Which agp power card?

Question

hi guys

i am ordering a new agp card tommorow however i am still bangin my head on which of these two to buy

1) nvidia geforce 7900gs(http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/AGP/nVIDIA+GeForce+7900GS+256MB+AGP+8x+?productId=33056)

2)ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 512MB AGP(http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Components/Graphics+Cards/AGP/ATI+Radeon+X1900+Series/ATI+Radeon+X1950+PRO+512MB+AGP+?productId=32916)

both cards have the same memory clock speed(approx) and also a similar memory bandwidth

however the 7900gs has just a 450mhz core clock and the x1950pro has a 575mhz core clock

my hearts with nvidia and the 7900gs is a lovely card however the x1950pro has 16 more pixel pipelines and a superior core clock speed

compared to my current geforce 7600gt will the 7900gs be a decent "upgrade" or would you go for the x1950

however my other worry is the psu,i have a 300watt in my pc at the moment however i also have a spare ez-cool 550watt psu,will this run the above cards

so my questions are :

1) which card would you go for ?

2)will a ez-cool 550watt psu be enough to run either of these cards?

3) would the 550watt psu be enough to run the 7900gs and also a ageia physX card,

any help will be much appreciated

cheers guys

Answer 1

DEFINATELY the X1950 Pro. It was, at the time, the fastest AGP card available and is significantly faster than the 7900GS, in most cases competing with the more expensive 7900GT. In fact, ATI targeted the X1950 Pro at the 7900GT, and the X1650 Pro at the 7600GT/7900GS.

The 550 Watt PSU SHOULD suffice depending on the rest of your system..as long as we're not talking extreme intel quad core overclocked CPUs then I think you should be fine.

Edit*

Looking at the rest of your system tells me the 550 Watt power supply will be fine.

Answer 2

Wow.  Way geeky for me.  I'm a rdbms nerd.  Hardcore hardware questions make me go cross eyed.  For me, I'm looking for throughput and processing bottlenecks.  The greater the disparity between motherboard speed and connected devices the more wait states have to be introduced in the connected device to stay synchronized with the motherboard.  Processors have been overclocked since at least the 486.  I'm still of the as close to zero wait state system as possible school.  So, for me the choice would depend on the surrounding system and it's ability to use the capabilities of the card.  The extra 175Mhz of clock speed won't mean much on a 333Mhz board.

Answer 3

After looking through a few benchmarks, I would get the X1950 Pro. Overall it looks 10-15% quicker than the 7900gs

http://www.techspot.com/review/28-radeon...

The AGP version needs 2 molex connectors, it might work with your current power supply but you'd be better off fitting the 550W one. Remember to use only one molex connector from each rail

If I was you though I'd save up another £30 and go for the HD3850 AGP version. This is the most powerful AGP card available and offers twice the performance of the two you stated. See below for full comparison

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/des...

I run a HD3850 with a 420W PSU so you should be fine with it.

Running a PhysX card should be fine too.

Answer 4

I got a 7900GS 512mb at the moment and it's a nice card, I bought it a year or so back and was very good.  I got it running on a 350watt psu so you should be able to run it on a 550watt(all depends on the amps on the rails)

When I buy a new card I use this site for comparison...

http://www.pantherproducts.co.uk/Article...

heres my card

http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/n...