Which is the best graphics card on the market at the moment?

Question

and is there any difference in perfomance between pci and agp?

Answer 1

AGP would be better, Get an Nvidia.

Answer 2

^^ The guy above me knows nothing, dont listen to him! ^^

The best card is of course the 7950 GX2, wich costs 500-600$
The runner-up is the X1950XTX wich is pretty much tied with it's brother, the X1900XTX at the same performance except a little better at 400-500$. The 7900 GTX is also the same price and the same performance as the two cards.
However u can get the X1900XT, wich is the same EXACT thing as the X1900XT but for 300-400$.
And since games dont need much more then 256Mb these days, the 7900 GT is only 250$ and can be overclocked and volt modded to a 7900 GTX level, thus saving up to 250$.

Course, if u want the BEST u can get 2 cards of anything ive meantioned in SLI or CrossFire (depends on the company u buy it from), and ull have to get a motherboard that supports 2 cards aswell. And make sure u have a new CPU, so that it dosent bottleneck the graphics card(s).

PCI = 1/2 AGP x1
And AGP x8 is what is used today. The card i mentioned are all using the "new" interface - PCI-E, wich has the same performance as AGP (AGP x8 = PCI-E x8), except that it is x16, but since x16 isnt used (only x8 is used today, so AGP and PCI-E are the same thing) it wont matter. But with PCI-E u can use 2 cards together to get up to twice the performance.
PCI isnt used with anything but the lowest end cards, because it's transfer rate and performance are very very low. AGP x1 exsisted over 5 years ago, and its only half of it, think abt it.

Answer 3

Hi, the technology tree goes PCI to AGP and the newest slot is PCI express or PCI-E. PCI-E provides more bandwidth (wider pipeline for information to flow through between graphics card and the rest of the system) this would enable hardware designers to work on faster designs in the future. There is not much difference between an AGP card and PCI-E card all other things being equal, but manufacturers are not making any new designs available in AGP format anymore. Try to familiarise yourself with the suffixes on the cards as they will make a difference to price and performance. For ATI in descending order its XTX PE, XTX, XT, XL, GTO, GT, PRO, SE. the higher the number the better the performance so a X1300 is slower than an a X1900 card. For Nvidia cards the as already mentioned the 7950 is the fastest card, it is 2 mobile 7900 cards bolted together. The suffixes in descending order areGX2, GTX, GT, GS. The differences are in the amount and speed of memory and the speed of the graphics processor (core).
One of the best value for money high end card is a Radeon X1900XT with 512 GDDR3 VIVO. Ebuyer.com is doing them for £209.98 in the UK they also have a US branch. There are more best value for money cards in other budget categories, example about £150 would get you a 7600GT which reputed to be a very good card.
I hope this helps, if you have any other queries please contact me via email.

Answer 4

pci is slower but the new pci express is faster than agp. a really good card will set you back a few hundred. check online for the current prices. nvidia and ati are the current leaders in graphic cards.

Answer 5

don't pay attention to the first guy, he probably read a wrong source
AGP is one of the worst slots to get right now
PCI Express X16 is the best of the best
the video cards depend on your purpose.
Gaming: either the 7900 GTX 512mb or 7950 GX2
Video Editing : Geforce Quadro FX4500 512mb


7900 GTX : $470
7950 GX2: $536
Quadro FX4500: $1800

The 7900 GTX is for great performance on a high budget
the 7950 GX2 is for Quad SLI, best, but new (new isn't always the best)
Quadro FX4500 is best for quality,

Each card can be coupled into a pair using an SLI compatible motherboard to create something called SLI
it multiplies the card's power by 1.9 times
close to 2 times, not bad, it increases both the quality and the performance by almost 2.

Answer 6

so far 3dmarkvantage says the ati radeon hd5970 is the appropriate u can get now.the estimated photos score for that card there exceeds 20000 (relatively score is 21267) which far exceeds the Nvidia Geforce GTX 285 which score is basically 13274.thats how vast the version is.

Answer 7

by far the best card you can buy is the x1900xtx,with a whopping 1gb ram and a jaw dropping 48 pixel pipelines.twice as many as the next best card on the market.....a good buy for only £499

Answer 8

Im running on a 7950GX2 and it is f*****g amazing. Mega xpensive bt worth £450. Only prob is u cnt run 'em SLI-not enuf bloody room(boo,hoo!!!!) Neva mind they R developing a Quad-core, 2Gb of Grafix.Bring it on! Try runnin wiv a PhysEx card, it'll blow ur **** off!

Answer 9

nvidia Geforce 7950 GX2

ati Radeon X1900XTX, there coming out with the X1950XTX later this year