Brother needs new vid card AGp - help!

Draysoth

My dear brother wants to get into World of Warcraft but it looks like arse on his system.

He doesn't have PCI-E, only agp, and can't afford to spend a bundle on a card.

What options are there? Thanks in advance. Note we're in Canada, so will likely be using NCIX.com or tigerdirect.ca.

Fibretip

what does he have at the moment? AGP reaches a quality ceiling, so it would be helpful knowing where you are at the moment.. because you might find it's not actually worth upgrading... I have a geforce 7800 GS and i wouldn't be able to go upwards any without swapping mobos. I'm guessing you're starting low though from your post?

Draysoth

Oboard pos... My system I am typing this on is running a 6800gt and it runs great. As long as WoW runs smoothly and he doesn't have to pay too much he will be quite happy I am sure.

robaal

There are some AGP 7600GTs, which should work well enough, though you might have trouble finding them. ZipZoomFly has one at 180USD, so I guess that would be about 210CAD?

A used 6800GT/Ultra would be pretty good too, and if he will be playing mostly WoW then you could also consider the X800XL/X800XT/X850XT cards, which perform well enough, but don't support Shader Model 3.0 which sometimes makes the games prettier (AoE3, the previous Splinter Cell) or lets them run at all (Splinter Cell: Double Agent). I think you should be able to get them for around 170-200CAD.

Then there are 7600GS/X1600Pro/X1650Pro which are slower, buy also cheaper and easier to find. Just make sure that the clocks aren't lower than default (400/800 for the GS, 500/800 for the 00Pro), the X1650Pro should be clocked at 600/1400 but it usually has memory at 800 like the X1600Pro, so won't be much faster than the 00 while costing more.
The GS is usually slightly faster than the Radeons and I suspect that it will overclock more easily, OTOH the X1600Pro is much cheaper.

Oh, and don't bother with the 512MB versions - most of the time they use slower memory than the 256MB versions and even if not they most likely won't be any faster than the cheaper versions.

Rizzi

I got an X800 GTO for xmas.
Got everything on max settings. Get average framerates etc..
It runs nice and smooth on all my other games.
HL2, BF2, Oblivion etc.

Upgraded from a 6600LE which ran WoW pretty well. I guess WoW isn't the most intensive game spec side of the coin

Draysoth

Is there anything under a hundred that would work...?

Magus`

Depends if 'under a hundred' includes tax.

Also, the longer you wait, the more expensive AGP cards will become as they're quickly being phased out.

Kyzen

The X800 GTO is an awesome bang-for-your-buck card. I scored the PCI-E version for my younger brother awhile ago for $83 off Newegg. Most X800 GTO's can be bumped up to awesome speeds via some overclocking.

robaal

Draysoth wrote:

Is there anything under a hundred that would work...?

CAD? I think you should be able to get a used 6600GT (or perhaps a 9800Pro?).
The 7300GT seems to also come in AGP flavour, but I'm guessing it would be slower than the 6600GT.

I think you should be able to get a X1600Pro if you meant 100USD.