If I was to buy a second hand AGP card that was pretty good say 2 years ago
what would I get. I want something cheap that will play games ok but doesn't
have tio play the latest. Or would something new be better if available?
Depends on the budget, and of course at some point the
overall performance of the rest of the system. For example,
buying a Geforce 7800GS (newer than 2 years old) would be
overkill on a P4 2.4 GHz or any system with less than 1GB
main memory.
Older games can get by better with older cards, if you
aren't looking forward you might get reasonable performance
out of an ATI X800 for around $100 (pricing depends on
location, and time spent looking for deals... it also
depends on when you buy, this aging tech sells out at the
lowest priced sellers eventually never to return, only the
higher priced sellers who couldn't sell as many (due to the
higher price) will have parts after a certain point - until
it's so old it's considered surplus and games have become
too demanding).
Another option around $100 is a Geforce 6800 (not the
crippled XT/etc versions unless priced accordingly as
necessary, or Radeon X1600 (Pro, if price is right), Geforce
6600GT, maybe Radeon 9800 Pro (though going back this far, a
greater reduction in performance than the reduction in
price, usually).
Going above $100, Geforce 7600GS (around $130 online),
Radeon X1650 Pro, 7600GT, 7800GS, etc. Unless your machine
was one of the last AGP based platforms or you'd upgraded
the CPU, it "might" make as much sense to replace the
motherboard and CPU (and memory if necessary) as to spend
over $130 on a video card... as newer PCI Express
equivalents of more modern cards tend to cost less than
their AGP counterparts, and are sometimes clocked higher too
for more performance per model name... offsetting the long
term cost of replacing mainboard and CPU, etc.
So we really need more info about what hardware you have,
what games you'd play, how important to play (what type of)
future games, how long you'd use it till moving on to PCI
Express platform, the budget, anything else that comes to
mind.
The generic answer might be that the best bang for buck
playing now aging games is Radeon X800XT, X850, or X800GTO
(least power/heat of the 3... no matter what you chose the
system cooling subsystem and PSU capabilities may need
considered and possibly upgraded as well). IIRC, the least
power hungry of the semi-modern alternatives would be a
7600GS but as with the other cards, beware of cards named
same or very similarly but with differently clocked
components. On 7600GS in particular you might find some
with mere 533MHz memory which are not so desirable as with
800MHz or higher memory... and often the price differences
are minor or nonexistent.
Also seek benchmarks of your target games, places like
http://www.tomshardware.com has VGA benchmark tables from
older cards which can be compared, just keep in mind that
the newer the benchmark / game, the more likely the older
cards will seem slow due to lesser support of newer
features, but may regain good framerates if game eyecandy is
turned down (or on other/older games which didn't have
demands as high).
No easy answer really, and buying a "second hand card" makes
it more difficult as pricing could vary wildly on these.
Some people will look for used cards but I usually try to
find discounts on new (even if aging tech) cards instead...
especially if you can't be confident the prior owner didn't
overclock it excessively, subject it to high temps
overclocked or not, or even more minor things like that the
fan is now worn out... saving $20 only to need buy an
aftermarket fan or heatsink assembly isn't much better than
new in some cases.
