I have an AGP interface and want to play some DirectX9 games, watch the occasional video and do normal web stuff and digital photography.

I have an ATI 9800 Pro that is going poo-poo on me.

It's December 28 which means .. NO MONEY to speak of.... does anyone have any ideas on what I can pick up to replace this card?

If you have the money, any of these should really do you well (side note: I love eVGA as a company, they put out a solid product):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130076

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814161053

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814121020

If you have a few more bucks, I personally prefer BFG (and eVGA):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143069

Or, want ballzout bang for buck?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814143046

That last card is really going to give you some serious performance for an AGP card. Memory clock and core clock are huge, and BFG warranty is seriously kickass. I would pick up that last one before anything else.

Well .. thanks. :)

I found the perfect low $ solution though.. I remembered that my daughter had an old ATI 9000 series Walmart card in her PC that used to be in mine before I swapped the 9800 in.

Since all she ever plays are pogo games I put a 7200 I had laying around in her PC and got the 9000 back.

It's only 64m and 4x and it's a Walmarty knockoff.. but you can't beat the price.. lol

I really need to move to a new motherboard and 64bit proc, but I don't feel like spending the money right now.

I hear you on the "Spending the money" thing. Honestly, Dell has some great Intel Core 2 Duo machines for under $500 and these new Core 2 Duo processers are kickass.

If you wanted to upgrade to a new machine, there are cheap solutions. If you wanted to build your own for around $1k, check out this thread: http://67-72chevytrucks.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=219275

Pay close attention from post #10 and below. The rest is just opinion and experiences I've had. Lots of good info in there.

I just recently bought and installed the BFG 7800GS:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814143046 (same link you posted Shifty)

That card is amazing for an AGP. I replaced an old 9600Pro and it's like night and day. It is my final upgrade to this aging computer. I figure this one will last me another 2 to 2.5 years, and then I'll probably drop another $1200-$1500 and build myself a new one, only to have it be outdated within 6 months again. :lol:

I'll probably drop another $1200-$1500 and build myself a new one, only to have it be outdated within 6 months again. :lol:

:lol: :haha:

Tell me about it! I just built a AMD 64 system with a 4000+ processor 8-10 months ago and it's already so outdated it's not funny :( It used a single core 90nm chip, and now Intel has a quad core 65nm chip (Core 2 Duo "Extreme"). Sucks my ass :(

I would be totally cool with the whole upgrade thing if I could keep the same motherboard for 2-3 years and just upgrade the internals, but with the way these bastards at Intel and AMD work, they change the chip architecture every 6 freaking months and make it impossible to keep up!

I would be totally cool with the whole upgrade thing if I could keep the same motherboard for 2-3 years and just upgrade the internals, but with the way these bastards at Intel and AMD work, they change the chip architecture every 6 freaking months and make it impossible to keep up!

I hear ya there. I can't believe I'm still getting away with my Socket 478 based system. I built this rig in December of 2004 and somehow it's still going strong, although my single core 2.8GHz Prescott chip is like riding in a horse and buggy compared to these new multi-core processors. The best I can do is overclock it and run my 10 fans to keep it cool. :lol: I upgraded the chip once, the RAM once, the power supply once, and the video card once. When I add all that to the original build price, I have around $2000 in a system that I might be able to get a few hundred dollars for if I were to sell it. Like you said, it sure would be nice if they'd stop changing everything so drastically, then we could throw some of those sweet new multi-cores on our old motherboards instead of being forced to build a whole new system. Now that I think about it, I'll be damn lucky to make it another 2 years on this one. :(

That's what I'm looking at. This 3000+ was the bomb when I built this thing, but now it's almost embarrasing to admit that's what I run! lol

The trouble is; there's nowhere to go from here without getting a new MB, new memory and a new vid card at a minimum. I have a 650w PS so that would probably have to be upgraded as well.

Yeah, and with XP being so un-portable, when you swap out the motherboard, you basically need to format and reinstall to get up and going properly without quirks. THAT is probably what sucks the most. Xp is so closely tied to the IDE controller on the mainboard that it has all hell problems installing when it can't see that IDE controller anymore. There are ways around this, but ... pain in the ass.