| Windows 7: Is this graphic card good for me? (AGP only) |
21 Sep 2012
|
#1 | | Win 7 Pro 64-bit 7601 Italy |
Is this graphic card good for me? (AGP only) As you can see from my specs, the best slot on my mobo is an AGP x8, I have no PCI-e slots.
So, I was googling around to see if I could upgrade my current graphic card. Seems like NVIDIA pulled the plug on AGP cards far before ATI.
The best one I found is a radeon 4670 with 1 GB of DDR3, which is available as either " gaming" or " home cinema" versions (the home cinema one has a crappier openGL but has better "unified video decoder" and has an integrated "7.1 audio", they are otherwise identical), both have native HDMI ports in addition to the usual VGA and DVI.
First question: Is my processor good enough to not bottleneck these cards?
Second question: what is the best of the two? Do I really need a better OpenGL? What are exactly the two other features of the "home cinema" card?
Feel free to recommend a better AGP card if you know. No price limit.
Don't tell me to buy a new PC and a pci-e card, I already know that would be the easiest way. | My System Specs |
| Computer type PC/Desktop System Manufacturer/Model Number custom built OS Win 7 Pro 64-bit 7601 CPU AMD Phenom 9650 QuadCore, revision DR-B3 Motherboard ASUS M4A78 Memory 4,00 GB Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Sound Card Realtek High Definition Audio Monitor(s) Displays Fujitsu Siemens P19-3P Screen Resolution 1280 x 1024 x 32 bits @ 60 Hz Oh yeah, 4:3 rocks! Keyboard Microsoft, whatever. Mouse Optical, logitec. PSU whatever, around 450w Case Scavenged from old company PC, 10+ years old Cooling CPU fan, GPU fan, case fan, nothing fancy Hard Drives (1) MAXTOR S TM3320613AS SATA Disk Device (2) STM35004 18AS SATA Disk Device (3) TOSHIBA USB 2.5"-HDD Internet Speed effective max speeds: 70-ish kB/s down 30-ish kB/s up Antivirus Avira, free endition. Browser Firefox with FXChrome to make it look like Google Chrome Other Info Was discarded by previous owner due to "horrible performance".
Was running Win Xp from a IDE drive. Yeah. Was a pain.
SATA II drive and Win7 and it zips away! Yay! |
21 Sep 2012
|
#2 | | Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit Norfolk, VA |
Both cards appear to be the same, only difference is the cinema one has higher clocked memory.
The little icons showing the features on the gaming one aren't all there but that card has all the same features as the other one. | My System Specs | | System Manufacturer/Model Number HAL-9000 OS Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit CPU Intel i7 3770K Motherboard Asus Sabertooth Z77 Memory 16GB DDR3 1333 Corsair XMS3 Graphics Card XFX HD6950 2GB EyeFinity Sound Card Logitech G35 & Sennheiser PC135 & VIA HD Monitor(s) Displays 23" HP 2310e, 23" Samsung B2230, 21.5" Viewsonic Screen Resolution 5760x1080 Keyboard Logitech G15 and G13 Mouse Logitech G700 Gaming Mouse PSU Antec True Power New 650watt Case Cooler Master HAF-932 Cooling Corsair H60 Hydro Cooler, 3x 230mm Fans, 2x120mm Fan Hard Drives 16TB of Storage
128GB & 256GB Crucial M4 SSD's, 2X 1TB WD Black, 3x 2TB WD, 3x 2TB Samsung F4, 1.5TB Seagate, WD 500GB, Internet Speed 50/10 Mbit Other Info Speakers : Alesis M1 Active Mk2 Studio Monitors , APC RS 1200 UPS, HP 4500DN Color Laser, HP P1006 mono Laser, Kodak 8500 Dye-Sub, Epson 1280 inkjet, Epson Worforce 610 MFC |
21 Sep 2012
|
#3 | | Win 7 Pro 64-bit 7601 Italy |
yeah, the only difference that I'm worried about is that the cinema one does have OpenGl 2.1 while the other supports OpenGl 3.2.
