. Not only was it not dual-channel capable, but it was limited to a 400FSB. It only supports DDR266 or DDR333 mhz RAM. So I don't see how it would be any different than a "hobbled" system you keep saying would bottleneck such a video card. If that was in any way true it would have shown up in their results. ;)

[PP Mguire]

The speed of ram and the difference in northbirdge is still a great deal of difference though. Like i said, i speak with experience. If i had the time i would show you myself with such systems.

[DragonMaster]

Sorry for not replying, I didn't get the auto-reply notification in my email(And stopped always using my computer recently, hey, BTW, isn't it the Shutdown Day today ? ;-) ).

About the AIW 9800Pros there are in the corner, they run at around $100 CAD.

OK, so *maybe* better cards are OK, and if they slow down everything, I think I saw an utility to make the graphics worse.

So a GF7 should use less B/W than a GF6?
PP doesn't seem to agree... From what I saw, I wouldn't either because I know that Doom 3 with a patch is able to run flawlessly on a Voodoo2 with a 600MHz CPU. More instructions = more bandwidth to me, but if they reduced it's use with the GF7 then, it's an other story.

An other thing to look at is the CPU. The CPU that is on that mobo is an XP2000 running at 1.667 GHz. The best the motherboard can take without Dremelling out a component is an XP 2100. (Otherwise, it's a mobile 2500+ IIRC)
Games that still work with that CPU generally ask for a GeForce FX minimum. The thing to know is if games asking for a GF7 minimum will work with an XP 2000.
I don't want a $30 FX because I heard at a lot of places that they often have problems and perform worse than the GF4 sometimes.

I don't know if there's a real point in putting much money on an AGP graphic card for that system, unless my brother decides to get an used P4, but the word "Intel" is burning his ears. I guess that because every systems we had before our Duron 950 worked like crap, crashed, were slow, and were Intels(We never had P3s unless I got an used one 1-2 years ago, but it was still slower than the system I recently had upgraded from a Duron 950 to an XP 2100)

Oh, and btw, is it usual to get generic DDR266 to run at 2-3-3-6-1T w/o problems?

[Kougar]

I wouldn't argue that point that that CPU would bottleneck the graphics card, I'm just of the opinion it would bottleneck them both similarly. The only catch is games set their own settings according to the system they detect during install, so the same game you install on a XP2000 isn't going to be the same as what you install on say a FX55. All the graphics and CPU settings would be adjusted differently.

As far as used P4s go, if it is a 478 socket, NewEgg had new OEM $110 Gallatin Extrem Edition 3.4ghz P4s again a week or two ago.... I was trying to resist the upgrade for this Northwood system, since it would OC to 3.73-4ghz and have 2mb L3 cache onboard. :roll:

I wouldn't know regarding the RAM... makes a bit of sense if you consider that DDR266 is the slowest DDR speed though.

[sushrukh]

It may sound false but it's true that if u put DDR 400 memories in the DDR 266slots they work much better than the DDR 266 rams.

And to the point :- As Kougar has already said that games do install on machines by looking every parts of ur machines like ram,CPU etc.You may have noticed that when u r in the game's video settings,there's an automatic detect utility which automatically detects ur system performance & let u play with the highest possible settings for ur PC.In both cases of 6800 Ultra & 7600GS, the game will be automatically tuned to give the best yet stable performance.Today's games have enough IQ to detect the difference b2in a 7600GS & a 6800.They will run or install according to all of ur hardware device's capability that it need to play safely.So, if the game thinks that some effects of ur graphics card may be tough to handle for ur PC, it'll be automatically disabled or lowered.

I'm saying from experience also.I do have a Geforce 6200 which is a Shader Model 3.0 card but whenever i try to play SM 3.0 capable games, Shader Model 3 gets automatically disabled in the game's settings.

Last night i was playing Splinter Cell Chaos Theory which is a SM 3.0 game.After installing the game i found that in the game's video setting section the SM3.0 is disabled.Do u know why ? It's simple.I'm using an athlon XP 2600+ CPU which the game thinks isn't high enough to handle SM3.0 capability.So,the game has turned off the SM3.0 ability of my card.So,no bottlenecking.

The above example i think is enough to prove that games have the ability to tune themselves according to the overall system performance so that bottleneck can't happen.

So, ur games will automatically scale down if it thinks that other parts of ur PC can't handle that graphics part.

[PP Mguire]

Well Dragon seems you know what i have to say on it. Im done arguing. If i find time, ill prove with benchies.I wouldn't know regarding the RAM... makes a bit of sense if you consider that DDR266 is the slowest DDR speed though.They make PC 1600 as well ;) DDR200

[DragonMaster]

It may sound false but it's true that if u put DDR 400 memories in the DDR 266slots they work much better than the DDR 266 rams.
Oh, so using DDR400 is possible on a DDR266 mobo? It only crashed like hell the last time I tried.

[werty316]

Oh, so using DDR400 is possible on a DDR266 mobo? It only crashed like hell the last time I tried.
Its possible, the motherboard would jsut clock the DDR400 down to DDR266 speeds. Its the same story if you have DDR2-1066 memory; since DDR2 boards only support upto DDR2-800, the motherboard would clock the DDR2-900 down to DDR2-800.

[DragonMaster]

So, why can't I use my spare DDR400 256MB stick on the Athlon XP, no matter what timing is used? It works in my X2 4400.

[sushrukh]

Try to update the bios of ur mobo.The mobo maybe isn't detecting the DDR400 memory but as i've said earlier DDR 400 memories r automatically downgraded to DDR 266 whille using them in DDR266/333 mobos.If u have the latest version of bios installed then do 1 thing.Ist install the DDR 266 module & in the bios manually set the ram speed as DDR 266(turning off the Auto & SPD modes).Then install the DDR 400 module.As u've already set the speed as 266,the 400 module will work in 266 mode.

I think it's an issue with ur mobo bios coz i've installed many DDR400 modules in many 266/333 mobos & each time the mobos has detected the modules & adjusted themselves according to their capability.

[DragonMaster]

My motherboard can only set the RAM speed to 200 or 266MHz(Unless I change the CPU FSB). I have SPD, HCLK-33 and HCLK as options with a 133 FSB CPU, and SPD, HCLK+33 and HCLK for a 100 FSB CPU.

I put it to HCLK(133) usually, so speed shouldn't be a problem. Even if I use the manual settings it will crash. Sometimes the computer starts, but it's slow as hell and puts up BSODs. Sometimes it just won't boot. Maybe I could play with the RAM stick order...

The hynix 256MB DDR400 stick is coming from an iMac G5.