P4 3.0 Ghz

My system properties are below. I am not a BIG gamer and I am not very very picky about graphics. All I want to know is what the best AGP video card for my system is. I have been told that the fastest card out there would be bottlenecked by my slow P4 CPU anyways. So, what video card should I get that I would get the most use out of? How do I know where my system bottlenecks and how do you usually compare specs of CPU and video card? If you need any more system properties I can give them. I just bought more RAM so I will have 2 GB. I hope this isn't an annoying question. I just don't want to spend too much on a card that my system can't take advantage of. Thanks. brian.


CPU Properties:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4
CPU Alias Northwood HyperThreading
CPU Stepping D1
Engineering Sample No
CPUID CPU Name Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz
CPUID Revision 00000F29h

CPU Speed:
CPU Clock 2994.30 MHz (original: 3000 MHz)
CPU Multiplier 15.0x
CPU FSB 199.62 MHz (original: 200 MHz)
Memory Bus 199.62 MHz

CPU Cache:
L1 Trace Cache 12K Instructions
L1 Data Cache 8 KB
L2 Cache 512 KB (On-Die, ECC, ATC, Full-Speed)

Motherboard Properties:
Motherboard ID <DMI>
Motherboard Name Dell OptiPlex GX270

Chipset Properties:
Motherboard Chipset Intel Springdale-G i865G
Memory Timings 3-3-3-8 (CL-RCD-RP-RAS)
PAT Disabled

BIOS Properties:
System BIOS Date 05/07/03
Video BIOS Date 09/18/03
DMI BIOS Version A01

Graphics Processor Properties:
Video Adapter nVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 with AGP8X
GPU Code Name NV18 (AGP 8x 10DE / 0181, Rev A2)
GPU Clock 274 MHz
Memory Clock 202 MHz


--------[ CPU ]---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU Properties:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4, 3000 MHz (15 x 200)
CPU Alias Northwood HyperThreading
CPU Stepping D1
Instruction Set x86, MMX, SSE, SSE2
Original Clock 3000 MHz
Min / Max CPU Multiplier 15x / 15x
Engineering Sample No
L1 Trace Cache 12K Instructions
L1 Data Cache 8 KB
L2 Cache 512 KB (On-Die, ECC, ATC, Full-Speed)

Multi CPU:
Motherboard ID DELL Opti GX270
CPU #0 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz, 2992 MHz
CPU #1 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz, 2992 MHz

CPU Physical Info:
Package Type 478 Pin uPGA
Package Size 3.50 cm x 3.50 cm
Transistors 55 million
Process Technology 6M, 0.13 um, CMOS, Cu, Low-K
Die Size 131 mm2
Core Voltage 1.475 - 1.55 V
I/O Voltage 1.475 - 1.55 V
Typical Power 38.7 - 89.0 W (depending on clock speed)
Maximum Power 49 - 109 W (depending on clock speed)

CPU Manufacturer:
Company Name Intel Corporation
Product Information http://www.intel.com/products/browse/processor.htm

CPU Utilization:
CPU #1 / HTT Unit #1 0 %
CPU #1 / HTT Unit #2 60 %


--------[ Motherboard ]-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Motherboard Properties:
Motherboard ID <DMI>
Motherboard Name Dell OptiPlex GX270

Front Side Bus Properties:
Bus Type Intel NetBurst
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 200 MHz (QDR)
Effective Clock 800 MHz
Bandwidth 6400 MB/s

Memory Bus Properties:
Bus Type DDR SDRAM
Bus Width 64-bit
Real Clock 200 MHz (DDR)
Effective Clock 400 MHz
Bandwidth 3200 MB/s

Chipset Bus Properties:
Bus Type Intel Hub Interface
Bus Width 8-bit
Real Clock 67 MHz (QDR)
Effective Clock 267 MHz
Bandwidth 267 MB/s

Here's a important question. What is it that you want to do, that your current graphic card cannot handle?

ie. play certain games? certain programs?

PS. You said you don't want to spend alot of money. What budget did you have in mind?

Looks like its about time to upgrade. You can build a brand new custom PC for about $500 or less. (P35-DS3L + E2180 + 2GB Corsair XMS RAM + other stuff + a cheap vid. card until you can upgrade)

Are you guys saying that an nvidia 64MB 440 MX card is the BEST video card for my current PC setup??? Seriously, I don't care how good of a computer I could have if I just bought a new one... This defeats the whole purpose of upgrading. I want an AGP video card that will improve my system performance. Please make this easy. Is anyone in here a real human being?