Does that make any difference for games it can play? | My System Specs | | Computer type PC/Desktop System Manufacturer/Model Number custom built OS Win 7 Pro 64-bit 7601 CPU AMD Phenom 9650 QuadCore, revision DR-B3 Motherboard ASUS M4A78 Memory 4,00 GB Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Sound Card Realtek High Definition Audio Monitor(s) Displays Fujitsu Siemens P19-3P Screen Resolution 1280 x 1024 x 32 bits @ 60 Hz Oh yeah, 4:3 rocks! Keyboard Microsoft, whatever. Mouse Optical, logitec. PSU whatever, around 450w Case Scavenged from old company PC, 10+ years old Cooling CPU fan, GPU fan, case fan, nothing fancy Hard Drives (1) MAXTOR S TM3320613AS SATA Disk Device (2) STM35004 18AS SATA Disk Device (3) TOSHIBA USB 2.5"-HDD Internet Speed effective max speeds: 70-ish kB/s down 30-ish kB/s up Antivirus Avira, free endition. Browser Firefox with FXChrome to make it look like Google Chrome Other Info Was discarded by previous owner due to "horrible performance".
Was running Win Xp from a IDE drive. Yeah. Was a pain.
SATA II drive and Win7 and it zips away! Yay! |
21 Sep 2012
|
#4 | | Win 7 Ultimate x64 Etobicoke, Ontario |
Think that is a typo as according to AMD, ATI Radeon
the HD 4600 series are all OpenGL 3.2. | My System Specs | | System Manufacturer/Model Number Me OS Win 7 Ultimate x64 CPU Phenom II x4 955 @ 4 GHz. Motherboard Asus M5A97 EVO Memory 2x2 GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600 Graphics Card Sapphire HD 6850 Sound Card Xonar DGX w/ Logitech X-530 Monitor(s) Displays Acer S232HL Abid Screen Resolution 1920x1080 Keyboard Logitech Wave Mouse Logitech G5 v2 PSU Antec Earthwatts 650W Green Case Antec Three Hundred Cooling Cooler Master 212 EVO Hard Drives 120 GB OCZ Vertex 3
500 GB Seagate 7200.12 Internet Speed 24000/1000 |
24 Sep 2012
|
#5 | | Win 7 Pro 64-bit 7601 Italy |
Asked them and they admitted the typo (just emailed me), seems like the "home cinema" one is the clear winner then. | My System Specs | | Computer type PC/Desktop System Manufacturer/Model Number custom built OS Win 7 Pro 64-bit 7601 CPU AMD Phenom 9650 QuadCore, revision DR-B3 Motherboard ASUS M4A78 Memory 4,00 GB Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT Sound Card Realtek High Definition Audio Monitor(s) Displays Fujitsu Siemens P19-3P Screen Resolution 1280 x 1024 x 32 bits @ 60 Hz Oh yeah, 4:3 rocks! Keyboard Microsoft, whatever. Mouse Optical, logitec. PSU whatever, around 450w Case Scavenged from old company PC, 10+ years old Cooling CPU fan, GPU fan, case fan, nothing fancy Hard Drives (1) MAXTOR S TM3320613AS SATA Disk Device (2) STM35004 18AS SATA Disk Device (3) TOSHIBA USB 2.5"-HDD Internet Speed effective max speeds: 70-ish kB/s down 30-ish kB/s up Antivirus Avira, free endition. Browser Firefox with FXChrome to make it look like Google Chrome Other Info Was discarded by previous owner due to "horrible performance".
Was running Win Xp from a IDE drive. Yeah. Was a pain.
SATA II drive and Win7 and it zips away! Yay! Is this graphic card good for me? (AGP only) problems? All times are GMT -5. The time now is 07:53 PM. | |