Video Card for Abit BE6-II v 1.1

[truearrow]

Need some help please.

I have an ABIT BE6-II v 1.1 motherboard and have been very happy. I'm looking to upgrade my out dated video card (Creative Labs Annihilator Pro 32MB AGP).

The BE6-II only Supports a 1X/2X AGP 3.3V Graphics Card so I'm looking for the best video card that this board can support. This will likely be the last upgrade for this computer. $ is always a consideration, but I'm more concerned in getting a high performing card. Can someone please recommend a video card that this motherboard can utilize that is a good value?

I've looked at both ATI and Nvidia but can't seem to determine the best AGP card that will work in the Abit 2X slot.

I'm running WXP on a Pentium III 800mhz 133FSB CPU with 640MB Ram.

I'm hoping the video card upgrade will enable me to play some current games like City of Heroes.

Thanks in advance for the advice!

Here is a link to my Motherboard and an AGP link showing the 3.3V AGP slot:

http://www.pchardware.ro/Reviews/review.php?id=10

http://www.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html

Figure 2 Diagram A is the type of AGP Card and 2X slot that I have. {AGP 3.3V (2X) graphics card in an AGP 3.3V (2X) slot.}

[glc]

It would depend on the output and quality of your power supply. If it's 300+ quality watts, you could put a Radeon 9500 Pro or 9700 Pro in there. Do note that if you are running a 133 FSB processor in that board, the AGP bus is heavily overclocked to 89 MHz, standard AGP spec is 66 MHz, this may cause problems.

[truearrow]

Thanks for the info. I do have a good power supply 300W. I was hoping to upgrade to a 256MB AGP card but I only see 128MB in the Radeon 9500 Pro and 9700 Pro cards. Does Radeon offer a 256MB card that supports 2X other than the 9800 ? Do you know if NVidia has a card I should consider?

Thanks for the help!

[fedz]

Check if the motherboard is compatible with 1.5, I've heard of some 3.3V mobos not accepting a 1.5v card (even though backwards compatible). I think 256mb would probably be overkill with a system like that, so look for a 128mb card like an nvidia geforce card. They're less expensive but still outperform low-end radeons and fx cards (from Tom's hardware).

[truearrow]

Looking at the ati web site http://www.ati.com/support/faq/agpchart.html
The 2X AGP slot on the Abit motherboard is 3.3V represented by Figure 2 Diagram A. The AGP slot is keyed for only 3.3V AGP cards. I recently bought the Radeon 9600 (8x/4x) 128MB card from Best Buy to test and found that it did not physically fit because it is (1.5V, .08V). The connection I made here is that a 4X card is 1.5V and the 8X card is .08V.

So I concluded that the motherborad is 3.3V and thus not compatible with 1.5V, because the AGP slot isn't keyed correclty. I think this reasoning is correct...

It does look like the Radeon 9700 and 9500 will fit the Abit 2x AGP slot. Only problem is that they only offer 128MB and I was hoping for 256MB, but as stated above, maybe this is an overkill.

I'll start looking at the Nvidia cards and see what they have to offer. Do you have any specific card or review that I should consider as an alternative to the Radeon 9500/9700 128M cards?

Thanks for the help, this is turning out to be bit harder than I originally expected ... thank god for PCMECH!

[fedz]

More mb does not necessary mean that much more power for the money. The ATi 9800pro 256mb barely outperforms the 128mb version and sometimes even performs worse (see here).
I've also got some benchmarks here for the various cards INCLUDING the biggest Geforce models. See for yourself, you'll be surprised!
As to the choices, I'll leave them to you. You'll have a lack in perfomance because of the AGP slot so it might be better going for the cheaper option that'll last you for the moment as you will probably need a better overall system for gaming anyway.

The radeon 9500 normally comes in at a higher price than the ti 4800 but most people think that it is a better card (despite the benchmarks). Alternatively you could try the cheaper ti 4200. Both are compatible with your 2x agp slot.
I've also looked around for comments on your mobo and apparently it will work with AGP 4x and 8x.

Anyways have fun looking for your card and don't heaitate to ask me if you have any more queries

fedz
____________________________________________________________
Edit:
Avoid fx models for the moment, they don't quite match the ATi models!

[fedz]

Just to convince you about the Ti's, take a look at this benchmark.
http://www20.tomshardware.com/graphi...0-5200-08.html
Not bad, eh!
If you want big, take ATi though

[glc]

For what a GF4 Ti will cost you, you should be able to find a 9500 somewhere, and the Ti is not a DX9 card. 128mb is plenty. You can only squeeze so much out of a 733 MHz processor anyway, a high end video card can only help to a point, especially if it's only running at 2x.

[fedz]

You might want to take a quick look at your hdd before upgrading as well. This tends to be a forgotten about limiting factor in gaming.
Driver updates should fix the DX9 problem, so no problem there
fedz