[Altae]

Well, I don't know much about video cards and what could be considered a good deal via prices. So, I'd like to ask the FFXIOnline community for some help

Currently, my computer is using a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128. I've heard several times this card is decent and one of those "Good enough" type products. But I'm looking to enhance the rate objects move in FFXI. Like, for more smoothness. Rather than choppy here and there, pausing, lag, etc. I have no real complaints with this one now, but I'd like to improve it^^ Thank you for your time!

[neighbortaru]

heh, what is your spending budget? i can recommend a $600+ card if you want.

[Altae]

Around 400-ish.

[neighbortaru]

http://labs.anandtech.com/alllinks.php?pfilter=2946
or
http://labs.anandtech.com/alllinks.php?pfilter=2463

The ATI is cheaper, but only slightly behind the nvidia on the FFXI benchmark (but nvidia is much faster on FEAR, DOOM and many other games).

Double Post Edited:
oh btw, they are both PCI-Express cards

[Altae]

Thanks for your help! The ATI one doesn't look too costly either

[Atacent]

if you need the fastest agp card, then get the 6800GT or X800XT PE.

[fastcart]

X850XT PE AGP exists too. It's better than the 6800gt in most benchmarks except for a few.
http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/simp...0825&ad=pwatch
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...l#3d_mark_2005
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2496 (comparison to 7800 pci express)

Something to note about these high end card benchmarks is that they tend to be cpu bound at "low" resolutions...

The high performance of cards like the Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition dictate that, even on today's fastest CPUs, they will be CPU bound at resolutions lower than 1600 x 1200. To prove this we've taken three GPU limited benchmarks, Half Life 2, Doom 3 and Far Cry, and showed their performance scaling vs. resolution using the X850 XT PE on an Athlon 64 4000+.

So what does this tell us? It tells us that these high end cards are CPU bound up until 1280 x 1024. It is only at 1280 x 1024 that the X850 XT PE becomes GPU limited and even more so at 1600 x 1200. It's for this reason that we conducted all of our performance tests today at 1600 x 1200.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2290&p=3

If you decide you don't need that much gpu, the 6600 gt and X800 (the regular version with no extra letters) may suffice. They both exist in agp versions too.