Radeon HD3850 AGP for an old P4 3GHz: Is it worth it?

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PhiloHippus

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Nov 25, 2007
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Hi everyone

I'm in a bit of a dilemma about upgrading my graphic card. My PC is a P4 3GHz, 2.5GB RAM, currently equipped with a Radeon 1600 Pro 256MB. I'm considering buying a Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 512 MB GDDR3 AGP graphic card, but I wonder, is it worth it? Will I gain any considerable fps advantage in current games running under a P4?
Currently I get around 15fps@800*600 in Assassin's Creed with every option turned to it's lowest, and 10fps@640*480 at best in GTAIV also with every option at it's lowest.
Would I get any significant improvement in such titles? Could I for example get 30fps@800*600 in GTAIV with high settings?
I don't know how much a proper CPU weighs in current games' performance so I'm at a loss on whether to invest on a new graphic card or not.

Any input appreciated

Cheers
 
Your pentium 4 will bottleneck that powerful of an AGP card. the 3000 series cards are meant for heavily overclocked high end single cores or decent dual core AGP rigs. Keep your 1600. Also, try running your games at higher resolutions - that may remove some of the effects of the CPU bottleneck.
 

3ogdy

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You already own a quite good videocard but I think you will notice some difference by switching to a 3850 AGP.On the paper there are some important things you get by getting this videocard.I have the next configuration: P4 Prescott 3.0GHz,2.0gb RAM(will upgrade to 3GBs),Radeon HD3850 on AGP and I must say that it work awesome!.I had a GeForce 6600 before this videocard and I really noticed the difference.Of course after buying the third GB of RAM I'll start searching for a C2D CPU-or even put a C2Q-the most likely is that I'll pass to a FSB1333 ,DDR2 and PCIEx capable motherboard-with a C2Q,of course.
 
G

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1600pro has 12 pixel shaders and five vertex shaders that feed four pipelines.

3850 has320 universal shader units, 16 ROPs, and a 256-bit memory bus.

You will notice a big improvement over every single game you play, just dont expect miracles as your P4 will bottleneck any cpu intensive or multi-core threaded game on the market, games such as GTA4 need plenty cpu power so there the gains will not be so big, but in Assasins creed you will be jumping a huge step in performance....

Read this http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ati-agp-3850-agp,1939.html

And then make up your ming if spending some dosh now will give you what you want, or do you save for new build!
 
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