Which graphics card? Help?

[asterias]

Hi there, I have a limited budget and was looking to replace my GE4 440mx.

I have found a radeon 8500, A geforce 6200, radeon 9200, ge 5700le.

Which is the better choice.

Any help would be great

cheers

Asterias

[Midknyte]

What is the budget? The 5700LE sucks, so don't bother with that. I'd probably go with the 6200 since it has the newest core, but a $$ amount would help.

[asterias]

Hi there,

probably around £30 on ebay

[Midknyte]

yikes. The 6200 would probably be your best bet. you can overclock it and possibly open up the 4 extra pipes to make it close to a 6600.

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=1907&s=1

[asterias]

All the 6200 Ive found only have a 64bit memory address. Would the 8500 be better ?

Cheers

[Midknyte]

the memory buswidth is only one aspect. i don't see how the 8500 would be better. it's already 2 generations old.

[asterias]

its just that I bought a 5500 a while a go and it had a 64 bit memory bandwidth and it was worse than my 440mx

[zybch]

Isn't the 6200 a PCI express only card? I'm not completely sure though.

I've bought and sold a lot of Radeon 9550s recently. This card is basically an underclocked 9600. It uses exactly the same core but the bios and ATI drivers don't clock it as high as it actually goes. You can use something like ATI Tool to 'unlock' the chip speed and you will get almost 9600 speeds for about 1/3 the price.

[tcom50]

FONT=Arial The 8500 card if its a true high end ati card would post the best benchies, your motherboard cpu combo may be better suited for the older yet fast ti4200 card, hang out at newegg under refurbs, youll get a much better choice, maybe even an ATI 9800 card ....

[Midknyte]

Yes, there is an AGP 6200. see the link I posted earlier.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...229/index.html
The 8500 was a decent card, but it's older technology. I just think the 6200 has more potential.

[tcom50]

[B]True, and there are certain 6200 cards that the pipe line trick has worked, under those conditions for sure get the 6200 ...Yet back in the day, many 3dmark scores were set by the ati 8500, I have seen 10,000 to 13,000 points on different systems, its all in the core speed and the quality of the memory, and extra pipes help....