I've got just the thing for you. nVidia is releasing the 6600GT AGP version next month. It will blow all thoes cards away according to recent bench tests by Guru3d. It's also going to retail for about $200USD.

Potency test ︰ 6600GT VS X600XT

 6600GT X600XT
3DMark03 - Game Tests  
1,024 x 768@Normal 8,042 4,113
Game 1  229.6 156.5
Game 2  58.5 24.0
Game 3  51.1 22.2

Game 4  46.4 26.9
Fill Rate (S) 1577.1 1063.4
Fill Rate (M) 3874.4 1940.9

Vertex Shader  23.3 13.0
Pixel Shader 108.0 34.8

3DMark 2001SE      
1,024 x 768@Normal 18,839 14,984
Game 1  87.3 93.8
Game 2  194.7 131.3
Game 3  117.7 123.6

Game 4  94.0 73.6
Fill Rate (S) 1747.6 1239.3
Fill Rate (M) 3892.5 1973.0

Vertex Shader  233.5 174.4
Pixel Shader 297.1 235.6

AquaMark 3      
Total 53.630 31,,825
CPU 7,374 3,795
Triangles/Sec 16.140349 million 9.579935 million

Frames/Sec 53.62 31.83
PCMark 04    
Graphics 4,492 3,044

Scores on left for 6600GT - Near 19000 in 3D Mark 2001! Thats better than any 9800 / 5950 Ultra!!!

Closing Thoughts...

On the whole the GeForce 6600GT offers a great upgrade path for those who are looking for a mainstream PCI-Express based graphics board packed with features that are going to become a big part of the future of the gaming industry. The issues that were raised by many people regarding the HSI bridge chip are not likely to play any part in the NV43's bridge back to AGP as the bus' bandwidth is being reduced rather than increased.

We can't ignore the fact that this board outperforms anything that was available in the previous generation, even with 4xAA enabled at high resolutions. In saying this, the 9800 XT, which was top of the pile in the last generation of GPU's, does not have enough memory bandwidth or texture fill-rate to be able to fully cope with 4xAA to the same extent that the GeForce 6600GT does. It's amazing to think that the board makes use of a 128-bit memory interface and it outperforms many 256-bit boards. It represents something very special and there is an air of excitement surrounding the future of this board - we can't wait to take a look at some retail samples. Over the coming weeks, we will endeavour to take a closer look at the differences in performance between old and new - the mainstream sector is certainly getting exciting.

The GeForce 6800GT continues to impress and is likely to be the choice for the majority of enthusiasts who are going to embrace themselves in to SLI when it is available. There are worries about the supply of GeForce 6800GT's as they're simply selling too fast for NVIDIA to keep up with demand on the AGP front. We can assume that when SLI becomes a reality, the demand is going to soar to even greater heights so one would hope that NVIDIA have been stacking their supplies of NV45 chips to give themselves any hope of keeping up with demands.