Im having an old P4 3.0Ghz and is hoping to get a new AGP replacement for my old FX5600.... i cant afford too expensive card.... and the processors must not be the bottleneck... from 7300GT to 7600GT or X1650XT... which is the best choice? thanx for ur advice.

Go with either the X1650 or the 7600GT. They trade blows in most games with the X1650 coming out on top in most of them. Your CPU shouldn't bottleneck them unless you are runnning small resolutions. The smaller the res, the more CPU power is required.

i would go for the GF 7600GT or X1650 depends on what is cheaper?

Have you thought about overclocking your CPU at all?

Im not thinking of overclocking... kinda risky overclocking an old processor. i live in a small town in Malaysia (u know where it is?) local stores dun offer any cards higher than 7300GT... so its kinda hard to egt a gd card at my place, since online stores also dun offer shipping to my country, unless.... u guys can help me out locating any online stores that offer shipping to Malaysia.

its not risky unless you know what you are doing, i have the same processor oc'd at 3.5 and i have been running it at that speed for two years with no stability issues.
As for the video card upgrade, what do you plan on playing with a new video card? because i can bet that even though it would be an upgrade from the old 5600, you'd still be playing at low settings on games like F.E.A.R. or CS:S.
SO, it all really comes down to what you plan on playing.

That depends, how far can you throw?


ok ok, so I know what you mean... lostandwandering basically answered your question in a nutshell. Having a P4 3GHz myself, I know your predicament... I had to decide what replacement card to get myself, but I ended up deciding that it's too old. I'm going to save up and purchase an entirely new system at the end of the year. Of course that isn't an option for most, so I'll just restate what lostandwandering said, go with either the X1650 or the 7600GT, whichever is cheaper.


EDIT:

That's a good point... what do you plan on playing with the new card?

i usually play strategy games like CoH and CNC3 and sometimes shooter like Doom3, HL2. never have the interest in RPG. I wish i can try out FEAR, medium-low graphics is enuf for me since i know the limit of my system. i wanna replace my graphic card so that it can live a little longer b4 the new "bearlake" mobo and DDR3 come in. only then i might consider buying a new system.

That depends, how far can you throw?


ok ok, so I know what you mean... lostandwandering basically answered your question in a nutshell. Having a P4 3GHz myself, I know your predicament... I had to decide what replacement card to get myself, but I ended up deciding that it's too old. I'm going to save up and purchase an entirely new system at the end of the year. Of course that isn't an option for most, so I'll just restate what lostandwandering said, go with either the X1650 or the 7600GT, whichever is cheaper.


EDIT:

That's a good point... what do you plan on playing with the new card?

LOL, nice.

Ya P4 arent good but i was suprised how far i was able to clock my old P4.

I had a Pentium 4 630 and was able to OC that bad boy to 4.0Ghz no problem and stable. Using a 680I mobo of course and 1.5V FSB and 1.5 Vcore.

lol err, why aren't P4's good?, it would make more sense if you were comparing it to the c2d. but that doesn't make any sense anyway because the c2d's are generations ahead of the p4.
so, if you would kindly explain why P4's are bad please =]

Because they are of the netburst architecture, and that means they run hot as hell.

is that the only major flaw ?

Fixed.

P4s just aren't capable of next-generation applications and operating systems, such as Vista. All the method calls and physics and whatnot-else in Crysis aren't going to play nicely with an old P4. I'm a software developer myself, and I develop games in Java and constantly need more processing power to conform with the standards that everyone else keeps raising. This single core I have just isn't cutting all the new updates and everythign else that I feel more or less forced to download.

lol ok, it is quite obvious that crysis will not run smoothly, or possibly even at all!. You are comparing this processor to programs generations ahead of its time. the old p4 will not cut it for the enthusiats here (obviously), but for games like cs:s or FEAR, these games can still be played. Now im speaking for the average-everday user taht browses the web, watches movies, music etc. Whats to say that this processor is bad?

Hell, you could even pair that up with an AGP X1950 PRO.

Fixed.

P4s just aren't capable of next-generation applications and operating systems, such as Vista. All the method calls and physics and whatnot-else in Crysis aren't going to play nicely with an old P4. I'm a software developer myself, and I develop games in Java and constantly need more processing power to conform with the standards that everyone else keeps raising. This single core I have just isn't cutting all the new updates and everythign else that I feel more or less forced to download.
Some of the P4s are decent, namely the Northwood and Cedar Mill. Other like Willamette (speed of mollases in january) and Prescott (the reason people call them heatburst) really sucked. The Prescott may well have been the single biggest leap backwards in the history of CPUs - slower than the Northwood but running much hotter. I'm guessing the OP has either a Northwood or Prescott. They aren't as fast clock per clock as Athlon64/X2 or Core2Duo but somewhat compensated with high clocks back in the day. Yes, Athlon64 was better and faster but not by as much as some people here would have you believe. A P4 is pretty sad compared to a modern X2 or C2D but the 3+ GHz ones aren't competely useless just yet, much as the better Athlon64/X2s are still useful despite the presence of the C2D. As to developing games in Java, I can imagine that would take some CPU power, as that's not exactly the most efficient coding language (from execution speed point of view). I doubt Crysis will fare enough better on the comparably aged Atlon64s than P4s to make either one a viable option for future-state-of-the-art games, but what does this matter? The OP wanted a card that would be an upgrade over an FX series GF, and the 7600GT, X1650XT, or X1950Pro would all suit that purpose. @OP: I'd get the 1950Pro if you can afford it, otherwise I'd get the X1650XT.

i used a P4 3ghz on vista and the OS run just finer than fine. please refrain from such comments , that CPu is damn "capable" of vista and can run it with a decent speed..

Well answering the actual thread title
I'd say roughly 6-7ghz if you phase it, 4-5ghz on air tops 8O

dude, you should just bear with it for a little longer and get wolfdale when it comes out. Don't spend anymore money on AGP, it's just not worth it.
I jumped from P4 northwood to C2D not long ago. My P4 northwood's a good processor and i'm waiting to get a board for it so it can serve as my music server.

Sounds like a good idea, except even the cheapest p35/x38 board will be over $100, the cheapest wolfdale cpu will cost another $100 (which is actually a very good deal), and new ddr3 memory will cost an even bigger amount. So in total the price would be at least $400 for a basic wolfdale system with a nice amount of memory

ah.. budget constraints.. in that case, i recommend stepping on either C2D first or AM2. As long as he rids that old 800 chipset series.
i previously ran on

MSI 875P Neo FIS2R
2.4 P4 northwood
MSI FX5600 128MB

it was good excuse to dump everything when my mainboard failed one day. It served me well for some time.