X800GTO2 upgraded or 7600GT for AGP system

[Johnny21a]

I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card on my old system (Athlon64 3400, 1G Ram, ATI 9600XT AGP). I don't want to spend too much money as I will be upgrading to a quad core in about six months. I just want something to allow me to play current and some of the new games. I am an occasional gamer so I don't really care about all the bells and whistles. I just found a deal on a used Sapphire X800GTO2 with unlocked pipelines and flashed bios which makes it effectively an X850 XT PE (correct me if I am wrong). I can get it for 100 euros. I'm also considering an 7600GT which I can get for about 160 euros. From the benchmarks i've seen I would say the X850 performs just a bit better. But should I factor in the 7600's support for Shader Model 3 ? Will there be more games in the near future that require it like the new Splinter Cell ? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks guys...

 

[cronic]

dont bother getting the used x800 gto2 the actual x850 xt is cheap enough
and dont worry smart shader 3 support the x850 xt and 7600 gt perform about the same but the x850 xt runs a lot hotter and consumes far more power than the 7600 gt but as the x850 xt is ati the image quality will be better

so really its just a matte of prefrence