My Spec:
Soyo dragon Motherboard: p4i865pe dragon 2
Intel Pentium 4 cpu 3.2ghz
OS: Windows XP service pack 1
seagate 200gb 7200rpm hard drive
radeon 9550 graphic card
512mb pc3200 ram (kingston) Im gonna upgrade this to 2.5gb once i receive my ebay item comes.

This machine cost me $$900+ to build.
Any suggestion on what graphic card i should buy? My motherboard does not support PCI-E so it has to be AGP.

I'd suggest Service Pack 2 for a start.

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Graphics Card? Hmm...well, if you are restricted to AGP I can suggest a few gaming graphics cards depending on your budget.

• ATI 9800 Pro/XT-
  If you don't want to spend much on a graphics card but you still want some power, I would recommend this. I've had a lot of good experience with this card (the bad often due to my manufacturer) but right now with games like Oblivion, it is seriously starting to show its age. As a positive, I've been able to play Half Life 2 with every setting at its highest, AntiAliasing 4x, and Anisotropic Filtering 8x. Pixel shader 2.0 compatable. The 9800 XT is a step ahead of the 6600GT and is another worthy contender. $140 128MB or $250 for the 256MB version. Or for the XT, ~$200. I don't see much of a reason to jump to the 256MB version of the 9800Pro. I didn't see too much of a performance boost.
  
• GeForce 6600GT-
  I haven't had the ability to test this out fully, but it is in the same price range. Through the benchmarks that I've seen, it is usually 10fps+ ahead of the 9800 Pro at lower resolutions. The only problem with the graphics card technollogically speaking is the fact that it has a 128bit memory interface. According to todays standard that can be quite restrictive. So, at higher resolutions, the 9800 Pro seems to pull ahead, but not at very playable levels, mind you. A perhaps advantege to this card is that it supports Pixel Shader 3.0 which some games utilize today on small levels offering some graphical eye candy that they don't incorporate into their pixel shader 2.0 class.
  
• ATI Radeon X800 Pro-
  I've heard many great things about this card in terms of sheer power. Unfortunately, I haven't been blessed with quite enough money for this card, so this is only based on what I've seen. It handles most games at their highest settings, including AA and AF, but on more recent games, or games of the future, you may need to tone some things down. The only major drawback is that it doesn't support pixel shader 3. That may not be such a bad thing. Under many circumstances, Pixel Shader 3 is very trivial and it still isn't 100% fully implemented in games of today. If you want a rediculous amount of power, you should check out the Platinum versions of the X800 family. They are very expensive though. ~$200 for x800Pro, x800 Platinum Edition ~$500+. The other card in the familty are also powerful so you'll have to do a little research to find the perfect balance of performance vs. price.
  
• GeForce 6800GT/Ultra-
  The 6800GT has virtually the same performance as the x800Pro but it includes Pixel Shader 3 support. The 6800 Ultra is a great card and is a little more powerful than the 6800GT. Like many nVidia cards, they have many advanced features but often have somewhat "buggy" graphics in some games. Sometimes, seemingly out of nowhere, some graphical glitch would appear such as a large blocky shadow covering the entire landscape, or an out of place, untextured polygon in the sky. I've seen those happen before on a computer of a friend. Those weren't due to overheating, but driver problems. That isn't to say that problems like that occur frequently, but it is something to expect every once in a while. Despite that, they are still a worthy contender. ~$300 for a Geforce 6800 GT or ~$350 for a 6800 Ultra.
  
• 7800GS/(7800GS 512)-
  As of right now there are two main types of the new GeForce 7800 series card available for AGP. The first one to appear was the standard 7800GS which had many of its pipes and ROPs disabled which made the card very expensive when the card was no more powerful than the 6800 Ultra. But now there is a new 7800GS which has the same core as the PCI express card and sports 512MB of memory. Right now this is the fastest card available to AGP users, and is slightly faster than it PCI express counterpart. This card is very difficult to get a hold of due to its price and location. I'm in the U.S. and it is a very rare card. It is much easier to get in Europe, however. I am unaware of its price, you'll have to ask Syphus about that, but I know it is rather expensive. I do know the normal 7800GS price though. It is about $300+.

In a summed up manner, the 9800Pro (or XT) is a midrange budget card that still packs a lot of punch. The 6600GT is one step ahead of the 9800 pro and sports PS3.0 support and is also a midrange budget card. The x800 Pro and 6800 GT/Ultra are mid to high end cards that have excellent performance. The normal 7800GS is about as powerful as the 6800 Ultra for about the same price. And the 7800GS 512 is the most powerful card available to AGP.

