9700pro 128 to 7600gt 580 core clock

[burghboy]

Was trying to breath a little life into my old agp system. I only need it to last for about another 6months and was wondering if I did this upgrade to the 7600gt (PV-T73A-UDE7) would I see a noticeable difference. Right now I mostly play WOW but also play a few other games on occasion but I would say I'm a pretty casual player.

My system is 2.4ghz
1gig of Rdram
450watt power supply

it was my thinking that anything higher than a 7600gt will be bottlenecked from my cpu but if that isn't the case I would consider going with a better card. Right now I can get the 7600gt for 100 bucks so on a price/performance level I think it will be hard to be. The other question would be if it would be better to stick with the old card and double up my Ram.

 

[Ananan]

I assume your PSU can handle it; 7600 GTs don't use that much juice.

If it can the 7600 GT would be huge upgrade. Much bigger than another gig of ram.

 

[oswold]

I doubt your cpu would be a bottleneck (even though you dont know what kind of cpu it is).

My 7600GT can handle just about every game out there, with newer ones having to turn down a few settings.

 

[burghboy]

it is a 2.4ghz Northwood sorry for not mentioning it before. More than anything I was wondering what kind of difference I could expect to see. None of the components that I have now will be carried over to my next system so I am looking for a short to intermiate term solution.

 

[PGHammer]

it is a 2.4ghz Northwood sorry for not mentioning it before. More than anything I was wondering what kind of difference I could expect to see. None of the components that I have now will be carried over to my next system so I am looking for a short to intermiate term solution.

I just did a similar move (2.6 Northwood-C overcranked to 2.9) from an AIW 9700 Pro to an X1650 Pro. I changed nothing else. One thing I *have* been able to do is crank up the *detail* settings of every game I own (from medium to very high or maxed) at 1024x768 or higher (Generals: Zero Hour is cranked north to 1280x960 and Quake 3 Arena is cranked all the way to a shocking 1280x1024; these games all have the latest patches, and all are running on Vista Ultimate). Running at or near desktop resolutions, in Vista, on an older processor, is not exactly expected (and *definitely* not at either 1280x960 *or* 1280x1024!). The surprise punchline is that while the CPU is overclocked, the GPU is bone-stock, and the system RAM is actually *undercranked* down to DDR266 (for better timings). Quake 3 Arena is now actually *display-bound*; both Zero Hour and Doom 3 are darn close to it (in short, all three are close to, or in Q3A's case, actually is, held back by the limits of the 17" CRT). Even with Valve's Source-based games (and the Lost Coast tech demo) 1024x768 is the *lowest* resolution I game at these days (and more often than not, I have every detail-related setting cranked to the ceiling).