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Upgrade advice please...

Nutbusta

Nutbusta

Nutbusta

Associate
Joined
4 Oct 2004
Posts
790
I was gonna buy one of thos bargain 3700 or 4000 chips from ocuk which got me thinking.

I have an X850 XT PE and was wondering if I can get much of an upgrade on this in the £150-200 area? It would need to provide quite a bump though. I am quite happy to OC, mod, solder and generally invalidate the warrantee:rolleyes:

Any suggestions welcome :) :rolleyes:
 
No cards on AGP that would be much better than the X850XT in your price range.

You can get PCIE cards in that budget that will offer substantially more performance but a mobo upgrade would be required (X1900GT or X1800XT), but these cards would be bottleknecked by your CPU & it may be hard to find a fast s754 CPU like a 2nd hand 3700+.

If it was me i would sell the CPU, mobo & graphics & start over, if not happy with performance of that particular system.
 
Aces, thats just what I was thinking (great minds eh). I was gonna get a cheap 3700+ (939) from OcUK and maybe a B grade mobo with PCIE.

I already have a S939 AGP board though and was just wondering if £150 PCIE card would offer much improvment (other than SM3) over my trusty X850?

I see the X1900XT 256mg can be had for £170. Does that get much of a performance hit over the 512mg version? I have a 22" CRT btw which runs ideally in 1600x1200 if that helps
 
The X1900XT 256MB is a really fast card, but it is slower than the X1900XT 512MB. At the res you play i would think the 512MB card would be the preferred choice, if you intend keeping your card for a while (think Crysis etc). However even the X1900XT 256MB is a huge improvement over your current card. [Too many good cards, not enough money ;) ]
 
Hi Nutbusta,

Remember as well that high performance agp graphics cards command quite a high second hand value as they're either limited runs or completely discontinued - like your x850xt pe!

I would imagine that you could get a 3 figure return on your card which would really add to your kitty for your pci-e system!

Check out prices on auction sites and such!

The cards your after should improve performance by quite a margin!

gt_junkie
 
Yep, I have seen them go for £200 recently (paid £220 for mine) and I still have the retail box, manual, disks and cooler.

I've ordered the 3700+ for the time being but a new card is most likely on the horizon.

Any more thoughts on the x1900xt 256?
 
7600gt would be better and can be had for £115 inc vat and delivery.

7800gs would be the next step but they go for around 200 bills. not worth it in my opinion
 
The only thing I'd upgrade is the CPU, tbh, and that looks to be doing the business at 2.6GHz anyway - your graphics card is pretty much fine for this round of Windows. Save yourself £2/300 for a new system next summer.

You could pick up a 7900GS which is pretty impressive if you're DESPERATE to burn your money, but from a practical perspective, that would be all you're doing.
 
Yeah, opinion seems to be that the 850xtpe is still pretty resonable although it doesn't clock much. I was toying with the idea of going for something like the x1900xt 256 but its a lot of money that I don't have.

A friend has an x1800xt (which was another alternative) but benchies show it only a little faster than mine.

Maybe I'll stick with the 3700 which should clock pretty well and do a proper upgrade in a year.

Ta for all the advice guys :)
 
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