Best Card For My System

Hello Everybody

I was thinking about graphics card that is best for my system for maybe year and a half. This is my system configuration:

Intel Pentium Prescott 3.0 HT 478
Asus Motherboard P4P800 SE
Twinmos Speed Premium 2x512 MB of Memory in Dual Mode
Gigabyte GeForce 6600 Turbo AGP 128 MB 400/1000 Mhz
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250 GB SATA Hard Disk 16MB cache
Enermax Noisetaker 420W PSU

I was planing to buy Radeon X850 Pro Agp version, because my weakest link is graphics card. I know about the new Radeon 1950 pro Agp series card but
I would not wan't to spend much money, because I will probably later on upgrade the whole configuration to PCI-E interface. So this new card would be like for another year and a half until I upgrade. What do you guys think, from the charts I can see that X850 pro like kicks my cards butt.

The 1950 would be a noticeable upgrade. The 850 would be an upgrade in speed but not by too much. You woud loose SM3.0 though.

If you plan to upgrade anyway, save the money and invest it in a few months in a whole new PCIe platform.

1) Your CPU wouldn't bottleneck the X1950Pro.
2) If you want 2GB RAM, you could buy another two 512MB sticks, and you'd still have dual channel.
3) It's not possible to upgrade a s478 system to PCIe, as there are no s478 mobos with PCIe.

You're right, though; the X850Pro should hold you for another year, but if you go with a new build, you won't be able to recycle any of the components, except for the hard drive.