AGP video cards worth buying?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Some will say: "None. Are you mad?"
The situation is, I'm saving up for a new PC, but I will keep the old one, mostly for the sake of playing old games without resorting to obnoxious workarounds. Now there's a Radeon 8500 in it, that was high-end for its time, but between the year 2001 and whenever PCI Express took over we'd seen quite an armaments race between ATI and nVidia. Of the latest AGP cards, which ones made most sense you think?

[Opethian]

I have a Radeon 9600XT and a Radeon 9800 pro
great if you still have a working AGP mobo

[nZero]

GeForce 7800 GS or Radeon HD3850 is about as high end as you're going to find in AGP, and will cover all of the DirectX 9/Shader Model 3 junk. Are there any games that are really pressing you to upgrade the Radeon 8500?

[Obiwanshinobi]

Well, I'd like to replay H-L2 and Chronicles of Riddick one of these days, that worked like a charm with 6800. Before I had to put 8500 back in. More games of the era (Doom 3, Area 51) either won't run without 2.0 shader or will run way slower with ATI than nVidia.
P.S. Some small-time games (Shatter, Super Meat Boy, Space Giraffe, Gridrunner Revolution) won't run with sub-2.0 shader too.

[Ed Oscuro]

This is a perfectly sensible question and I support the idea of going with a HD3850 if you need more performance - last I read this was the best-performing AGP card by a long shot. Quite old now, of course.

However, the games you list should all be playable (and more) on a modern PC. HL2 required Steam, remember the big fuss over that? No reason not to play that on a new machine. Chronicles of Riddick seems to be compatible with Win 7 64-bit. (Activating Compatibility Mode for a Chronicles of Riddick executable is not exactly a horrible and ugly workaround.)

If you've got a 6800 I don't think there can be any case where a 3850 is going to run slower, taking driver differences into consideration.

I don't know the exact dating anymore, but Geforce 6800 cards are from ~2004 (some 7XXX series GeForces got Battlefield 2 branding, to give some extra perspective) while the HD3850 may be from as recently as 2008.

It may well be the case that upgrading that old PC might hurt compatibility with some older titles - mainly ones that won't benefit from even a GeForce 6800, let alone a HD3850.

Nothing wrong with upgrading the old rig but I don't see the justification in the games mentioned here. I would just move those demanding but compatible games over to a new system to avoid breaking the old system's compatibility with older games.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Ordered Bliss 7800 GS 512 MB GS+. Don't ask. Just... don't. Reading the stuff about things reminded me why I grew tired of PC to begin with.
P.S. I think the grey area would be the likes of Mount & Blade. Just how demanding these are down where it counts is a mystery to me.

[matrigs]

And you could have bought a VOODOO card

[Obiwanshinobi]

Could have bought a Dreamcast, dammit. Silly me.

[matrigs]

A Dreamcast is ALWAYS a good investment.

Jokes aside, if i had an old pc i would seriously buy a Voodoo 5500 / 6000 just for the sake of owning one. I can remember what kind of holy grail this was back then.

[Obiwanshinobi]

From what I remember, Unreal was the Voodoo's selling point. That looked jolly fine last time I saw it on DX(9).

[gray117]

nvidia 7800? Pretty sure that was the card to get when hl2 and doom 3 were about if I remember right.

[drauch]

A Dreamcast is ALWAYS a good investment.

Jokes aside, if i had an old pc i would seriously buy a Voodoo 5500 / 6000 just for the sake of owning one. I can remember what kind of holy grail this was back then.

Yeah doods. I've been on the search for one forever. Been wanting one ever since they came out, and never got the chance. I work at an electronic recycling center and I check every day. SOME DAY.

[Thomago]

"mostly for the sake of playing old games without resorting to obnoxious workarounds"

I was about to recommend a Geforce 4x00 card because these were the last decent video cards that supported 16 bit dithering, but since your definition of "old" only includes fairly new games with 32 bit renderers, a card like that wouldn't be appropriate.

[gray117]

Hah! ... I know what I was thinking of ... I wonder what the 3dlab wildcats workstation cards were actually like with games... got to pick some of those up for giggles - I remember looking at those stacked double chip £1000+ cards as if they were from another planet.

[Raytrace]

Yeah doods. I've been on the search for one forever. Been wanting one ever since they came out, and never got the chance. I work at an electronic recycling center and I check every day. SOME DAY.

I was about to talk of them - so legendary

[Raytrace]

fairly new games with 32 bit renderers, a card like that wouldn't be appropriate.

most games post Quake III Arena use 32-bit colour I think.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hmm, I have some Matrox quad-head video card (and its adapter) lying around somewhere. Probably useless for everything though. Was in a dual Pentium III system (also useless for games)