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Upgrading Graphics Card to 6800 512

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18 Oct 2005
Posts
788
Location
London, UK
Hello,

My m8 has a question, will his system be able to upgrade to a 6800 512,

1.7 ghz amd altlon
mx440 oced
640 mb ddr ram
300 w power supply.

Keep in mind that his mx440 is severly overclocked and runs cod2 pretty well @ medium settings and half life 2 near high & quake 4 on low.
 
Truthfully, this is going to sound a bit mean... but I not sure its worth the upgrade.

That system is pretty low end. THe only reason that Mx440 is able to play at decent speeds is because it is not doing a lot of the shading work.... also 512MB of ram for a 6800 is kind of to much. 256 is more on par.

If it were me, I would probablly save up and grab a cheap system.

(venice 3000 about 60, motherboard, 40, and 1GB of DDR ram, about 100... possibly a cheap PSU).

Grab the asrock 939 motherboard, which will allow him to keep the current AGP graphics card, then after that, change to a better card.

Otherwise, grab a cheap 9800PRO or something :)
 
He could, but it'd be a waste of money. If he wants to change his gfx card a better option would be to pick up a secondhand 9700/9800 card which should be available for £50 or less. Anything more than that is overkill really on such an ancient CPU.
 
Turbanation said:
So any1 else got ne more sugguestions?

MB-002-AK Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 (Socket 939 & Upgradable to AM2) AGP & PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-002-AK)
£36.95 £36.95
CP-117-AM AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3000BPBOX) (CP-117-AM)
£64.95 £64.95
MY-004-OK OcUK Value 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit (MY-004-OK)
£49.95 £49.95
CA-052-AN Antec NSK4400 Mini Tower Case - 380W SmartPower PSU (CA-052-AN)
£34.95 £34.95
GX-026-BG BFG 3DFuzion GeForce 7600 GS 256MB DDR2 TV-Out/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-026-BG)
£67.95 £67.95
Subtotal £254.75
VAT £44.59
Total £299.34

This would be a much nicer upgrade and he might be able to get a bit for the bits from his old computer.
 
The 6800 Ultra 512MB card is only available on PCI-E. It was a limited release expensive card. The 300W PSU won't be able to cope with that card either (unless it's a Shuttle PSU)

His PC is reaching the end of it's useful life - I'd spend the £300 on the spec suggested by Raikiri. He'll get a far faster PC, future proof with PCI-E and AM2 and with a decent PSU
 
ajgoodfellow said:
The 6800 Ultra 512MB card is only available on PCI-E. It was a limited release expensive card. The 300W PSU won't be able to cope with that card either (unless it's a Shuttle PSU)

His PC is reaching the end of it's useful life - I'd spend the £300 on the spec suggested by Raikiri. He'll get a far faster PC, future proof with PCI-E and AM2 and with a decent PSU


I think he is talking about th 512mb 6800NU on AGP :) complete waste of money as I dont think these ones can unlock and they only have a 128bit memory bus.
 
You dont need 512meg on the gfx card, 128 would be fine even.

The mx440 is good, Ive used it myself but its doing ok only because its running dx7 or so. The 6800 will be dx9 so dont expect fps to rise tons, it should look a lot better.

Cpu is ok, overclocked ? 2ghz or more would be better

Psu might not cope, how many drives. Its border line, you might find the display starts blanking out. I tried a 9800pro on a A64 sempron with only a 300w psu and it was in trouble.

My advice is if the budget is tight, spend less on the gfx and upgrade the psu. Upgrading everything would be good if money is available, Raikiki's one was good but I would have faster ram and oc the cpu
 
ob1 said:
My advice is if the budget is tight, spend less on the gfx and upgrade the psu. Upgrading everything would be good if money is available, Raikiki's one was good but I would have faster ram and oc the cpu

If ya look at my post, I suggested it first :p

Either way.

You dont need fast ram, simply run it on a devider (if we are talking about the 939 setup) as long as the timings are tight, you wont lose a huge amount of performance anyhow.

With his friends current setup, if the motherboard is very old, it may be tricky to overclock via BIOS (this is especially true if it is a PC from a shop, rather than something he made himself). I say dont buy a thing for it. Save up 300 - 400 and then just upgrade the rest of the system,

*EDIT*

I suppose he could well buy another PSU now. The problem is, if his computer is from a few manufacturers, then the case will have been designed to only take certain types of PSU (being designed just for the manufacturers).
 
Last edited:
the spec attached details the Antec case...which allreday has a decent 380W Antec PSU incorporated. This should de the job nicely.

Not sure about the CPU bottlenecking...it would bottleneck the top line of cards...but probably not the 7600 range. Anyhow....you could probably OC that CPU to at least 2.3-2.4 quite easily I would say. So I wouldnt worry about bottlenecking.
 
there was one ASUS 512mb DDR2 AGP 6800 series card, but it ran on a 128bit memory system....AKA utter bab, my 128mb LE laughs at its performance.

I would agree on spending the cash and gettin something like a 754 or 939 setup , even a 2800 semp64 and good mobo would cost you bout 85 notes and be VERY clockable, then a PCi express 7600 GT or summin for around £90
 
stop forgetting 7600s are faster than 6800GT - ultras, so if they were CPU limited, 7600s will definately be, only the GTs are this fast mind
 
Turbanation said:
would the cpu be bottlenecking it?

Yes. On a 1.7ghz cpu (is it really 1.7ghz or 1700+?) there's no point getting a 6800GS, he'd be better off getting something cheaper like 9800pro (or 6600gt if he insists on brand new).
 
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