What is a good graphics care when...Follow

Your highest end slot on the motherboard is AGPx8?

I've looked at several and done a bit of research, but as I understand there are mainly two things to consider: speed and ram. Is that correct?

I'm only familiar with Nvidia as of this post (my current card is a geforce 5200gx plugged into the agp slot: yes it's THAT old), so AMD cards aren't out of grasp or anything, but if you suggest a good card that is AMD I would appreciate a longer explaination.

Basically, what's the best thing I can get without PCIe? Furthermore, approximately what year would your suggested upgrade put me with before it went obsolete, so I can get a better feel for what it can run?

Price range is about 150-200, but even if it's more expensive, suggest it anyway; I might learn something.

Thank you in advance, to all ye who post here.

/sigh

That's what I figured it would come down to.

I'd need to completely format my HDDs to be compatible with a new one right? I can always back up bby burning to dvd but I'd like to know for certain. Upgrading isn't really hard for me anymore when it comes to components, but I've never messed with the motherboard.

Yea, like Smash said. Since you're replacing the Mobo, you'll likely be replacing your CPU as well, and getting a current installed OS to recognize hardware changes like that are possible, but entirely not worth it unless the info you're trying to save is priceless.

But yea, said but true. A good AGPx8 card is going to cost you nearly what it would cost for a new Mobo, CPU, and PCIe video card.

Recently I was in the same situation. I ended up getting a GeForce 6800 from ebay for $40.

If this is an option, I'd do that. I'm not a big fan of buying used components on the Bay, but that's largely because I'm lazy and don't want to be hassled repairing/trying to return something that doesn't work.