Advice for AGP 9800 Pro upgrade

I'm trying to decide whether it's worth upgrading my current GPU. I'm not interested in a full upgrade at the moment, so I want to know how much better performance, if any, I can get for a ~$150 investment into, say, a 7600GS.

My gaming right now is mostly Civ4 (which is somewhat unstable on my current setup), but I'd like to be able to tackle Oblivion and NWN2.

I'm also worried that an upgrade will force me to upgrade my PSU, as well.

Current setup:

Asus A8V Deluxe 939
Athlon 64 3000 single-core
Seasonic Super Silencer 300 (80%+ efficiency)
Audigy 2ZS Platinum
Compro VideoMate TV/FM card
2 SATA HDD's, 7000RPM
Bunch of USB things
9800 Pro + Arctic Silencer

(You can see why I'm not looking at a full upgrade, because I'd need to upgrade almost everything on this list).

I'm looking at the Gigabyte 7600GS because I'm led to believe by other posts here and elsewhere that my mobo isn't very happy with Radeon GPU's. Also, I'm assuming that Gigabyte's fanless setup is not only silent, but also draws less power (no extra fan to power).

However, the AGP platform analysis article seems to hint that the 9700 Pro was reasonably competitive. In fact, for Oblivion it scores 13.2 vs. the 7800GS's 20.0, which the article states is "relatively close." How "close" in real terms is that? Is the difference even less when talking about a 9800Pro vs. 7600GS?

In short, what do I get if I buy a 7600GS? More stability? Much better graphics? Somewhat better graphics? No noticeable difference at all?

For $150 you can do better than a 7600GS

I wouldn't worry about that. Either ATI or Nvidia cards will be fine.

The X1650XT is the best AGP Oblivion card for $150. Like kaotao said, pretty equal to a 7600GT, but it's ahead in Oblivion.

For $150 AR, go with this one. Only thing in AGP that will beat it is a X1950 pro for $200.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161064

300W PSU though, ouch. Better check the amps of the 12v rail.

Power consumption:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/v [...] 0xt_4.html

Oblivion results:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/v [...] xt_14.html

I'd assume no 300W will be enough for the X1650XT either.

Thanks for that link to the power consumption charts, Pauldh. I'm glad to know the information is out there.

As someone who tries to conserve power, this entire thing is giving me pause... I especially don't like knowing that a GPU upgrade will cause my idling power consumption to go up, since... isn't that the point of idling? Anyway, lots of good info to chew on. Thanks, forum residentz!!!!

EDIT: I looked up the power consumption of the 9800 Pro on that same site... looks like ALL of the cards you point to use less power than the one I've got running now. Of course, there's the ecological damage of buying a new card to begin with... but... must... play... Oblivion...!

the problem with the 9800 is that it has much older technology and will probably get raped if you want oblivion to look good. Get the 7600 or the 7800

The x1950 pro won't help him much with that CPU. If he upgrades his CPU, then the x1950 pro will be SCREAMING.

If he want's to upgrade his video card only, probably go with the 7600GT, or 7800 GS.

luv the PSU calculator, it's fun and gives the illusion of precision . It recommended under 300 W. But one thing I hadn't realized is that PSU's lose power capacity over time. Mine is > 2 yrs old? Oy.

Thanks everyone!

itll be a huge difference, yes, but the card will be quite handicapped. that was demonstrated in the toms hardware review of older agp systems. with a low processor, you can get pretty close performance with a lower card.

however though, if you're stuck on a 300 watt PSU, you ain't going nowhere. when i first upgraded my old compy from a 9600pro to an x800xl i had a 400 watt power supply. that lasted a few months before the PSU died and fried the card. i also had 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives, a tv tuner, and power hungry p4, but i think that its a lesson worth passing on.

if you're gonna upgrade the GPU, upgrade your PSU too. a good 500 watt unit can easily be had for $100 and it will give you some peace of mind.