I am currently running 1280 x 1024 and I am in the US.

Looking on the Egg, the X1950 pro would fit in your budget but are all out of stock. Don't know if they will come back in stock...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161208

HD2600XT is then the best I could fing for AGP and it's 159.99. Woudl be a huge improvement over the old MX.

Hope it helped.

i think a radeon 2600 series card will do you some good, and its light on the power supply, too. good luck!

^^ do what budha said ^^

this article should help with the bottlenecking issue, not great news but remember, defining what is playable is up to yourself and if something is playable you ain't being bottnecked, graphs cannot show bottlenecking unfortunately, only the end user can decide what is best for themselves

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/agp- [...] -2039.html

Thank you so much to all of you guys. Babybudha, thank you, you are awesome. You have restored my faith in geeky forums. The world would be such a better place if us nerds weren't only smart, but also people smart. I am looking to buy a new power supply. I think my current one is 250 watts or something horrible like that. I bought this computer for $60 at a university surplus auction which is a super good deal even if it isn't the most up-to-date system. I'm a married college student, you don't get much poorer than that. It's 10x better than my old 600 Mhz iMac and my 1.2Ghz HPeice-of-crap. If you have any good suggestions for power supplies, that would be cool. I have an ATX case, it's normal sized. I see so many cheap power supplies but I don't know if they're okay to buy. Anyway, thanks again for you help, cool.

To briantadho rrocks
Just read the thread dont know if you are still looking but my two cents worth (for what its worth)
The 2600 isnt far behind the 1950Pro these days but there are a couple things you should know, The drivers from ati are said to not work properly but you can get a good set of drivers from Omega http://www.omegadrivers.net/ .
If you use AA a lot then the 1950 would be better as the 2600 will loose performance with AA enabled, how much ?enough for it to make it not an option if you are going to use AA.
The 1950 will want a PSU with at least 28 Amps on the12volt rail. This info will be in the specifications on the website (usually) normally a model with about 450-500 Watts will have the requiored Amps.
As far as bottlenecking goes its all relevant really all it means is that the card is running a fast as the p4 will let it. It will still look awsome and kick your old MX 440 64 MB into a week next tuesday.
Of the other options 7600GT/1650. Both come with ddr2 or Gddr3 the Gddr3 is a must for these cards and the 1650 would want to be a 1650xt to be equivelant to the 7600GT.
In order of preferance i would say 1950 Pro is the best then close second 2600 with only thge AA thing making the differance then 1650XT and 7600GT tying for third.
Mactronix

$If you can find a 1950pro for under $150, I would surely go for it. But you will almost surely also need a better powersupply.

AA is a setting that smooths out lines and edges. It improves image quality (but at a performance cost).

Here's the Tom's tiered wiki on power supplies:

http://www.tomswiki.com/page/Tiered+PSU+Listings

I don't recommend any PSU that's lower than tier 3. I use an Antec True Power 500 watt tier 3 in one PC and an Antec Neo 550 watt tier 2 in another PC.

That should help you decide. Check on the amps needed on the 12 volt rail for whatever card you get. Playing at 1280 x 1024 resolution, you'd get a CPU bottleneck with a P4 3.0 with many higher end cards.

Here's the Johnny Guru page on power supplies, including links to power supply calculator.

Here's the Tom's January 2008 GPU guide linked to page 5: Best AGP at different price ranges.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/0 [...] page5.html

An AGP underclocked 3850 that wasn't announced in time for the above article will be arriving from Powercolor, but it might be a bit too much for that old system of yours. It probably will be priced higher than the PCIe version too.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php? [...] 5&Itemid=1

I was in your situation too. I too decided that the x1950 pro would be the best choice... until I realized it came with the hidden cost of upgrading my power supply. Since my upper range at that time was also $150 just as yourself, I opted to go with the x1650 Pro 256mb GDDR3 version, as that is what tomshardware reccomended for the best AGP card under $100.

To give you an idea of it's performance, it plays Crysis on the default "medium" settings, with physics and textures set to "high", and I get around 20 fps (in the demo).

I heard frames start dropping later in the game, so I decided not to buy the game, but I just wanted to use the demo as a way to guage the performance of the card, and it didn't do too badly all things considered.

You can get an x1650 Pro 512mb GDDR2 for about $70 now, because I don't think they have any more GDD3 versions.