Best for $200

tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
edited June 2005 in Hardware
Hey, I've been wanting a new video card for a while now. I finally got another job so the moneys coming in again :) Anyway I have an nvidia geforce fx 5700le right now, and its not performing up to my "needs" i guess you could say. I play alot of counterstrike source, halo, and half life 2, and I would like to be able to run the settings on high, espeically the resolution at 1280x1024. So anyway I need the best agp 8x video card that I can get, and I dont want to spend more than say $200-230, so I want your reccomendations, and a link to the best card for my situation. thanks

Comments

  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    I say, save for a week or so more and go with a 256 bit interface card like an Nvidia 6800GT or an ATI X800XL. Just my.02.;)
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    No, its not a matter that I dont have the money, its just that I don't feel like spending like $350 on a card.
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    tmh88 wrote:
    No, its not a matter that I dont have the money, its just that I don't feel like spending like $350 on a card.
    In that case this eVGA 128-A8-N343-AX for $189.00 would be the most bang for your buck! Sure it is only 128mb memory but it is a decent 256mb interface card that has more pipelines than a 6600GT, which is in the same price range. :cool:
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited June 2005
    I agree with mtgoat, those 6800nu cards are probably the best bang for the buck. If you are a hardware tweaker, you also have the option of unlocking an additional 4 pipelines for some added boost.

    I don't think ATI has much in that price range that can compare.
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    jw, but how can you unlock 4 pipelines? That seems kinda weird that there are 4 pipelines unused.

    I went to the reviews on this card, and like you said you can unlock pipelines. Heres what a customer said "I used RivaTuner to unlock the dormant pixel and vertex pipelines"
  • Mt_GoatMt_Goat Head Cheezy Knob Pflugerville (north of Austin) Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    tmh88 wrote:
    jw, but how can you unlock 4 pipelines? That seems kinda weird that there are 4 pipelines unused.

    I went to the reviews on this card, and like you said you can unlock pipelines. Heres what a customer said "I used RivaTuner to unlock the dormant pixel and vertex pipelines"
    To keep manufacturing costs down hardware mfgrs often disable or handicap one product as an inexpensive way to produce a cheaper product. There are several guides to unlocking the unused pipelines and it worlks qite well. Even if it doesn't these cards are still a great bang for the buck!
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    is there a big risk involved unlocking the pipelines. Could the card possibly be damaged in any way if its done incorrectly?


    Hmm so say a manufacturer makes a card with 16 pipelines, but on certain ones they lock or whatever 4 pipelines so that its only 12 pipelines then, and then sell it for cheaper. Is this basically what they do, so they can sell two versions of the same card, but make one more expensive? I just dont get why they would do this, its all too confusing :confused::p
  • MAGICMAGIC Doot Doot Furniture City, Michigan Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    tmh88 wrote:
    is there a big risk involved unlocking the pipelines. Could the card possibly be damaged in any way if its done incorrectly?


    Hmm so say a manufacturer makes a card with 16 pipelines, but on certain ones they lock or whatever 4 pipelines so that its only 12 pipelines then, and then sell it for cheaper. Is this basically what they do, so they can sell two versions of the same card, but make one more expensive? I just dont get why they would do this, its all too confusing :confused::p

    Yes, theres a risk in any mod you do to a piece of hardware. It costs them the same to produce the card, but by having a card with 12 pips for 200 it makes it so they can charge 400 for the cards with 16. nobody would buy the 400 cards if the 200 ones were the same.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited June 2005
    tmh88 wrote:
    jw, but how can you unlock 4 pipelines? That seems kinda weird that there are 4 pipelines unused.
    It's essentially marketing. It costs the manufacturer about the same to produce the high end and low end cards based on the same graphics chips. If all they offered were the fully capable high end, they would either block out those wishing to spend less money or have to lower their prices dramatically and lose their profits.

