[superomega1]

alright, i'm on a tight budget. i wanna get a card from sapphire tech and i wanna know what card has the best value for money. i look at all these online sites and all they say about sapphires cards is that they bring excellent performance to games, even the 7500's and such which in no way will run any of todays games very well. what i'm trying to ask here is which is the best card i can get for £120?
also will pci express work on agp slots?

[Stanley]

at least 8xxx and above.... 7500 sux so badly so aint worth $1

[AT82]

This is the wrong sub forum.

[Willla2]

pci-express cards dont go in AGP as far as I've been told. there's a small chance I'm wrong, so it would be good for someone to clear that one up.

I'd go for the saphirre 9600, 9600Pro, 9800 or 9800Pro (that's in order of how good they are, crappest to best). Those will range from around 90 quid up to 150, so pick the one you want for your budget. All the pci-e cards are out of your range anyways.
go for 128MbRam

[Philibob]

(Original post by Willla2)
pci-express cards dont go in AGP as far as I've been told. there's a small chance I'm wrong, so it would be good for someone to clear that one up.

PCI-express don't go in AGP

[lotus_lee]

For £120, you definitely have got to go for a Radeon 9800pro. Doesn't matter which manufacturer you pick, as long as you get one that has good memory (2.8ns if possible) and has a r360 core.

[Quiksilver]

is PCI express compatible with all motherboards, or only brand new ones?

[Willla2]

to make use of the pci-e super fastness you need a brand new mobo. Not worth it atm though, not unless you're a video editor.

[Philibob]

(Original post by Quiksilver)
is PCI express compatible with all motherboards, or only brand new ones?

Newer ones will have PCIe, even then it's hard to find motherboard with it and AMD motherboards with PCIe are near enough impossible to find at the moment

[Quiksilver]

(Original post by Willla2)
to make use of the pci-e super fastness you need a brand new mobo. Not worth it atm though, not unless you're a video editor.

does it not use regular PCI slots then

[Philibob]

(Original post by Quiksilver)
does it not use regular PCI slots then

It's a special slot, there are also 'regular' PCIe slots (1x) they're a lot smaller than current PCI slots

[Quiksilver]

(Original post by Philibob)
It's a special slot, there are also 'regular' PCIe slots (1x) they're a lot smaller than current PCI slots

oh right.
can you use multiple GPUs with PCIe?

[Philibob]

(Original post by Quiksilver)
oh right.
can you use multiple GPUs with PCIe?

Only if the GPU supports it, like NVIDIA's SLI for the 6800 cards.

[Quiksilver]

(Original post by Philibob)
Only if the GPU supports it, like NVIDIA's SLI for the 6800 cards.

so pcie is basically just a faster version of agp?

[Philibob]

(Original post by Quiksilver)
so pcie is basically just a faster version of agp?

There's other differences as well, including increased power to the slot + serial transmission (I think AGP is parallel although not 100% sure)
Anything developed for PCIe cards or that does a large amount of data/texture swapping should benefit from PCIe

[Willla2]

but the thing is to make the most use out of PCIe you gotta put the code in your software. PCIe is just another fad that the market is trying to push upon us. ASUS have been bribed a huge amount to make their new cards PCIe only. The market really want us to start using something we just don't need at the moment. Dont go out of your way to buy a PCIe mobo, i'd wait at least another year before it's remotely worth it.

[[-David-]]

Tis true the early benchmarks from PCI express aren't as good as we hoped, but it will enivitably replace the AGP interface, there is a big deal out of it as it will be aparrently the same leap in performance as with ISA > PCI. Frankly, i find this hard to beleive seeing as AGP 8x hasn't been used to its full potential.

And yes, PCI will come in a veriety of sized slots, 16x will be for graphics, im not sure about the rest (2x, 4x, 8x etc)

[Mighty]

Best card you can get for £120 would probably be an ATI 9600 or 9800. I got a 256mb one for £110 (and a free copy of HL2 ) I'm not sure what the NVidia equivalent is.

I wouldn't bother with PCX right now, it's not mainstream yet. The cards that have been released in PCX format are no faster than their AGP equivalents at the moment.

[austinmetro]

(Original post by Mighty)
Best card you can get for £120 would probably be an ATI 9600 or 9800. I got a 256mb one for £110 (and a free copy of HL2 ) I'm not sure what the NVidia equivalent is.

I wouldn't bother with PCX right now, it's not mainstream yet. The cards that have been released in PCX format are no faster than their AGP equivalents at the moment.

i got the 9600 256mb for bout 80 quid.

Thats cos i ant got much money, seems2 play newest games at fairly high res without bummin out!

[Mighty]

(Original post by austinmetro)
i got the 9600 256mb for bout 80 quid.

Thats cos i ant got much money, seems2 play newest games at fairly high res without bummin out!

Yeah, it's a good card. Can't compete against the x800 though