Hopefully all that information is correct. I'm pretty sure it is. If you have any more questions about the terminology or want some solid comparison, feel free to post back.

Hope that helps!

Also, all the monetary amount are in U.S. Dollars. You may need to convert to your monetary unit.

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Letting the X800 Pro represent ATI is very cheeky indeed...

• ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition
  The final evolution of ATI's Pixel Shader 2.0 hardware, the X800 XT PE is powered by the lightweight 160 million transistor R481 core, which churns out 8.4 Gigapixels of raw power at 540 MHz. Comparatively, the 7800 GS can push 3 Gigapixels and the 6800 Ultra can push 6.4 Gigapixels, weighing over 300 million and 220 million transistors respectively. The Achilles heel of the R481 is the now dated Pixel Shader 2.0 architecture, which gives it a weakness in new and emerging titles. However, with a high fillrate, low power usage and low heat production, the X850 XT PE is definitely best-in-class.

The Radeon X800 Pro was a real dissapointment from the start, and has been since put out to pasture. A technically superior and fast solution in the Radeon X800 XL has replaced this SKU completely in ATI's lineup.

• ATI Radeon X800 XL (X800 XL 512)
  Never be tempted by a Radeon X800 Pro if a Radeon X800 XL is in the question. You may be thrown by the fact that the Radeon X800 XL is clocked at 400 MHz, while the Radeon X800 Pro is clocked at 475, however, the former has all 16 Pixel Pipelines enabled, while the latter only has 12. The heart of the X800 XL is the R430 Core, a special version of the R423 used in the PCI-Express X800 XT Platinum Edition that is built on a 110nm process (later used for the X1800-series). The standard model is equipped with 256MB of GDDR3, but is aptionally available with 512MB.

The only 512MB 7800 GS I have seen so far is the Gainward model, which is in truth a 7800 GT. There's a newer model coming out they are calling the GS+, which is actually a 7900 GT, which has 24 Pixel Pipelines at 450 MHz and exceeds the 7800 GTX in performance.

Incidentally, if by upgrading to 2.5 GB you mean you're expecting a pair of GB modules, and you plan to use them with your existing module, that would not be a good idea. This would mean you have an uneven number of slots populated, disabling the dual channel support of your i865 chipset. This would halve your peak memory bandwidth.

It should be noted that graphics glitches noticeable in NVIDIA cards are the fault of the drivers, and not the card itself. The shadow problem that Schmidget mentions reminds me of a problem that can occur in some games that handle Stencil - a feature for generating shadows by casting vertex buffers - incorrectly. Try enabling Stencil in Unreal Tournament 2004 and you'll see a similar thing with an ATI Radeon X800-series card. If you want to blame someone, blame the game developers for failing to implement sufficient checks or do sufficient testing. It's a shame that us, the consumers, are forced to choose between two excellent pieces of hardware on the whims of developers.

edit - wow. excuse my initially lazy typing. Should make sense now :P

oops...type-o that 7900 is actually 7800. Sorry. It has been fixed. :-[

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No worries, I've taken the comment out too

Nice post by the way

Thanks for your input guys. Anyway I'am considering on a geforce 7800gs ($250-$300) But I think the market will lower once nvidia comes out with it's next installment. Would you recommend GeForce 6800 GS for gaming??

I know a guy with the 6800 GS...

I find the part to be amusing because the 6800 GT and X800 Pro where always considered to be direct competition. The final refresh for both parts changed their basic formula: while the X800 XL gained another quad (cluster of 4 pipelines) and dropped in frequency by 75 MHz, the 6800 GS lost a quad and gained 75 MHz. I'm sure it wasn't intentional, but ATI and NVIDIA are yet again showing that they have quite different ideas.

Although still a viable gaming solution, the 7800 GS out classes both of them completely. The improvements in the G70 really shine in the latest games.

Thanks Syphus...I think that is the biggest post of mine so far.

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i would get the radion x800gto i have this gpu and it is awsome!!

The Radeon X800 GTO is the same as a Radeon X800 GT in all specifications (with the exception of a slight 80 MHz increase to memory) - it simply uses the R480 in place of the discontinued R420.

Syphus you sure do know all your stuff mate

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