I want to upgrade

[mekender]

ok, I have a computer running a ATI branded radeon 9800 pro 256Mb AGP card... I do not want to upgrade to a PCIe motherboard yet, as the new AM2 sockets are too close to release. however, am hoping to upgrade to a better video card... problem is, I see 30 different manufacturers selling ATI cards, and the ATI branded cards are so damn expensive... also its hard to figure out if any of the Xxxx, XxxxxSE, Xxxxpro cards are actually an upgrade, some of them say GDDR2 others GDDR3... and apparently the X1600 is a lower end card than the X850... well frankly I cant find any way to reliably compare both brand, model and performance Vs. what I already have... and lets not even get into the 5 million different nVIDIA manufacturers... and again we see that it looks like the 6800 is better than the 7200, but the 7800 is better than them all(and costs a fortune)... I also dont want to spend a fortune on a menial upgrade of a percent or 2


any ideas, susgetions or info would be appreciated...

 

[jaguarskx]

AM2 is coming out on May 23rd. Is that too long of a wait?

 

[angry_ducky]

AM2 is coming out on May 23rd. Is that too long of a wait?

It's about 2 and a half weeks away. Wait it out, and build a whole new system.

 

[mekender]

right but AM2 will be uber expensive and ill wait a bit till the 939 processors come down in price and get an X2 and probably a SLI setup... but thats probably 4-6 months away... im looking for something to upgrade soon that wont cost an arm and a leg

 

[jaguarskx]

AM2 will not be uber expensive, but they will cost more than the current S939 Athlons. About $20 - $25 more expensive for the CPU. DDR2 RAM is another story.

 

[1Tanker]

Ok, how much are you willing to spend?

 

[jap0nes]

also, future releases of AM2 will (probably) show much better performance than early releases