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yes, it's time for me to get a new gfx-card (agp).
and no i don't play any games, this is for demos/etc only.
i'm considering a radeon x700pro or possibly a geforce 6600gt. which is better?
is ps3.0 really needed for "futureproofing"?
do i need the 256mb-versions or is 128mb enough?
any other gfx-cards in that pricerange to suggest?

I'd suggest going geforce at the moment. It's pretty rare, but some demos do already need ps3.0 (or some equivalent features in opengl world). You know, hypnotoad and the like...

I suggest you get a really old and slow one, so you can see who can really code and who can't :)

Yeah, like a VIC-II chip :o)

i'd really recommend gf6600gt. very good performance for the price indeed.

Flow control in Pixel Shaders! It is inevitable.

okay, so the geforce it is. now all i need to know, are the extra 128mb ram worth the money?

you'll definitely want ps3.0 if you're spending money on a new card now. (if only for 4k's and the likes, which are sure to rely heavily on hip shader features soonish, whether the whiners like it or not)

gemini, i was looking for a card half a year ago ( or so ) and was choosing exactly between x700 and 6600gt. So now i have asus 128mb N6600GT/TOP/TD, which has pretty overclocked core and memory, and i'm satisfied with it. i think 128mb are more than enough and i was told the same by a few more people who are related to graphics coding.
so check 6600gt/td and /top/td :)

another popular choice is to buy a non-shader card, then criticise every demo that needs shaders on the basis that it could have been done without.

As to 256MB cards, they're worth the money if you use a very big screen (i think the apple 30" screen actually needs 256mb) or if you use 2 large-ish displays and intend to run a demo on one and work on the other. I use 2x 1280x1024 displays at work, and I have to turn off 1 screen to get some stuff running, especially with AA turned on. Thats with 128mb.

I suggest gf6600gt, so you can see who has time for coding and who hasn't :P.

so, bonzaj, as 6600gt owner i can assure you, you hardly have any time :D

gemini: memory-requirements go up by quite a bit when you go for shadermodel 3.0 stuff with hdr cubemaps and rendertargets etc. texture-compression etc helps a lot on the "normal" textures, but democoders usually seem to forget about that (wicked cool) feature. anyway, i'd go for the 256mb right away just to be sure that you can use that card for a long time.

Hahahaaaa, that's a BURN, dude, a _BURN_ :D

although there is no 256mb version of the 6600gt, only the plain 6600, which is quite a bit slower (afaik)

zoom ?!?
Asus GeForce 6600 GT TD 256MB AGP

tho there's no asus' TOP with 256mb afaik. check out this anyway

You're indecently correct :D

m: that's a plain 6600, they just fucked up its name there.
Compare the picture with this one.

fucked up :).

i still don't get it zoom, if you follow the very first link i've posted, you can see there are plenty of 6600gts with 256 megs, but if you claim that there are no _asus_ 6600gts with 256mb, then i think you're wrong again at least because of this but i think it has just been announced, because there's no detailed info at official website ;)

finally, just from official website :

now let's see if i have fucked up some of the bbcode :D

eh.... then again they say "Powered by nVidia ® GeForce 6600" :( oh well :((( see the post before previous then ( and why the fuck they use "GT" ?? )

6600GT and 6600 are exactly the same chip (GPU). About the only difference is GPU/RAM clock speeds. So don't buy by looking at the name, look at the clocks instead.

ok, after some searching it seems like there are 256mb versions of the 6600gt, but only for pci-e.

hah, found a passively cooled agp-gf6600gt. only 128mb though, but that will have to do.

(and yes, i want passive cooling in order to make it fit with my shuttle and not make any noise)