pentium 4 + 8800GS

yes

just get it.8800gs is the most value 4 money card.as 4 the power supply,a cheap Coolermaster 390W pwers my friends pc with no problems at all.it costs less than a tank of water.

The 8800GS will be a big upgrade from your current card regardless of CPU.

That may not be the case. The Core 2 architecture is more efficient than the Pentium 4 (more IPC or instructions per clock), and not only runs cooler but overlocks much better. The extent to which you can overclock that chip depends on the quality of your motherboard, RAM and PSU.

You'd have two full cores with the latest instruction set support. I'll try and find some more details on this since I spend most of my time using AMD rigs, perhaps some of the the members can help you out in the meantime.

E4300 overclocking: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007 [...] t-reviews/

Whatever the system, I think you made a good choice with that GPU, and you won't be dissapointed with its performance.

I must agree with wild9.

You'd be better off by pairing the 8800gs with E4300, regardless of Vista. Beside Vista drivers are now mature, so performance vised it's similar to XP (in some segments even better).

At lower resolutions(like 1024, even 1280) the most limiting factor is your CPU(single core P4).
Even if you put 9800GX2 with P4 3.0GHz you would not see almost any benefit over 8800GS because of the CPU limitations.

So i suggest to get the 8800gs, but pair it with E4300, and if you know something about overclocking, overclock the CPU(E4300 of course). Should reach 2.8-3.0GHz without any problem.

That should give you nice boost to your FPS at resolutions you run your monitor.

about the overclocking. i tried to put the E4300 into my p5ld2 mobo, but the res didn't correspondend with the c2d res needed. and surplus i couldn't flash bios till the last one, it stuck after a littlebit older version.

the fact that the e4300 is on a msi board, is bad news, and overclocking isn't an option. i can overclock my p4 630 HT until 3.46 stock cooler, but again it is not enought for that 8800GS i guess. i don't want the best fps, but i want to play newer games, and i know if i play at 1024 or 1280 i would get good fps. is see it with cod4. at 1024 and 1280 it is really playable. but newer games i have tested (demo) like crysis the 8600GT the card just sucks when i am in actionscènes.

stick to the 8600GT, or try a little upgrade to an other card? 8800gs best bang for the buck? (like you say)

Yes i have to agree and even though you wont see th efull benefit of the card due to the processor it will still be a good upgrade which will let you use more AA etc.
Its up to you where you put it but it would make sence to me to put the new card in your system as that would be an upgrade and then put the 8600 into the other, if its compatable. The 7500 le is based on a 7300 card so that would be a good upgrade also, At least the 8600 has some DX10 capability (just) and will be better for video playback.
Mactronix

a quick question guys...does bottleneck occurs at reso 12x10?

hey thanks again for the posts

so if i count it up:

-8800GS would be a better upgrade than the 8600GT
-if i don't bother the lower cpu, it will perform like it could
-96 euro's = not much
-i still can put it in the E4300
-if i look at this link http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=V3K3mQ62WmY it has to work
-i only play max resolution of 1280 with 17inch screen, not planning to buy a bigger screen...

are there raisons for not buying it? i guess i have enough room in my case

Ok i will count it back
- The 8800GS will be a better card and you will see an improvement over the 8600.
- I will give a quick explanation like jay2tall did. Basically the CPU has to do some calculations that the GPU is dependant on to render the images. When you have a quite powerfull GPU and a weaker CPU, (like you will if you put the 8800 in with the P4). Your FPS will be capped by how fast the CPU can supply this info. This does mean that you can use more detail settings, AF/AA etc to increase the picture quality as the GPU will have spare performance due to being capped FPS wise by the weaker CPU.
-Yes its a good price
-Definatly at least try it in the E4300 rig
-That link is a GT you are looking at a GS there is a lot of differance.
-As jay says a resolution can actually cause a restriction, it is possable (not definate) that an increase in res would give a slight indrease.
Mactronix

Ok yes i see what you are saying now. yes you are right.

When you have a weak CPU and a quite powerfull GPU as i said already the GPU has some untapped performance. When the GPU is asking the CPU for instructions faster than the CPU can manage thats where the limitation comes in.
Now its possable, Not always but in some systems increasing the resolution gives the GPU more to do, as does increasing the detail level. This effectivly slows down the speed the GPU is asking the CPU to do things at and takes the preasure off of the CPU which can return a small increase in FPS.
As i said its not a given and isnt a massive increase, certainly not enough to go get a bigger screen over.
Mactronix

Hey all

today i've been to the pc'shop. the friendly guy told me the information i needed. the 8800GS would fit my mobo, i would get better performance but i shouldn't get high qualitiy's like the GT cards.
strangly the guy was fair ( is said it to him, and he said, ''if you bought or not bought something, honesty is the first thing! )

and i concluded that i can upgrade my whole system for only 700 euro's.

c2d Q9300, 4 gigsram, 500gb hdd, asus p5k pro, 8800GTS

haha, so i know for what i'm going to work this big vacation! thanks for the help guys!!

hehehe rofl, nice personal touch in your post!

but hey, look at my system: i only upgraded more ram and gpu's. the rest is to expensive

i'm addicted to gpu's