    CPU manufacturers do a similar thing. Let's say there's a CPU line (Intel, AMD, or Via), and there is a run of nominally rated 3400MHz units being produced. The manufacturer sorts out those truly capable of 3400, those only capable of 3000, 2800, and so forth. Not all the chips will have the same performance level, but they all come off the same line, so to speak. Well, that's not all. If Intel (or AMD) puts on the market all the 3400's that are 3400 capable, they won't be able to keep their high price points. Yes, they actually take a portion of the higher performing chips and disable them to only perform at a lower rating, thus ensuring a low enough supply of the 3400-badged chips to secure high market prices. That's one of the reasons why some batches of CPUs will overclock better than others. A particular run of CPUs was 'too good', in that many perfectly top notch CPUs were badged at lower speeds to keep prices up for the higher-badged chips.
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    so say I do decide to get that 6800 card that someone posted above (heres the manufacturers specs http://www.evga.com/products/moreinfo.asp?pn=128-A8-N343-AX), it says it has 12 pixel pipelines. Since this is just the regular 6800, and there are other 6800 models with 16 pixel pipelines, I'm just assuming that there are 4 locked pipelines. Ok now my question is, how do you go about "unlocking" the pipelines.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited June 2005
    There is a concise guide available here

    Btw, just an FYI, this is only possible on the AGP version of the card. The PCI-E variant is a native 12-pipe card (i.e. no pipelines to unlock).
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    well I just noticed somthing about that 6800 and I cant use it :mad: I have the agp interface with the 3 slot connection thing. Look this is my card i have now, notice how where it plugs into the mobo how its broken up into 3 parts. http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=14&PISNo=269 wow this sucks, and none of the high end cards are like this. I hate my motherboard :mad::mad::mad::mad: its a k8v se deluxe and its a piece of crap
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1009366&CatId=0 I just found this. It will work with my 8x agp interface. Its the same 6800 just costs more :shakehead
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited June 2005
    tmh88, it should still fit, even though it it split down the middle. As long as your system supports 4x/8x AGP, it will not have a problem. The only thing that may not fit in your AGP slot, is the old 1x/2x only cards, which are missing the second slit, and don't fit.
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    Yea that one 6800 that was posted at the top is missing the 2nd slit, and wont fit on my piece of **** mobo :shakehead :bawling:
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited June 2005
    tmh88 wrote:
    Yea that one 6800 that was posted at the top is missing the 2nd slit, and wont fit on my piece of **** mobo :shakehead :bawling:

    I'm 99% sure that card will fit and work just fine in your board. If you look closely at a picture of your AGP slot, you'll see that everything should line up. Your mainboard is quite modern and should have full AGP 8X support.
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    lemonlime wrote:
    I'm 99% sure that card will fit and work just fine in your board. If you look closely at a picture of your AGP slot, you'll see that everything should line up. Your mainboard is quite modern and should have full AGP 8X support.

    You were right, my agp slot has 2 sections. I was almost positive that it had 3, so I opened up my computer to check, and I realized that its my video card that has 3, and my agp port has 2. So now i guess i can get the 6800. O yea and one more bad thing. When I opened up my computer and took out my video card, I saw that one of my capacitor's legs wasn't even soldered. So basically theres a 1/2 soldered capacitor on my video card, but the weird thing is I havent had any symptoms of it. I havent had any corrupted video or anything, it works perfectly. Maybe its one of those "hidden" pipelines.
  • lemonlimelemonlime Canada Member
    edited June 2005
    tmh88 wrote:
    You were right, my agp slot has 2 sections. I was almost positive that it had 3, so I opened up my computer to check, and I realized that its my video card that has 3, and my agp port has 2. So now i guess i can get the 6800. O yea and one more bad thing. When I opened up my computer and took out my video card, I saw that one of my capacitor's legs wasn't even soldered. So basically theres a 1/2 soldered capacitor on my video card, but the weird thing is I havent had any symptoms of it. I havent had any corrupted video or anything, it works perfectly. Maybe its one of those "hidden" pipelines.

    I had a similar problem with a cap on my old GF4 card. I bought it as-is, and one cap was damaged. I got a few random graphical glitches as a result, but I simply pressed the broken leg back onto the card,and used a bit of super glue to hold it down (not handy with a sodering iron). My ghetto solution did the trick though, card worked beautifully.

    Glad to hear the 6800 will work out. You wont be disappointed about that card.
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited June 2005
    I'm just going to solder the leg back in ONLY if it starts acting up. Theres no need to risk completely screwing my card if its working fine. I'm decent at soldering, mainly cause I had to do ALOT of soldering for my modchip in my xbox. I havent had any problems or errors. I'll probably sell it on ebay when i get my 6800, and then I'll solder the leg back in.


    But wait, that capacitors leg wasnt even in the hole, it was like hanging off. So basically the circuit had a gap in it and wasn't completed so how did it still work? weird huh :confused:
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