Should I buy a BFG AGEIA PCI PhysX card for my legacy PC?

jdranetz · January 11th, 2009, 04:37 PM

I realize a lot of talk has been about getting PhysX to run on Radeon. So this may seem like a dumb question.

I have a legacy PC with an AGP slot.
I have a Powercolor ATI 3850 graphics card installed.
nVidia long abandoned AGP, but, as you know, ATI kept up support until more recently.
Thus I have the fastest AGP grpahics card I could possibly ever get.

I see some PCI bus BFG AGEIA PhysX cards still out there. Does it make ANY sense for me to buy one to augment my setup?

Is the PhysX implemented in new games only compatible with nVidia's version and not the AGEIA version? Would I be throwing away money and wasting my time? Are these cards useful, or have they gone the way of 3dfx voodoo?

Jeff

Unixlord · January 11th, 2009, 06:45 PM

The answer is no frickin way. An absolute waste of cash IMO.

screenager · January 11th, 2009, 08:01 PM

its a waste of money and a waste of energy by thinking of it.

Zamoldac · January 11th, 2009, 08:22 PM

lol... i thought that this was settled once and for all.... NoooO_O WAY ! ageia = bullcrap

jdranetz · January 11th, 2009, 08:46 PM

Thanks!

Understood. Thanks for sparing me the expense.

darthcyclonis · January 11th, 2009, 11:58 PM

trust me I have one. It was given to me. Even in games that use PhysX it's not that great.

DOOMJESUS · January 13th, 2009, 11:15 AM

by all accounts physx is a complete bust but i think you wasted your money on the 3850.
you would have been better off saving your pennies for a new motherboard.
agp really and truly is dead now....
the 3850 doesn't have the balls to play a decent round of crysis at high res, it's time to move on....

jdranetz · January 13th, 2009, 11:30 AM

Thanks.
This AGP machine is one 4 computers we own. I was just hoping to stretch a little more use out of it. With the 3850, it does play Mass Effect pretty well. With the HD 2600, it was unplayable. We have two machines that are better gaming PCs; an AMD AthlonX2 and a new HP HDX laptop with a 20' LCD and 8800 GTS.