In article , DDC
wrote:

,snip

And then getting me a low cost system just to be up to date with the
technology. athlon 64 3200 + a pcie x300 ****y card...

Are the pcie really better than the agp version like x300 agp and x300
pcie?


a+

PCI Express has a lot more bandwidth, but it isn't currently being
used all that well. Tomshardware did an experiment, where they
found that PCI-E x4 was almost as fast as x8 or x16.

The thing is, though, if your new motherboard has a PCI Express
video slot, you'll be ready for faster cards when they drop
in price. They will only make AGP cards as long as there is
still some demand for them, and once PCI Express dominates the
market, AGP will disappear. If you already had a $500 AGP card,
getting an AGP motherboard might make sense, otherwise get
the PCI Express one instead.

A 6600GT isn't a bad card. AGP 8x version, 500/1000 clocks,
with 128MB memory, costs $149. A PCI Express x16 version of
the same card is also $149.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...charts-07.html

Paul