Is my AGP 4X on my GA-7VTXH a big botlleneck for my 9800pro?

Your processor might be a small bottleneck, but nonetheless, WoW is a Ram hog for sure. Another 512 should set you nicely for adequate performance. What resolution do you play at?

No, AGP 4X will not bottleneck a 9800.

Yeah I knew 8x was double bandwidth as 4x, but having read articles before and remembering that we are still pretty far away from having reached full potential of 8x... I thought 4x was still plenty.

I play at just the default resolution, I believe 1024 x 724 ?

Honestly though, is another 512mb DDR memory really necessary? Would it really make any kind of a difference? I mean I'm already running 896 mb ddr ram (333 mhz). Isint that more then enough already? Just kind of curious, because wow graphics dont seem that intense..

Btw, are my fps about average to what I Should be getting? 35-40 fps sound about right at default settings on WoW ?

as said before the 4x and 8x doesnt mean much.
example;
a 6800gt in agp and a 6800gt in pci-e=pretty much no difference

more memory would help.

LOL, 9800PRO IS A GOOD CARD.. 4-5 YEARS AGO.

The difference is Wow reset its stock settings with the upgrade and your not noticing the better resolution and visuals. It probably upped its resolution to 1024x768, from 800x600. then cranked some goodies up. WoW does that automatically with new hardware detected.

Also make sure your drivers are installed. d00d.

REad a bit first brefore you go insulting on one of the greated old skool video cards ever made.

And no 4x and 8x dont make a difference, d00d.

Update your agp drivers, mobo drivers, video card driver, and all yur drivers, but never insult the 9800pro against a 440 mx again, we are talking a crippled geforce 2 vs a 5900ulta. 2 generations better + a dozen steps up.

It's possible to play Neverwinter Nights 2 at 1024x768 resolution on highest visual settings and even with 4x or 8xAF with Radeon 9800 Pro even on x1 AGP and get very smooth performance on many game maps as long as there is 1Gb RAM and all shadows are turned off.

I would guess that either you have your graphics settings and resolution too high or your CPU and memory bandwidth (not quantity) are holding you back.

A 9800Pro is way better than a MX440. I used to have a 9800Pro but I gave it to a friend when I upgraded to an X800 series card.

Yeah on paper the 9800 pro seems light years ahead of the mx440.. that should be a fact. As for updates, I ahve them all instaled. It's a clean install of windows xp since yesterday, did the chipset update (4in1 mobo drivers), did the graphisc card drivers.

What kinda FPS should i be getting do you guys figure? I'll run a 3dMarks2005 right now, and i'll post my results for reference as well.

http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultanalyzer.jsp?pr...

Using 3dmarks2005 trial version, i have obtained 2821 as a score. What do you guys think? Is this what I should be getting ?

That score actually is surprisingly high considering your CPU and RAM.
I think I used to get ~2700 with the same video card, a 2.8GHz Pentium 4 and dual channel DDR400. Of course 3D-Mark is mostly a graphics benchmark.

Another issue could be that that older card I *think* was a directX 7 only card so with the upgrade WoW could now be using a direct 8/9 path instead which maybe why you didn't see the jump in provement you were hoping for.

Quick answer: No.

Your CPU is limiting the speed mostly, IMO.

I just made a few changes to hopefully get a better score. Disabled paging file, enabled fast write in bios, OC'd core from 378mhz Core (stock) to 400 mhz (416 shows artifacts), as well as OC'd Memory from 337mhz (stock) to 343mhz (357 mhz showed artifacts). I was a little bit dissapointed in how little I could OC this card, but I did get some *fair* gains...

I just did a new 3dMarks2005 benchmark, and got a new score of 2931 (increase of 110 points from previous run). Here is the link http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultanalyzer.jsp?pr... .

Thanks for the help so far you guys, but just still kind of curious as to what people are getting in terms of FPS with my video card on WoW, as well as wanted to know just how many more fps would I gain from getting another 512mb ddr ram stick roughly? At times I spike 60fps when I look straight down on the grass only, but as soon as I move into more detailed regions (looking straight at citys etc) it goes back down to about 30-35 fps.

BTW, i wanted to ask because I thought this was very weird? When I was running 3dmarks2005 benchmark, when I had my ears right up against computer, the graphics card was making some really weird screetchy sounds that sounded like very short quick nano squeeks at a very fast past. Could this be the vertex shaders in action or something??

Your 4x AGP is probably not the bottleneck (your not going to use all that bandwidth I dont think).. its likely your CPU or the 9800.

The "new 256-bit 128mb 9800pro" is actually a fairly antiquated card (tried and true, great card in its day). Step up to the Geforce 7600 GT or perhaps X850 PRO (both excellent midrange cards for less than $200). Both these cards are another giant step ahead of the 9800pro.

Furthermore, I have played WoW for quite some time and I noticed a WORLD of difference when I updated from 512mb Ram to 1Gig.

I'm running an intel 2.26 (533mhz fsb), 1 gig Rambus (pc-1066), and an asus 6800 128mb vid and I can play at 1600x1200 unless raiding when I need to take it down to 1280x1024 to avoid chopps.

Hope that helps.....

Disabling the paging file is SUICIDE! What were you thinking (or what kind of moron told you to do that)? For one thing you'll run into "memory insufficient" crashes more often than not; secondly you're killing your performance.

You're not getting excellent performance because you have a rather slow CPU and only 512MB of RAM. Your computer is behaving exactly like it should, don't worry.

I just spoke with my friend who gave me this card, he supposidly was running this graphics card at 50-100 fps, with 3000xp and 1.5 gigs ram running at 1280x1024 resolution with highest detail/effect on. I'd say that's almost 200% better then my current setup? Could just a simple cpu upgrade going from 1800+ to 3000+ equial 200% better performance? Does this sound realistic or not ?

I have almost a gig of ram not 512 mb of ram though. As for the cpu, could it be that big of a factor? If I were to go to a AMD AthlonXP 3200+(Barton,.13u) 400 N/A, would this be enough?

nevermind, I just realised my motherboard GA-7VTXH ( http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Product... ), is only capable of 266 FSB so the highest potential cpu I can put in would be a AMD AthlonXP 2600+(Thoroughbred,.13u). and Not the 3200+

Sounds like the delta between you and your friend is a faster cpu and more memory, both of which account for the difference in frame rates.

Right on. I had a cheap K7S5A ECS mobo with the 1.2GHz T-bird cpu (200 FSB) and upgraded to a 2600+ 266FSB, and from 512MB PC133 SDRAM to 512MB PC2100 DDR and it made a huge difference. Granted, your cpu and RAM aren't that low like mine were on my old system, but I do know that the jump to the 2600+ should be noticeable because the clock speed will be more than decent (2.13GHz I think). I'd look into it since you may be able to upgrade the cpu for just under $100 if/when the time is right, but I haven't looked at the prices recently so maybe I'm quite mistaken...