An A64 3000+ @ stock 1.8GHz has more gaming power than a P4 3.2 C or E, or a XP3200+. It would perform closer to Cleeve's 3400+ (part 2) than to his XP2500+ (part 1).
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] age10.html

hes not using a 1950 card

x800gt+3000@2.1ghz will give better fps then 1.8ghz
? Say what? That makes no sense. He isn't using a X800GT either, and really they are not a very good buy now anyway. Not to mention it would be the Oblivion bottleneck big time even with a 1.8GHz A64.

A X1650XT and a 1.8GHz A64 @ 1.8GHz will easily beat a X800GT and any CPU. He's talking Oblivion, why recommend he OC his CPU and go with a card that can't do HDR in a game that is extremely GPU intensive outside?

That is incorrect. Any Athlon64 will see a colossal boost with an X1950 PRO.

Doh! I thought you wanted to upgrade.

Newegg reviews suck. That is not an upgrade.

Oh, you can run it. But you can also run it on a 9800 PRO, probably a bit better than it will on a plain jane 6600...

Actually, the Oblivion engine favors Ati cards so much, it might run better on a 9800 PRO than even a 6600 GT...

Did you mean 6800 GS? Because I don't think there is a 6600 GS...

I fear he/she meant this card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814143056

I don't see any 6800GS AGP's on Newegg.

8O so sad it's almost funny. Kinda like "upgrading" from a GF4ti4600 to an FX5200.

typo ! typo!

Gigabyte 7600GS



I'm glad I'm at least amusing you mock the n00b!

Man, what a difference between "6" and "7". Anyway, I have the Gigabyte 7600GS on order, I know it'll raise hell in my box (passive cooling) tho to be honest I'm kinda looking forward to finding out how well the heatsink works and how good the ventilation turns out to be in there (Antec SLK3700 BQE). I also made use of the one-time $15 rebate from PayPal, which more than compensated for shipping.

... tho in this case, "7" is definitely better than "6", it seems!

Jeez, one typo and you look like a complete moron! Now that I've corrected myself, maybe I'm just a half-wit?

Thanks, Pauldh

I've been shopping this choice for, like, 4 months now so I'm not going in completely uninformed. The problem with all the charts and graphs is, as I explained, that nothing out there compares MY card with the NEW card. I have to make guesses. For example, for a while I thought the X800 was the same as the 9800, so when doing a GPU comparison I thought to myself, this 9800's pretty good! Then I read the first AGP article which made the 9700 Pro sound viable, so I kept think, this is pretty good!

Anyway, the problem with having 2-3 year cycles is that it becomes impossible to do a "how much better is this?" comparison, unless a kind forum denizen or five help straighten you out

Hey, my 7600GS is in a SLK3700 also, but it's an older bronze model. I like those cases. Mine was built to be quiet as the system it replaced was hot and loud. It has a Nexus power supply and Nexus low RPM fan in it, so It's quieter than stock but also moving less air. Anyway, I tested the rig and that passive 7600GS could loop 3dmarks for 30 minutes without any issues. Like I said it's not a gaming system so that was the extent of my gpu stress testing. But I think you will be fine.

This is the heatsink on mine:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814150170

In that price range you should be looking at the cards I recomended on page 1 of this thread...

If you decide to go with the lesser 7600GS, don't bother with spending the extra money for the 512MB version, as it will only amount to maybe a couple more FPS.

If you decide to go with the lesser 7600GS, don't bother with spending the extra money for the 512MB version, as it will only amount to maybe a couple more FPS.

Ok, I'll take the x1950Pro out of the equation but I'm still confused as to why one of the remaining 4 are better than the others. The 7800GS/256 is better than the X1650XT/256 and 7600GT/256?

Thanks

Unlock the darn thing and convert it to a 9800xt. At that point it won't be too far behind a 7600gs ot x1650 pro. You might find some new life in the thing. Until it cooks, you can postpone the jump to a new board.

Well, I'm not very technical savy when it comes to OC'ing so I never bothered trying. However, I think I will try so I can squeeze some more power out of my system before having to upgrade. I'll have to post a separate thread on how to OC.