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Son's PC AGP upgrade on this spec...

moggsy

moggsy

moggsy

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Joined
11 Dec 2006
Posts
223
Hi all

My son plays on WoW and has asked what is the furthest he can upgrade his PC without going the whole hog of mobo, ram etc...

He currently running a Radeon 9600 256mb with an AMD 64 3000 CPU in an Asus K8V SE Deluxe board with 1.25GB ram

The board takes an 8X card I'm pretty sure...

Not being a gamer myself, what's the best marry-up with this chip in AGP GPU's now...?

Many thanks for any advice ;)
 
I'd say a 7600gt 2nd hand. Really good underated card. Next choice would be an x1950pro which is better but can be quite expensive and needs a half decent PSU.

The fastest AGP card is this: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...2MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (AGP) - Retail But remember that you wont be able to use an AGP card in any future upgrades, I'd say avoid it. This card is meant for people with an athlon64 x2 2.5-3ghz with 2gig RAM etc

Other cards i might look out for would be a 7900/7950 which were quite expensive when i was on AGP but you might find a cheaper one now, not sure.

if it is any use, I used to have an A64 3000+ 2gig ddr400, AGP 7600gt. Scored 3350 on 3dmark06 and played farcry flawless at 1280x1024 with max settings
 
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Currently running a 7600GT AGP in my old Athlon XP system.

I can play TOCA 3 at 1680x1050 on my 22" LCD at full detail fine.
 
World of Warcraft is generally a very "easy" going game on hardware. However, it really depends what content your playing.

WOW's Cartoony graphics run just fine even on fairly low end graphics cards @ 1920x1200 resolution!. Used to play the game at that resolution using a Geforce 6800GT.

However, if your son is into "raiding content" WOW can get very demanding on the CPU.

I made a few tests at Kalecgos ( a dragon in Sunwell plateau). Due to the nature of the raid the tests arnt perfect, but should indicate what I mean.

All tests made with the same graphics settings except resolution, the PentiumD computer only having a 22inch monitor. Multisampling at X1, and Texture filtering 1 notch to the right. |--|--------|

Pentium D 805 (Dual core Pentium 4 @ 2.66Ghz) (resolution 1650x1080)
Geforce 7900GTX
FPS during boss fight 5-9
FPS looking at sky in Nagrand 100

Pentium D 805 1650x1080
Geforce 8800GTX
FPS during boss fight 5-9
FPS looking at sky in Nagrand 150

Core 2 E6700 @ 2.66Ghz 1920x1200
Geforce 7900GTX
FPS during boss fight 20-35
FPS looking at sky in Nagrand 180

Core 2 E6700 @ 2.66ghz 1920x1200
Geforce 8800GTX
FPS during boss fight 22-38
FPS looking at sky in Nagrand 250

Finally
Core 2 E6700 @ 3.2ghz 1920x1200
Geforce 8800GTX
FPS during boss fight 28-50
FPS looking at sky in Nagrand 255

Max fps was considerably better on the 8800GTX regardless of what computer it was installed in, but the minium fps are completely CPU bound, with the 7900GTX keeping up with the 8800GTX in most situations. The 8800GTX does allow higher AA/AF without hitting FPS too badly, while the 7900 suffers, but in terms of game playabililty for a "guild raider" cpu power is the main requirement imho.

For 5-10 person groups(and raids) then the computer he has is probably more than sufficient, but if its stuggling with frequent spells of minium FPS, than even if you changed the motherboard to get a PCIe slot and fitted the best graphics cards, it would hardly change it, as you'll get bottlenecked by the CPU.

Ask your son if he want to improve "raid play" or single group content. For single group a GPU will improve max FPS, and allow higher settings on eyecandy / resolution. For raiding, a high end CPU even coupled with a mid range GPU will perform a lot better than a low end CPU and a high end GPU.
 
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ACESHIGH said:
I would get the ATI Radeon HD X1950 Pro from overclockers.
Easily beats the 7600GT, infact its about 7950GT performance.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showp...ro 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP) - Retail
Click to expand...

I agree entirely.

I used to have an AGP 7600GS 256MB along with a Sct 939 A64 3000+, I upgraded to an X1950 Pro AGP and its leagues ahead of the Nvidia card.

