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Monstermunch · 2 Mar 2006 at 19:06

If you got something like one of these two, it will probably last you into mid 2007 if you're happy with medium setting in the later stages. But won't last that long if you use AA & AF.

GX-058-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X850 XT 256MB DDR3 VIVO TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-058-PC)
£179.95 £179.95
GX-068-XF XFX GeForce 7800 GS 256MB GDDR3 TV-Out/DVI (AGP) - Retail (PVT70-KUAF7) (GX-068-XF)
£184.95 £184.95

Personally I think you'd be better off saving up and going PCI-E

Xplo · 2 Mar 2006 at 20:58

You would see a pretty huge improvement. Just because the natived res is 1920*1200 doesnt mean you have to run it at that. If you dont fancy upgrading and your games run fine at your current resolution just play at that.

muckymick · 2 Mar 2006 at 21:10

HUGE difference,especially with a monitor at that res.

Explicit · 2 Mar 2006 at 21:39

Well, I don't see the point in splashing out big money on AGP cards, unless you are 100% certain that you will be keeping it long enough to exhaust its value. If you're thinking of switching to PCI-E relatively soon, it would be better to save the moneny

Explicit · 3 Mar 2006 at 00:07

smoove said:
Been looking at these cards on a famous auction site, can you tell me why the latest PCI-e technology is cheaper than the ageing AGP? (£139 vs £250).

Mass production = Economies of scale

It's as simple as that. They produce more PCI-E cards than they do AGP. When buying in bulk, they get greater discounts which allows these benefits to be passed onto the consumer. AGP is slowly being phased out, so they don't purchase materials in great quantities like they do for PCI-E, therefore they're more expensive to produce.

BigDom · 3 Mar 2006 at 20:31

smoove said:
I think i'll stick with my current setup untill I find its strugging with games, then get an upgrade.

Will my CPU and ram need upgrading? Taking a look at the p4 pages, there doesnt seem to be anything much faster than 3ghz?

For gaming it's best to go AMD, 3ghz is, certainly in AMD terms, right at the low end of the performance spectrum ( slowest 939 chipset is the 3200+ Venice core, fastest the 4800+ Dual Core Processors ) - Note that the rating on a AMD chip is it's approxomate equivelent to a Intel chip. So the SLOWEST AMD chip is slightly quicker than yours. ( AMD chips run at a slower speed than Intel but have much more efficient core so perform better ).

Therefore yes it's best to budget an upgrade in CPU and Ram.

ACESHIGH · 3 Mar 2006 at 21:43

BigDom said:
For gaming it's best to go AMD, 3ghz is, certainly in AMD terms, right at the low end of the performance spectrum ( slowest 939 chipset is the 3200+ Venice core, fastest the 4800+ Dual Core Processors ) - Note that the rating on a AMD chip is it's approxomate equivelent to a Intel chip. So the SLOWEST AMD chip is slightly quicker than yours. ( AMD chips run at a slower speed than Intel but have much more efficient core so perform better ).

Therefore yes it's best to budget an upgrade in CPU and Ram.

TRUE!

a P4 3GHZ is pretty slow