[pest]

I am building a new machine and need a little advice. I will be going the amd route and will be buying the new motherboard with the kt400 chipset, at least a xp2200 processor, 512ddr3200(to start), etc, etc. I will be added some new periferals and cannablizing others. I am currently running a gf2pro vid card. I want to wait to buy a top notch vid card so i can take advantage of the 8x agp (when it comes out) but I dont think the card I have will please me with the new system.

Is there a good intermediate card I can pick up in the mean time. The gf3 is a good card but nvidia is still pretty proud of them and I dont want a MX-anything. Is the radeon 9000 any good? Price watch has them for $70. How about the 8500? What do they compare to in the GF line?

[nomar]

Depending on how much you want to spend, the Radeon9700pro is out already and it supports AGP 8x. It's $369 at Newegg.

The asus A7V8X is a kt400 that supports 8x and is $155 at newegg right now. I like the Soyo Dragon boards myself but someone pointed this one out to me and it looks pretty sweet.

The radeon9700pro is gonna be the card to beat for a long time. If you really want to wait for the next gen nVidia cards, it may be a tough wait with such a kickass system.

[Bazooka_Joe]

Nomar beat me to the point. RADEON made the 8X already. The 9700 is better than a GF4 Ti 4600 for games built on the Q3 engine (MOH, JO, etc), but the GF4 is slightly better than the 9700 in games on the Unreal engine.

Also, the 9000 is comparable to a GF4 Ti4200.

[pest]

Thanks for the replys guys.

nomar - gigabit has their version out for around $100 delivered, but I think I am going to go with the asus for this. The mother board is one place I want to buy the best. It will most likey, be the part of this pc that lasts the longest.