Is it compatible?

[auronx62]

Hello, I'm looking to purchase a video card, but was wondering if my current set up is too obsolete for the video card i'm about to purchase. I bought this rig like 3 and change years ago and think that with the raging growth of technology, it might be out of date. My current build is:

ABIT KN8 SLI NF4SLI 939
MEM 1G|RW 184P D400 RW400/1024
VGA SPPHRE X800GTO 256M
CPU AMD 64 |3800+ ATHLON X2 939P


I'm looking to buy this video card:
XFX HD-4850 Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 (2.0)

After looking at the expansive slots specs, it shows this:
PCI Express x16 x 2 • PCI x 2 • PCI Express x1 x 3

First and foremost, is it compatible? I hear that it is compatible with PCI Express 16 (V 1.0).. so its under the assumption that it is. But it terms of overall compatibility...would it be wise to get the vid card? (well its only like 80 bucks or so)
Any help would be appreciated.. thanx =)

 

[Shadow703793]

You can use the 4850 but your CPU would probably be a bottleneck. Overall, given what you have right now, I believe that would be a good upgrade.

 

[auronx62]

My main goal really is to be able to play some games really... I've been trying to run TF2 (and games like L4D) but damn my frames drop to like 10 after lik e 5-10 minutes of game play. I also hear that maybe due to ram insufficiency.... Would you advise a ram upgrade first, or vid card change.... or maybe both?

 

[Sharft6]

I'm not sure you would see any difference between a 3850 and a 4850 with a 3800+ especially under tf2 and l4d. Athough tf2 seems to be properly multithreaded now and l4d always has been so thats a bonus.

 

[xaira]

buy another gig of ram and get the 4850, it wont bottleneck exept in the latest gta which is highly cpu reliant anything else should run fine, but only if the monitor is like 1208xN*

 

[Shadow703793]

^+1 for the RAM.