How to rate video cards?Follow

From my experience an equal pci-e card is a fair bit cheaper than the AGP, maybe it would be more beneficial to get a PCI-E board and a PCI-E card?

Your choices would depend on about how much you want to spend on the new video card. I personally prefer Nvidia cards. I have a GF6800gt which I bought about 2 years ago for $300. It runs WoW and CoD2(WWII FPS) fairly well. If you want a AGP card, why not try 7800gs which retails for about $300. It's probably the best AGP card on the market.

Apples and oranges. PCIE is a slot on the motherboard. SLI is the ability to have more than one Nvidia card running simultaneously.


Apples and oranges. Comparing a dual-processor CPU against a single-processor CPU is like comparing a Harley with a bicycle. You need to compare an AMD dual-processor CPU against the Intel one. Try an AMD 64 FX processor, instead. (AMD wins, but not with the 3700+)

QFT

To add onto it though

Between the CPUs that the other person asked it is basically an older CPU that isn't the core 2, so for THAT what was said was correct really. Between those two, AMD does win. Overall, for more CPUs outpreforming the competitor, again AMD wins... but in the current gen of CPUs (if you can call it a gen) Intel wins HANDS DOWN with the Core 2 Duo in both price and preformance. I can't wait for AMD to get their hands on the fab process that was used to make the core 2 duo, AMD is going to come back with avengence I bet when they get that.

Also, the ATI "SLI" is actually called crossfire, and is a bit more advanced then the half and half rendering you were talking about. You can set one video card to any number of tasks like just be a physics renderer... think of that physixs card that was supposed to take the strain off your graphics card by rendering all the mini particle effects and such, and make that into a 512 meg powerhouse like a x1900xtx or something high. I'm not sure if the same holds true for the SLI though...

OP, to add onto what was said already about comparing the cards...

Don't be too fooled by the fact that most newer nVidia cards have more pipelines, they are generally a bit slower (when comparing an equal price) then ATIs. They make up for it in other ways though. In general, what I personally look for when choosing between cards (after price) is:

GPU Clock Speed
Memory Clock Speed
Memory Bus
Pipes


in THAT order. If there are different memory sizes available (like say 256 and 512) then I decide if the extra $$$$ is worth spending it. It generally is imo, especially for gaming in general. If you're just mainly going to play WoW though I wouldn't really suggest upping to the higher memory if you already have a (semi) beefy system behind it.