Im Buying a new Graphics card......?

[jay22]

I have 2 options as im on a budget and i want to know out of these 2 cards which would be the best, also for abit of gaming now and then nothing 2 heavy.
Option 1 is the sapphire radeon x1600pro 512mb and option 2 is the sapphire radeon hd 2600pro 512mb ? there both agp by the way as i don't have a 16x pci express slot which is a bummer i know.

Anyways i don't know to much about graphics cards and i know these cards ain't the best about by light years ! but as im on a budget and i can get them both at about the same price id just like to know which is the best out of these 2 cards 4 my money ?
Cheers !

 

[WildEagle]

Get the Radeon HD 2600 Pro. That's a better card than the X1600 Pro.

 

[revogamer]

if you want the best agp its the ATI HD3850, but out of those two, the 2600 pro

 

[Shao128]

if you want the best agp its the ATI HD3850, but out of those two, the 2600 pro

+1 on that. Just a couple things to keep in mind though.

1) Ati no longer "officially" supports AGP cards. If you download the drivers from ATI's website you will need to edit the .INF and add an entry for your card for the newest drivers to install. Although you will still be able to get the drivers from the vendors site that manufactured the card (Diamond/Sapphire/Asus/VisionTek etc), they are usually a little slower at posting the drivers after ATI does.

2) ATI is going to be release its 4000 series of cards very soon, reports say as early as this month. The price of the 3000 series is already dropping because of this. If you can be patient you will be able to find some good deals by looking around. I bought a 3650 PCI-E 512MB for $75 CDN just 2 weeks ago.

 

[Axon]

The prices of Motherboards are also dropping, just buy a nice, not-too-overpowered MB with a PCI-E x16 slot, it will really make a difference.

 

[jay22]

I had a x1550 4 about 5 months and had nothing but problems with it my pc freezing all the time no matter what catalyst drivers i had. I just sent the card back 2 misco and my computers freezing probs have stopped , back to the old onboard graphics by via they suck so much with a vista rating of 1 and no drivers for vista 64, not that they could do aero but some contrast settings etc would be nice.
Is it just me or are catalyst drivers all just really buggy ? every time i tryed to change video options in the catalyst center the center would just freeze ?

 

[Shao128]

Is it just me or are catalyst drivers all just really buggy ? every time i tryed to change video options in the catalyst center the center would just freeze ?

Ive been using ATI cards for some years now on my home PCs and I generally havent run into major issues related directly to the Catalyst drivers. They have their bugs here and there, but generally I find them pretty decent over all. I've found the majority of problems are the manufacturer specific, I had a Diamond ATI Radeon HD 2400, and nothing but issues, then I moved to a Sapphire of the same model and it worked great. Some manufacturers will overclock the cards from the factory and not always provide adequite cooling for example, which will cause you to run into issues. I've ran nVidia cards at work and run into far more problems with their drivers than ATI. But thats just my personal experience, I'm sure others will be different.