upgrading from a 7600gt

[spacegrass]

Hi, Im quite new here and Im upgrading from a single xfx geforce 7600gt 256mb.

I notice the price of x1800xt's has fallen dramatically and in particular the sapphire 512mb model, which is priced here at £200 inc vat, has caught my eye.

I would therefore like to sell this card and upgrade to the x1800xt, I have looked at some benchmarks online and it seems in games such as f.e.a.r the average frames are almost double as to what im currently getting with my 7600 gt.

Ok, the point of this thread is I hear less than great cpu's can bottleneck high spec graphics cards. I have a amd athlon 3200+ overclocked to 2.45 ghz in my machine, would this be a good enough cpu to run the x1800xt?

Also I hear a top spec graphics card will draw a lot of power, I currently have a sumvision 500 watt model installed, will this be adequate?

 

[LoadsaMoney]

x1800 will be fine, mine runs perfectly well on a stock 3500+ (2.2ghz).

 

[spacegrass]

so the x1800xt isnt getting long in the tooth now and thats why its fallen in price so dramatically (less than a year ago these were over 400 quid)?

i mean with the new x1900's would I be fool to buy a x1800xt now?

 

[Alexrose1uk]

Should be fine. Obviously, at the cheapest ones being at least £50 more, the x1900xt is a better card, but the x1800xt is still a decent card. Not the best anymore by a way, but its still a decent card, and ATI cards are well known for doing filtering well.