Graphics Best PCI card?

I've got a decent, but older, computer that needs an updated graphics card so my son can play games. It'll only take a PCI card. What was the best PCI card made before they all starting going Express?

 

Your PCI options are incredibly limited... you don't even have AGP? Even the newest PCI cards are going to only marginally better than onboard graphics last I checked. Most power you'll get is around an ATi 9250 or nVidia MX5200; I'd probably go with the former since the nVidia 5-series was largely utter crap

 

There are still some good AGP options but on PCI your best bet is probably this: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/09/05/Visiontek_breathes_life_into_PCI_graphics/ though I suspect that, for many games, you would probably be CPU limited also.

Edit: & welcome to the forums

 

The Visiontek X1300 PCI is the fastest PCI video card out there.

 

I think i read here on Bit-Tech that there is a x1600 PCI coming or already out.

Edit: Sorry i am wrong. It was a x1300.

 

so i assume its faster than the geforce 6200 pci (does this only have 64bit memory?)? anyone have any benchmarks between teh two?

 

If you're buying PCI (or AGP) rather than PCI-E you can discount anything to do with Hyper-Memory or Turbo-Cache (as these require PCI-E to increase bandwidth). Going by reference clocks they line upa s so:

GF6200 110nm 300/550 128bitDDR core=1200+225 RAM=8.8GB/s
X300SE 110nm 325/400 64bitDDR core=1300+163 RAM=3.2GB/s
X300 110nm 325/400 128bitDDR core=1300+163 RAM=6.4GB/s
X1300 90nm 450/500 128bitDDR core=1800+225 RAM=8.0GB/s

The GF4MX, FX5200 and Radeons 9000-9250 are pretty old (esp GF4MX) so unless your CPU is very slow and you can get one very cheap you're better off aiming higher. As you can see the X300SE is totally choked by low memory bandwith but the others have enough to keep them satisfied. When you see the raw numbers (which are a decent guide to performance) it's clear why the X1300 is the fastest. Do you have any other options?

 

The X1300 is pretty much unanimously chosen as the best PCI card. I just recommended it to a friend who only had PCI, and he has had good luck with it so far, with some moderate mostly older gaming. I don't think it can be pushed that far though. If you can afford to upgrade the motherboard to AGP or PCI-E you can probably get a cheaper and better GPU with the motherboard for the same price. But if you only want to upgrade the video card, then go X1300.