Worthwhile upgrade?

[200sx]

Hi everyone,

I have been offered a PNY 256MB 6800 Ultra AGP for £100.

Here's my current spec

Athlon64 3400+ s754 DTR Clawhammer
Asus K8V-X motherboard
2*512MB Kingston value RAM
XFX Geforce 6600GT 128MB AGP
Zalman CNPS9000-AlCu
Zalman CF700-AlCu
Soundblaster audigy
250GB Maxtor diamondmax10 SATA 16MB cache
Aopen H400 series case
Aopen silent 300W ATX2 PSU
LG 1710B 17" TFT monitor DVI
Logitech MX1000 and standard keyboard

Two questions really:

1. Is £100 a good price for the card?
2. What kind of performance increase should I see?

 

[200sx]

I would love to go PCI-E but am too afraid of my 3400 DTR not working with the new motherboard

I'm really tempted by the 256MB X1800XT for £170 and one of those Asrock s754 Sli boards. Would the £200 for this lot be more worthwhile?

ps. 2*512=1024MB

 

[200sx]

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

I ve just bought the following

Sapphire ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-121-SP)

Gigabyte K8NE nForce4 4X (Socket 754) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-037-GI)

I couldn't resist the bargain of an X1800XT for £170

The last ATI card I owned was a Radeon 8500LE 64MB, it was a great card so I hope this one is too.

ps. I know the Asus NForce4 boards are only a couple of quid more but I can't stand actively cooled chipsets, too noisy. The GA-K8NE can be used with DTR CPUs according to sources on the web.

edit. What kind of performance increase would I see from this lot then?

Thanks again.

 

[200sx]

Well I've fitted the new motherboard and video card and all I can say is

WOW !!!

The motherboard worked with my DTR chip like a dream, far better than the ASUS board. Windows detects the CPU at 804MHz but it's actually running at the full 2.2GHz, other than that perfect.

Well the video card has blown me away!
I cannot stress how much of an upgrade this is over the 6600GT and the 6800Ultra.

I'm scoring 25.5K on 3DMark'01, 16K on '03 and 8.5K on '05. Currently downloading '06, which has to score better than the 800 on my 6600GT and 2.4K on the Ultra.

Forgetting the benchmarks (they really don't paint a true picture of the performance), I can now run every game I have (bar BF2 due to 1GB ram) at full settings! I have never ever been able to do this before in my 15 odd years of PC gaming...

Thanks for the advice everyone, it was VERY much appreciated.

 

[200sx]

Thanks for the advice Exsomnis

I can't beleive my little 300W PSU is coping??? I suppose it ran fine with the 6800Ultra so was 90% sure it would work with this.

Thanks again