Okay, This is what I plan to get in order to upgrade my system:

Old System in nutshell:
1. Athlon XP 3200 Winchester 939
2. Radeon x800XL Graphics Card
3. 1G of RAM
4. WG Raptor HD

What I plan to buy for an upgrade:
1. Opteron 170, 175 or 180
2. ATI x1950XT Graphics Card




**

Sounds pretty good. You shold do what you can to go to 2GB RAM, though. That helps a lot since you have less swapping during and after heavy use.

ati x1950xt is a poor choice:

1) no vista driver support and driver issues
2) you can get a x1950xtx with a good cooler and faster for under $300
3) your could find a lower cost x1950 pro for under $200
4) bad cooler very loud fan with a bad heatsink after you spend another $30 for after market cooler you void warranty

i am building 2 amd 939 for resale in few weeks i can not decide either oppy or x2

i think x2 is the way to go if you can find it for $100 the oppy is almost $200 they both get u to 2.6ghz

The card is not that bad. I haven't had heating problems the loud fan you don't notice unless your not using the computer, You can get a x1950xt for $219.99 with a $20 rebate at newegg, and as for the vista thing if you have XP it gives me no problem, and with the AGP version of the card on the way the card will probably have vista support soon.

The X1950XT is not a poor choice at all it's the best GPU for $200 can't beat the perf/cost this card has.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814102067

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] page4.html

I'm confused. Do you have the Athlon 64 3200 or Athlon XP 3200. You say XP and socket 939. Not the same. But you do say Winchester which leads me to believe it's in fact an Athlon 64 3200.

I agree with prozac26, if you game get the better video card and 1 extra GB of ram instead of a processor upgrade.

Now, I do have to ask if your mobo supports PCI-Express. The X800XL if I remember correctly was available in AGP & PCI-Express version.

I just bought the X1950XT from Sapphire it cost me $200 with MIR. The HIS IceQ X1950XT just came out with a $50 MIR which is what I would get today if I had the choice today as it would end up being only 10 bucks more than the Sapphire version.

I don't have Vista and don't plan on getting Vista until there's a SP2 for it but I did do a quick check and this sure in the heck looks like Catalyst Driver support for Vista to me, here. So, I don't know what DragonSprayer is talking about.

I have not seen an X1950XTX for $300. Even if it were $300, it's 50 bucks overpriced. The 8800GTS is a much better buy at $340 or so if you plan on spending this amount of money.

For under $300, get the X1950XT and 1GB of RAM. But if you want to save a little money then this HIS X1950Pro is only $150 after MIR. That's a damn good deal. I wouldn't doubt if that's one of the best bang for you bucks video card out there.

What is your budget?

and what mobo do you have?

Is your mobo PCI-E?

What are the specs of your ram?

i will agree THG like the x1950xt but it still has the old loud cooler and it has vista driver issues last i heard.

Assuming you have Pcie, get this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130082

or wait till next month and get a G84 based DX10 card for under $200. Buying any DX9 card right now, particularly one at $200 or over, is stupid. Very stupid.

Almost every good gpu is very loud now a days.