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Is there much point in upgrading my AGP?

Big Bottom

Big Bottom

Big Bottom

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23 Oct 2006
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17
Location
The Highlands
I have an Athlon 64 3000+ with 1GB of RAM and a 9800 Pro and it's getting to upgradin' time unfortunately. Trouble is I can't afford much more than a graphics card upgrade and some more memory. The new GeCube ATI Radeon X1950 AGP card has caught my eye and seems to be reasonably priced, but would it just be a waste buying this for my rig. I'm pretty sure my CPU will be a bottleneck for at least some of this vid card power, but it seems to be my only choice at the moment since it's all I can find the cash for. If a cheaper card and some more memory would be better then I might do that but that Gecube card does look tempting. :eek:
 
Im not sure if it will bottleneck it but if it does it will still be fast ;)

other options are the geforce 7800GS and the 7600GT

Id say the 7600GT will be about 3 times faster than your current card
 
i'm going for the x1950pro because it means i can put off upgrading the whole computer for a lot longer. until it was announced, i was contemplating a new build in the next few months. but i think this card will tide me over for at least another year if not longer. :D
 
Big Bottom said:
I have an Athlon 64 3000+ with 1GB of RAM and a 9800 Pro and it's getting to upgradin' time unfortunately. Trouble is I can't afford much more than a graphics card upgrade and some more memory. The new GeCube ATI Radeon X1950 AGP card has caught my eye and seems to be reasonably priced, but would it just be a waste buying this for my rig. I'm pretty sure my CPU will be a bottleneck for at least some of this vid card power, but it seems to be my only choice at the moment since it's all I can find the cash for. If a cheaper card and some more memory would be better then I might do that but that Gecube card does look tempting. :eek:
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I'm of mixed opinions here.

On the one hand I'd say get a pcie 939 board, stick in a 256 meg x1900 ad find another stick of ram if you can. On the other hand it would seem sensible to do as little as you can until you can afford whatever is the desirable spec later down the line.

I think going second hand would be ideal for you though, whatever decision you finally make.
 
I am pretty much in the same boat as you BB, apart from the fact that I have my CPU is a AMD 64 3200. The board BTW is a Asus A8V deluxe. I recently bought a Belinea 10 20 35 widescreen monitor from here which is brilliant. I do notice that there are probs with the newer games. Should I get a new board, CPU and card in the new year? Any advice welcomed. Don't really want to spend more than 500 squids. Even less if I can get away with just a new/second hand card.


thanks.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'll probably just get the Gecube card since it isn't too expensive and will certainly give my system the boost it needs.
 
Lt Goody said:
I have a x850xtpe would there be much of a performance boost with a 1950pro or is it not worth it.
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Definately worth it, the performance boost will be staggering, i went from an x800 XT PE to an x1800 XT 512mb, and was completely blown away. :)

To the op, Welcome to the forums, the x1950pro will be a huge boost in performance for you to from a 9800pro, but you have an A64 3000+, so you could get the x1950pro in PCI-E form, and the DFI RDX200 PCI-E motherboard thats in the 'This Week Only' for only £29 odd, both come to about £165, where as the AGP x1950pro is £187 on its own, then seen as you have a PCI-E board you'll only need to upgrade the graphics card in the future instead of the whole lot, unless you wanted to upgrade the CPU as well of course, but you've still saved £20 odd by buying the PCI-E board, and the PCI-E x1950pro (the same card). :)

Even better though if you can spend an extra £12, then you can get the much faster x1900 XT 256mb + the DFi board for only £199, or you could just stick with the x1950pro and the DFi board, and get yourself an extra 1gb of Ram.
 
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only people who should be upgrading agp gfx cards should be people with socket A setups or other sockets where pci-e is not available.

for those that have s939 cpus but older boards that are agp only they would be far better off buying a cheapo asrock mobo and pci-e gfx card.
 
I'm considering a similar upgrade, I have a similar setup to the o/p but a 6800LE, I'm looking for improvements to the FSX dem I tried recently.

Anybody have any benchies of the 6800LE & the Radeon X1950 AGP / 7800GS and the 7600GT ?
 
Cyber-Mav said:
only people who should be upgrading agp gfx cards should be people with socket A setups or other sockets where pci-e is not available.

for those that have s939 cpus but older boards that are agp only they would be far better off buying a cheapo asrock mobo and pci-e gfx card.
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I'd rather keep my Neo2 plat than use that Asrock pap tbh.

Anyway to the poster just get a 7600GT not expensive and will make a big improvement. Might want to look at another gig of RAM while your at it.
 
I suggest the new mobo and card to the op as they can then later upgrade if they wish to a better card, I myself have a socket A and in a few weeks I will be purchasing a new monitor and a 7600gt.

Jonny
 
R124/LA420 said:
I'm considering a similar upgrade, I have a similar setup to the o/p but a 6800LE, I'm looking for improvements to the FSX dem I tried recently.

Anybody have any benchies of the 6800LE & the Radeon X1950 AGP / 7800GS and the 7600GT ?
Click to expand...

Not got any personal benchmarks, but I've got a Leadtek's A400 6800LE TDH 128MB DDR. Been lucky with completely unlockable pipelines/shaders, although never got around to overclocking it.

As it's in a Shuttle barebones I'm stuck with AGP.

Going by Toms Hardware Guide VGA Charts the 7600GT AGP beats the 6800 Ultra. So will easily beat my unlocked 6800LE. Just the £120+ price tag (depending on where you check) is a sticking point. Or slightly less if you go for XFX's default clocked version.
 
Edinho said:
I'd rather keep my Neo2 plat than use that Asrock pap tbh.

Anyway to the poster just get a 7600GT not expensive and will make a big improvement. Might want to look at another gig of RAM while your at it.
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Don't talk rubbish,

The ASROCK's are far from pap.

That statement just renienforces my theory that you are cearly misinfromed about PC hardware.

The Asrock Dual sata II will do 300 FSB and has an AGP and PCI-e slot.
This will allow a nice overclock and and a new PCI-e card.


Asrocks are made by ASUS.
 
Not being funny guys but from what I can see it's not clear if the OP has a S754 or S939 cpu, if it's the former then he's gonna be pretty disappointed if he shells out for a new S939 mobo and PCI-E card :)

Personally I think the x1950pro is a good jump from the 9800pro.

As for the guy with the x850xt-pe, personally I wouldn't upgrade from that on the AGP platform, it's still a reasonable performer.
 
you should still be able to get a cheap PCIx mobo, regardless of weather you're on 754 or 939.

I did this not so long ago. You won't get the very best out of the new gf card, but you will still see a very substantial performance gain - it is worth it.

On the other hand, don't dismiss the option of selling your old stuff and upgrading everything. 754 and 939 gear is getting quite rare, and parts are in very high demand atm ;) .
 
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