7800 GS AGP upgrade worth it ?

Hey guys, so I have an older P4 Northwood 2.4 GHz AGP based system with 1 GB of RAM. I upgraded to an X800 XT a while back, but recently that card started artifacting to the point that it became unusable.

Now I'm stuck with a vanilla 9600 that is very mediocre for gaming as you might imagine. I'm planning on building a new system soon that will be able to play Crysis on near max settings (who isn't these days right?). I would like to wait, however, until the game is released so I can look at benchmarks et cetera to get a better idea of what I'll need to buy.

Anyway I was wondering if you think it's worth it to buy a 7800 GS to hold me over until then or is that just pissing away money that could be put to better use. I know that Newegg.com sells them for around $200 which isn't that bad and I really want to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R when it's released this month on medium/highish settings. Do you think this is a good buy? I'm worried a little about my CPU bottle necking the system and if it would be better just to get a 7600 GT or 1650 XT. I feel like the 1950 pro, although a better card than the 7800 GS, will definitely be bottle necked by the CPU and may involve me having to buy a new power supply (I currently have a 400W I believe).

Thanks for the advice and sorry for the long post.

yeah just get one of the cheaper variants of the x1xx series or the 7xxx series to hold u out till you start seeing more crysis benchmarks. They are not at all bad for gaming at lower resolutions ... for the time being any way

Thanks guys, seems like some good advice. I noticed that newegg sells an XFX 7600 GT for ~$160 after rebate and an EVGA 7800 GS CO edition (clocked at 430 MHZ vs 375 MHZ std) for ~$180 after rebate.

Do you think that the overclock on the 7800 GS will improve its performance enough to warrant buying it over the 7600 GT?

What about buying a solid PSU that I could use for a future rig, and use it right now to power a X1950 pro? (Still a little worried about my processor :? )

Any other good sources for reasonably priced video cards on the web or in actual retail (I work/live in the Washington D.C. area)? I went to compusa the other day and they wanted ~$350 for a BFG 7800 GS o_O
Sorry for all the questions.

Thanks

you might look at the corsair line of psu,s.
they come with a 5 year warranty.

Glad to help. This is what you want...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161064

Pick it up while it's still available.

yeah specially since you only really want a card to last u 6-7 months or so before you go to dx10.

Id go for the cheapest option.

they all perform relitively the same..ish with one card outperforming the other in specific games.

check the list here: http://tomshardware.co.uk/graphics/charts.html

and see the difference in performance and figure out if the increase in performance is worth paying that bit extra.

No, and that's an overclocked 7800 GS. If you want to compare that you'd need an overclocked 7600 GT...
Plus, that's a 3dMark bench. In actual game benches it's very close in the FS review...

At reference stock speeds, the 7600 GT is usually faster (barely):

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] page5.html

Hey, that BFG is an OC's 7800 GS too... odd.

Regardless, it's obvious that thr 7800 GS isn't worth spending ther extra $$ on...

Nope

Depends on the price difference I guess. I wouldn't pay all that much more for it, but if it's within $20 I'd go for it.

Seconded.