I am currently running an Intel Board, with a P4 w/ 2.8 Ghz, 1 Gig RAM and a crappy PCI video card. I have an open AGP Slot and looking for a few good options for a card that will run Oblivion. I dont want to spend a lot of money. 20 to 30 USD. I have read a few of the posts here but nothing is cut and dry with what each card is, PCIE, PCI, AGP etc... any help appreciated!

AGP is really an antique, and hasn't been supported by anything newer than three years ago's Radeon HD 4n00 cards, which are getting hard to find in game-capable quality (HD 4670). nVIDIA stopped adding new AGP cards back in 2006, six years ago, when Oblivion was still new.

Newegg had two HD 4670s with the correct GDDR3 VRAM, strictly for PCIe,

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102975

and

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102976

The only one of the AGPs that will work is three times that cost, at $113:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161337

Newegg had an HD 4650, which had roughly 35% less performance, but they were out of stock on that one.

Damn, Computers change so much over the years lol. Thanks for the tips!

You can try checking with your own local PC Repair shops, which sometimes have take-off used cards still working well, such as HD 2900s, X1950s, and so on, but if you do go that way, you won't save anything -- those were less efficient about power draw, and while they are still plenty good enough for Oblivion, they require a Power Supply upgrade to 450 / 500 watts.

IMO, a really obsolete old PC like yours isn't really WORTH spending any more than $40 on. It's already at least as old as Oblivion is (six years), and you can already find far better PCs for $100 - $150 in Thrift stores in any metropolitan area, because of the cachet favoring laptops, causing ignorant clowns to sell off perfectly usable desktops to buy the latest, but weaker, laptop technology that just doesn't work as well.

Gorath, both of those links are PCIe cards. The 4650 AGP is 89 USD, the 4670 AGP is 110 USD.

AFAIK, The Radeon 3870 AGP is the fastest AGP card available not the 4670, although the 4670 has more VRAM. However, the best deal would be the Radeon 3850 AGP


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@OP: After some search, these are best cards available for somewhat reasonable price.

Radeon 9800 Pro (67.50 plus shipping)
http://www.surepart.net/products/ATI-ATI-RADEON-9800-PRO-100%252d435005.html

Radeon X800 XL AGP (51.00)
http://compare.ebay.com/like/260974699119?var=lv&ltyp=AllFixedPriceItemTypes&var=sbar&_lwgsi=y&cbt=y

Radeon HD 3850 AGP (48.11 auction, no reserve)
http://www.ebay.com/itm/HIS-ATI-Radeon-HD-3850-AGP-H385Q512ANP-512MB-IceQ3-Turbo-Video-Card-No-Reserve-/170823413314?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item27c5de6e42

Radeon HD 3850 AGP (60.00) Note: You need a PCIe 8-pin power connector or adapter*.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Shapphire-HD3850-AGP-512mb-GDDR3-video-card-V0932-Dual-DVI-with-S-video-out-/230775510030?pt=PCC_Video_TV_Cards&hash=item35bb4ad40e

* http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=4311580&CatId=790

The HD 3n00 cards, other than the HD 3450, a real dog, have been gone from the retail pipeline for a couple of years, in any interface, but the AGPs ran out first.

I've amended the comment to better suit the bad news. I'll have to see what my date stamp was, maybe I was half asleep.

A week or so ago, I bought a card on ebay. Being so stupid as to not look what type of slot it was, when I got it home I realized it was PCIE, and not AGP like my computer needed. So, instead of buying an AGP card, I just upgraded to a newer used pc with PCIE. Hopefully I will be happy with that lol.

Thanks again for the updates.