That said, I quickly discovered that the CPU was holding back the card considerably, and then upgraded to an Asrock 4coredual SATA2 Motherboard which allows you to use either PCI-e or AGP, DDR 400 or DDR2 along with a modern dual core CPU although the X1950 benifited greatly from the new CPU, with hindsight, I wish I'd skipped the 1950 upgrade and gone straight for the motherboard I have now (The advantage being you don't have to upgrade everything at once although you do pay a marginal performance penalty)

Now I have an e2180 CPU, 4Coredual SATA2 Mobo and an 8800GTS 320MB, night & day difference again.


In a nutshell, don't bother trying to upgrade an old AGP system, to be honest the value / bang per buck compared to even low end later kit simply places AGP where it belongs, in the museum.
 
I agree it's not worth spending much money on an AGP based system now but surely if you could pick up say a 2nd hand 7600GT AGP for £30 ish then that would make his system last a bit longer and be better than his current Radeon 9600.
 
Thank you all for your suggestions and recommendations esp. Corasik for taking the time and doing the comparisons!

I agree with the general feeling and it's not worth spending a lot on an AGP based system. We are looking to do a 'proper' full upgrade in 12-18mths time, but as jeggsy said, 30 quid or so for a 2nd hand card will give it a bit of a cheap boost just for now!

I've looked on fleabay and there's a shedload of 7600GS's....aren't they as good as the GT? (but prolly still considerably better than his 9600 though I bet....)
 
7600GS is probably better than what you have now but not as good as a 7600GT.

If the old grey-matter serves me right, the 7600GS is a lower-clocked version of the 7600GT and has the slower DDR2 memory instead of the 7600GT's faster DDR3.

If you can, the 7600GT is the one to get.
 
I'm currently playing on a 2.8ghz P4 with a 7600GS agp card from Leadtek. Unless you can find a GT card for a similar amount, a GS card will be fine. Anyway, with that CPU you'll probably find, like I did, that any gaming, and the card, will end up being CPU limited, so you may as well go for the cheaper option.

I would highly recommend getting one. I managed to get 18 months of good time on that 7600 - it will play absolutely anything except a few of the 2008 releases. I'm surprised that it can actually push the pixels of my 22" screen with no problems. It's only games with high CPU requirements or bad processing optimisation where my system falls down.
 
Just found the same thing with my setup as I just got a 22" Samsung LCD running at 1680x1050.

I thought my 5 year old Athlon XP 3000, 2Gb RAM, and 7600GT AGP might struggle but I can still play TOCA 3 with everything maxed out ! !

Haven't been brave enough to try FS2004 yet as that ran crappy at 1024x768.
 
Hey, thanks for all your input on this...

One thing, if we went for either of these 2 cards (it's gonna come down to price in the end tbh....) is it best to go for the 256 or 512 versions of them...? (My son has a 19" Sammy widescreen TV/Monitor...)

Oh, and do they require their own power source from the PS....he only has a 350W PS (yes, I know that's now 2 things.... :p )

Cheers again
 
Might as well go for the 512Mb but it wouldn't make a lot of difference. The only thing I would say is see if you can find out if any of the cards your looking at have DDR2 or DDR3 memory. DDR3 being the faster type but I don't know off hand if they fitted any 7600GS cards with DDR3.

My 7600GT has to have a power cable from the PSU. I would have thought the 7600GS would be similar.

My PC was running a 400w PSU with my 7600GT for about year until I got a better PSU. The 7600 cards have pretty low PSU requirements so you might get away with your 350w PSU.
 
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As mentioned, WoW is mainly cpu limited I believe although I suppose with a 9600pro this may not be the case.

The slowest parts of the game (loads of chars on screen at once) are nearly always down to a lack of cpu power.
 
An x800 pro (or xt) would be a nice card for that system and game, but as others have said WOW may be CPU limited unless he plays at high resolutions. Still, he could turn on more eye candy like anti-aliasing.

If you want something newer, get either a 7600GT or, even newer, a 2600XT although the latter might have poorer driver support especially for older games.

If you want something powerful, able to play say oblivion or COD4 smoothly, get the x1950 pro or HD3850, but be warned they suck more power so you may have issues plus the CPU will bottleneck the card in todays dual core games. Again, the latter may have poorer driver support for older games.
 
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