Need to upgrade ATi 9700PRO

It's probably about time that my Radeon 9700PRO was put out to pasture as it's bottlenecking my machine.

I have a 3.4 Gallatin running at 3.8 - I know it's a bit out of the arc now, and that I will probably have a bunch of posts telling me that I should just ditch my AGP/S478 system, but I'm not going to be doing that for a while yet!

I was thinking along the lines of replacing the 9700PRO with an X850XT if I can find one or maybe an X1650.

I think for an S478 machine, an X1950 would be a bit of an overkill would end up being bottlenecked by my old CPU!


Anyone have any suggestions?

Honestly AGP 8x did not really make much of a difference in performance, and surprisingly neither did the move from AGP to PCI-express. See AGP graphic cards in 2007 for benchies. Also of note is AGP DX 10 cards are coming.

Right now might not be the best time to do a complete build because 45nm & DDR3 are just around the corner. I would be tempted to wait for them, then a bit longer for the prices to drop rather than invest in a sys that might not have much of an upgrade path, not handling upcoming CPU's and memory which may set the standard for a long time to come.

How much longer do you plan to keep it going? if you want another year out of it get the x1950 card xt version for preferance as its about the best agp card around at the min.
It does however draw a lot of power so you would need to check your psu first if thats a no no and you dont fancy changing it then the x1650xt(not a pro or any other they are no where near as good), is a good alternative along with the 7600gt which is about par with the x1650xt but draws less power.

Mactronix

Running at 3.8 Ghz?

That's pretty speedy, I doubt an X1950 PRO would be appreciably bottlenecked... I did benches on an old 2500+ and the X1950 PRO showed measurable gains over a 7600 GT in newer titles.

Your 3.8 Ghz kit should be much faster than that...