Recommend a card for a Presler system

[Flanno]

A couple of months ago I sold my sli rig, got myself a 360 and HDTV. Was just spending too much on upgrading every 6 months...no control whatsoever. Anyway, at work I just got handed a PC for some Beta 2 Vista testing (to do at home), but the video card on it is pretty much crap for gaming (x600 256meg Hypermemory).

The rest of spec is pretty good - P4 dual core presler (3.4ghz with 2 megs on each core), 2gig PC5300 DDR2, 500gig SATA, Xfi-Exteme. Motherboard is based on latest Intel chipset but is not sli or xfire compatible. Next month I would like to get a top gaming card though, and I will be running it on a 2 year old top of the line Sony 21" CRT, so it can handle resolutions of 1600x1200 and above. The PSU on this machine is only a 379w, but this system can support a 7800GTX 256meg (offered by manufacturer). So hopefully the ATI X1800/X1900 cards will also run ok. In any event the PSU is replaceable with a more powerful one as the case takes standard atx.

My question is this :

1. Is the 3.4 presler good enough to justify a 1900XT ? Or will I be severely cpu limited.

2. If the PSU can support a 7800GTX 256, do you reckon it can handle a 1900XT. Bear in mind there will be the cpu (not overclocked), 2gig ram, 1 HDD, 1 Optical, Card Reader, TV Tuner card and Soundcard running.

thanks

 

[lay-z-boy]

any modern card will be held back by the mediocre speed of your cpu.

Personally i would advise the x1900xt as in its xtx guise, its faster than the 7800 and 7900 gtx and the small overclock can be done easily, the ati is also better at high res' and when you apply aa and af.

However that cpu speed is slooooooow, i would try to see if overclocking is an option, any new card would not be used to its full unless you were at 4ghz+ at least.

 

[Flanno]

Thanks for the advice. However I thought the new Intel 65nm dual cores with 4megs cache were quick - that's 2 megs on each core. From the reviews I have read the 3.4 come close to a stock FX57 in gaming. No options to overclock the motherboard I'm afraid.

 

[lay-z-boy]

What intel didnt say is that the caches gets slower the more they add, aanyway.
The 3.4 cant be compaired to the fx57 as its single vs dual core, the fx60 is the one.

If you can, plump for the x1900xt.

 

[FrankJH]

I would get an X1900XT myself, and possibly a new psu to go with it

 

[ACESHIGH]

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-060-PC) £317.19*Including VAT

 

[Flanno]

That is the one I will get allright. Unknown if this sytem can take a standard ATX PSU. However how much more power does an X1900XT 512 suck compared to an 7800GTX 256, as the psu is qualified to run with that card.