Help me find a cheap AGP videocard to play Sims 3

RudeCurve

Banned
I have an old 2.5GHz P4 system with AGP4X slot 1.5V that I want to add a videocard that has PS2.0 or higher and 128MB or more to play Sims 3. This is for my sister's PC. Her budget is around $50. Can you guys recommend some good videocards for me? Thanks.

PS the system is running XP Pro SP3 and has 1GB of RAM. Monitor resolution is currently at 1024x768.
 
As of 2009, AGP cards from Nvidia have a ceiling of the GeForce 7 Series. As of 2009, DirectX 10-capable AGP cards from ATI include the Radeon HD 2400, 2600, 3650, and 3850 and the Radeon HD 4650, 4670.

You will have to find out if they are ok in a 4x slot I beleive they are but check for yourself,
 
Well that settles it, P4 + AGP is a dead platform for all but the most casual web-based and legacy (DX8 and older) games.
 
Man alive! I was going to point and laugh for picking the weakest possible AGP card, but apparently there are still some FX5200s kicking around... :oops:
 
I recently picked up a Geforce 8400 GS PCI-e 256MB card for $28 new @ Micro Center. At some point you just gotta upgrade your platform (meaning move on).
 
I recently picked up a Geforce 8400 GS PCI-e 256MB card for $28 new @ Micro Center. At some point you just gotta upgrade your platform (meaning move on).


There's been 4670s available for as little as $40 recently, would have been a much better bet imo, the 8400 GS shares a core with Nvidia's intergarted graphics part! Still its probably an order of magnitude better than that 6200 at least!
 
I was given an older 8400GS (with 16SP) and I use it instead of a faster, but noisy geforce 7.
it does a good job of playing legacy games at high IQ. I can throw recent games at it, 800x600 low/med settings and it will run them. Quite a little nice card : it gets murdered by any other recent one but still is an order of magnitude better than a FX5200.

I have a fast dual core and 2gigs of ram though. No point getting a 8400GS AGP for a pentium 4, as it would run recent games at 5fps rather than 20fps.
 
All new cards ship with a driver disk ;)

Right. Problem is hardly any AGP cards out there are truly "new". Chances are they've been bouncing around the channel for months. Case-in-point: the last tech shop I worked for bought a Diamond Radeon HD 2600 Pro AGP card to sell as a replacement for customers with bad AGP cards. The driver on the supplied disk didn't work on any system we tried to install it upon.
 
Just got finished installing the AGP card and the game is actually very playable even at 1440 x 900.:oops:

I tested it on my LCD using the DVI connection. I actually enabled advanced rendering functions with PS2.0, smooth animatiions and reflections and still get around 20fps. Everything else was on lowest settings. My sister is very happy to be able to play this game now without having to buy a brand new computer. In fact she just ordered a 22" widescreen LG LCD to use with the PC. She's been using a 17" CRT display for several years so this was the perfect time for her to upgrade.

EA wasn't lying when they listed the minimum system requirements.
 
Back
Top