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So the other day my trusty Radeon 9800 pro died an awful death well ahead of schedule. I wasn't really planning on buying a new card until I built my next computer, which I can't afford to do right now, but I'm not quite willing to give up on my WoW addiction at this time and the ancient geforce 2 card I managed to unearth just won't cut it.

What are my options for a reasonably cheap agp card that can at least equal the performance of my old one these days? I'm afraid I haven't bothered to keep up with the times an the alphabet soup is quite frankly confusing as hell

In the cheap but powerful area you have two basic options

The 7600GT's from Nvidia(99-140$)
Or the X850's from ATI (100-140$)
But a question comes to mind, are you running AGP still?

Yes, I'll need an AGP card, no PCI-e slot on the motherboard which is why this incident is so annoying. I was planning on a new motherboard + cpu sometime next year and a new video card to round it out.

X850 Pro or 7600 GS should fit the bill at about $120-140 from Newegg. The X850 will be faster, but the 7600 GS is newer and supports more features.

If that's too rich for your blood, maybe a 6600 GT if you can find one.

EDIT: Be careful, though. Both those cards are also available in PCI-E, so make sure you're getting the AGP version.

you can get an Nvidia 6800 for less than a hundred bucks (if you can wait till friday you might get a special on one for around fifty)

That will do most anything you ask of it decently well until you go for the full upgrade

If you're talking about the 6800 XT, that's a perfectly good option as long as you're not expecting it to be much faster than your 9800 Pro was. Where did you see it for $50, though?

Thanks guys, the 7600 GS seems to fit my needs and some snooping around on the local shops webpages shows that they have it in stock so I can pick it up at my leisure

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:If you're talking about the 6800 XT, that's a perfectly good option as long as you're not expecting it to be much faster than your 9800 Pro was. Where did you see it for $50, though?

A local computer store had one on special not to long ago. I imagine on black Friday you might be able to find comparable prices.

and if he wasn't thinking of upgrading until next year anyway then it seems a 6800 would work. But if Geodd has already settled on the (admirable) 7600 thats fine too. I'm just a poor college student prone to go with the cheapest option,