my friend is considering buying an AGP card for his computer which currently has no video card. We're wondering how far is too far. Is there any point in getting something like an nvidia 7800 gs for an agp slot or will the limited bandwidth kill it?
what about a Biostar GeForce 6800 XT / 256MB GDDR2 / AGP 8x / DVI / VGA / TV Out / Video Card?

I just dont know if buying a really good card would be a waste of money considering it has to run in an agp slot. Any opinions on the matter would be appreciated. Thanks

We'd need to know the specs of the system...CPU, motherboard & RAM speed/type. Also, high performance AGP cards are power hungry so a good power supply is absolutely necessary.

The 6800XT is not a very good card. XT means "hi-performance" for ATI based cards but "low-performance" for nVidia based cards. And GDDR3 memory is the preferred type. Have a look at this:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12...

i agree with jam , we need to know the rest of system spec. There is no point in putting in a agp card that far exceeds the rest of the system. The PC can only perform as good as its weakest link.
But it is wrong to think that agp cards cant be that good because it is an AGP slot. AGP cards can give stunning performance if the rest of the system can feed it.

I've used a 6200 and it stinks badly. I've also used onboard 7050 video exceeds that 6800 I think and so it's almost worth buying a motherboard with that onboard video and add a processor for the price of a descent video adapter. When I made the decision to move onto PCI-E with a new build was with a x1950 Pro AGP card which out performs any of the cards mentioned, and still couldn't feed my gaming needs. I'm currently playing Crysis and COD4. What games is going to be being played as well.

unfortunately I dont know the system specs. I figured the agp slot itself would be the main factor restricting the video card. But if a good card can still perform well in that slot then maybe I'll try to get more information about the system and go from there. I know his power supply is only 300w, so it might have to go.

as for the XT, I guess I was thinking GT. I looked at the numbers again on wiki and, you're right, it's hideous