3d Mark03 Score 847? Is this right?

Dude, you're gonna upgrade to score higher in some pointless benchmark?

If his score is that low his gaming is gonna be suffering plenty... 8O

considering the crappy card you have, this is not much of a surprise haahhaa joking, i had a card like this and it sucked badly.
is this the 64-bit version?
try a driver upgrade, check for unnecessary software running in background, viruses/spyware, etc.

edit: i'd get the 6600GT if i intended to play at least some 2 year old game

Your FX5200 is crap, so going to a "decent" ( I use this term loosely by today's standards) card like a 6600GT would be quite a significant upgrade. What's your upgrade budget?

I did a 3dMark05 Test with my E6400 and a X300 I use while my PSU for my X1900XTX arrived, got a whopping 3xx score, changed video cards and now i get 11,xxx, so basically what you test is your video card output with 3dMark.

If you want to upgrade for better gaming experience go right ahead, if you don't do it regularly don't even bother.

No offence... but no surprise there :twisted:

Your FX5200 is about has good has todays on-board VPU, and not much better.  

If your system is gonna get use for gaming 8) , start putting some money aside and get any 150-200$ range VPU. It'll give at least 5 time (and more like 10*) the performances of the card you've got now. :twisted:

:idea: One thing, you should anyway keep that FX5200 in case you've got problem with your new VPU, it can come in handy if only for not getting stuck with a black screen.

AGP, right?

A 6600 GT , 7600 GS, or X1600 would certainly boost your score (and, more importantly, your computer's ability to game decently)astronomically.

It's your videocard that is the bottleneck for gaming performance 90% of the time, not the rest of your system. And your 5200 is a really slow card...

Thanks for all the replies guys,

I'm not purely doing an upgrade just to get a new benchmarking score. I'm primarily doing the upgrade because i've never changed a GPU before, i need the experience of doing it, so i'm buying a lowish spec AGP card now.

I was just mythed by how some peoples scores seemed to differ or go up so high etc after changing the GPU, i guess as someone mentions above, my sexy Geforce 5200 must be getting on a bit, causing a bottle neck.

Thanks again.

Woh!

This is wierd, but my PC is EXACTLY the same as urs.

And i did get 924 points in 3DMark 03 even though i can run Painkiller, Halo etc. on high with pretty good frames most of the time. I can even run F.E.A.R. on "playable" settings, almost getting to 60 FPS on the minimum of the low, where u cant tell anymore if ur shooting a wall or an enemy..

Thats why im going to upgrade to an X1900XT to boost it to 30,000. Amazing isnt it?

ONLY get an x1600 if you plan to photoshop or video edit... x800 series or x1800 series is for the cost effective gaming solution (ati solution)

Actually... come to think of it... my core 2 duo x1600 PowerBook Pro.... BLOWS

lol

so don't even think about getting an x1600

I agree 100%. The X1600 was a mistake.

First off it's a Dell.... (I know i will get bashed for that, but...)

You definately need a better video card, the 6600 is a good option.
let your budget decide

Also check your BIOS setting and turn off the HT, you are not going to see any improved performance by using it. (in my opinion)
While you are there change your HD setting to 'performance' (if your BIOS has this option.) I use a Dell at work (why I said I was going to get bashed) It's a Dimension 5150, 2gig, 512 vid, 2x80GB SATA in Raid 0, after i made thesae changes in the BIOS it helped my programs load faster.

First off it's a Dell.... (I know i will get bashed for that, but...)

You definately need a better video card, the 6600 is a good option.
let your budget decide

Also check your BIOS setting and turn off the HT, you are not going to see any improved performance by using it. (in my opinion)
While you are there change your HD setting to 'performance' (if your BIOS has this option.) I use a Dell at work (why I said I was going to get bashed) It's a Dimension 5150, 2gig, 512 vid, 2x80GB SATA in Raid 0, after i made thesae changes in the BIOS it helped my programs load faster.

Meh... the X1600 XT is slightly better than the 7600 GS for the same price, if not cheaper.

The X1600 PRO isn't that bad for the price, either. Better than a 6600, but not quite as good 6600 GT.