Upgrade of Socket A AGP

[MysticDee]

Im currently running the old athlon xp 3200 400fsb barton. 1 GB of corsairs XMS DDR3200 RAM. Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with all the usual trimmings. SATA1 Matrox 250GB HDD. Im also running a powercolor Radeon 9800XT.

Im waiting till AMD reply to conroe whenever that turns out to be (please dont turn this into another fanboy thread) so im not going to be upgrading my motherboard and processor for quite a while.

The real question is would upgrading my GPU yeild any real performance increases. If so what would be my best option for the upgrade if at all.

 

[kryojenix]

I'm in a similar situation to you, brother! I have Gigabyte GA-7NNXP, Athlon XP 3200+, 2x512 MB Hynix RAM, Seagate 7200.7 200GB SATA1 HDD, Sapphire AiW Radeon 9700Pro.

But my best advice is to resist all temptation to upgrade your graphics card now. Think about it, you already have a Radeon 9800XT - you'd still have to pay significant money to get a better VPU for AGP, so if you move on anytime soon you will have some expensive junk to get rid of.

And all for what?

Not totally certain, but I think you will see (or rather benchmark) definite improvements if you get a GeForce 6600 (GT?) or above, or a Radeon X700 (XT?) or above. But I think it won't be such a big deal, compared to the money you shell out.

Unless you get something better again, like a GeForce 6800 or 7800 or Radeon X800 or X850 or above. Then you may notice some significant improvement, but you'll have spent that much more on obsolete AGP junk!

Look, I'm not speaking from experience or anything. Just that this is my understanding. By the end of this year, you'll have Conroe/AM2 to choose from (might have to wait even a bit longer to let the dust of marketing settle or for AMD to really pull out their next rabbit cos it sounds like Conroe might be something), and you'll also be able to choose between ATi R600 with unified shaders, or whatever nVidia comes up with. Then you'll be rueing the day you splashed out on big AGP today. Well, I would be anyway.

I'm playing Oblivion on my system. I was sad at first to turn so many settings down. 1280x720, no AA, distance landscape -OFF, etc... But now the game has really sucked me in so I'm enjoying it heaps. No AGP card would make me happIER enough to be worth much cash just now.

There you go, without even any ATi/AMD fanbostuff!

 

[chunkymonster]

Im currently running the old athlon xp 3200 400fsb barton. 1 GB of corsairs XMS DDR3200 RAM. Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with all the usual trimmings. SATA1 Matrox 250GB HDD. Im also running a powercolor Radeon 9800XT.

Im waiting till AMD reply to conroe whenever that turns out to be (please dont turn this into another fanboy thread) so im not going to be upgrading my motherboard and processor for quite a while.

The real question is would upgrading my GPU yeild any real performance increases. If so what would be my best option for the upgrade if at all.

Yes, upgrading the gpu would yield preformance increases. Consider the 7800GS, it's pretty tremendous.

Ultimately, it should be a question of costs and longevity. IMO, what you have now is no slouch and with a worthy (7800GS or X800XT) gpu upgrade, the machine should be viable for another 12-18 months depending on your usage. Truly though, if you're looking to upgrade within the next 6-9 months then hold off on the AGP, save the cash, and go with a PCI-e x16 card when you swap out the mobo, proc, and memory.

Good luck!

 

[mas0n]

I have the exact CPU and MOBO and I have a BFG 7800GS installed.
The difference is HUGE. I more then doubled by '03 marks. I just upgradede to 2GB of RAM for even greater gains.

Did you have issues getting your system to run 400 FSB with some games? I had issues in BF2 and WoW. I had to manually set up most of my BIOS but it works. Let me know if you have similar issues.

I upgraded from a 9800Pro AIW 128.

 

[cleeve]

You'd definitely see gains with a 7800 GS, but I'd save the $100 and go with an X800 XL. You can get 'em for under $200 now I hear. Great fit for your system, and probably 90% as good as the 7800 GS...

 

[Nil]

You'd definitely see gains with a 7800 GS, but I'd save the $100 and go with an X800 XL. You can get 'em for under $200 now I hear. Great fit for your system, and probably 90% as good as the 7800 GS...

Since he's playing Oblivion though, won't he miss out on some candy with the X800 XL vs. an SM3.0 card like the GS? Probably still not worth $100, but it's worth something.

 

[cleeve]

Valid poiint, but Oblivion is a strange animal. Hard to say if thr 7800 GS on his rig would be fast enough to enable HDR anyways...

If he has to shut it off for good framerates, he ends up with X800 XL visual features for $100 more...

 

[Anoobis]

Hmmm....I have a vested interest in this thread as well.

I am currently running an Athlon XP-M 2600 at 2.3 stable, Abit NF7-S V2.0, 1 Gb RAM (value stuff, which won't let me go any further for OC'g, but it works), and a 6600GT.

I probably won't upgrade the rest of my system until the end of the year.

Would it be worth it for me to upgrade to the X800XL???

 

[cleeve]

800 XL over a 6600 GT? For sure, if you want higher resolutions and more AA

 

[MysticDee]

I have the exact CPU and MOBO and I have a BFG 7800GS installed.
The difference is HUGE. I more then doubled by '03 marks. I just upgradede to 2GB of RAM for even greater gains.

Did you have issues getting your system to run 400 FSB with some games? I had issues in BF2 and WoW. I had to manually set up most of my BIOS but it works. Let me know if you have similar issues.

I upgraded from a 9800Pro AIW 128.

Ive had very little problem with stablilty on this system at any speed. Never really tried to overclock anything as im a complete novice in that department. All games that ive placed soo far has run pretty well, just missing those extra bits and pieces.

I was also thinking about the idea of more ram, would it be a waste to for some new larger dimms 1GB each, would the relaxed timings ruin the performance increase from the added amount of RAM for applications to utilise. Just a thought...