ATI 4670 AGP upgrade

The 4650 is severely limited by the DDR2 memory. For not much more money, you can get a 4670, most of which have DDR3. Just make sure the 4670 does have ddr3, nearly all do. I had a 4650 with DDR2 and was disappointed in the performance.

You may also be limited by the performance of your CPU. Anything single core these days is not very good for games.

It is an upgrade and should not be bottlenecked to much.

Thanks, found the 4670 AGP version, $10.00 more after rebate and DDR3. Also clocked 150mhz more on the core 946mhz more on the memory!

It is worth the extra $10 no question about it.

Update:

Signed up for Amazon.com visa card and got an extra $30 off the purchase. Total cost now $69!

Thanks guys.  

The 4670 will be a major upgrade, but either way, your system still has some pretty serious limitations. So whether it'll be acceptable for a game like L4D is anyone's guess.

I'm sure I won't be playing at max res with all the eye candy but I'm looking for playable frame rates when battling the hordes in L4D2. The game is fairly smooth now on my 6800gt with med settings at 1024 x 768, just gets choppy when the hordes attack. Can't complain, the system is 5 years old!

Also looking for some xtra frames in some of my sim games like rFactor, GTR2 and Race 07 as well as Race on. Keep in mind my goal is to perk my current system up until next year and then probably build an i7 920 with crossfire or a good single card.

Thanks for all the input guys, I'm impressed at the useful and respectful input you get on here.

I am pretty sure the system is going to be balanced with the HD4670 it is about as powerful as the top GPU´s at the end of Intel´s Netbursth years.

Well, adding a 4670 is going to basically max out that system, but all I'm saying is, even with the upgrade, who knows whether it's going to be able to handle the most intense zombie hordes.

It's worth a shot, since L4D isn't the only reason you're buying the card. In either case, the 4670 is a major upgrade over what you've got and will help most of your other games as well.

L4D really stresses the CPU.

I agree Taco, that's why it wasn't a hard choice since I'm only out $70 if it doesn't give me the boost I'm looking for. I want to hold off on my new system until the mobos, cpu, and vid cards drop a little in price.

Sabot, that is my main concern also, I've noticed that mentioned that L4D is slightly cpu dependent. I can only hope the hyper threaded 3.4 P4 still has some punch left!

Well, if there's a single-core chip that can play L4D, that one's probably it. I'm interested to know how this turns out, because my backup machine is a P4 3.0GHz with an AGP 4650. If it works on yours, I'd be inclined to see whether it's playable on my old machine too. That would be a big plus for when the main system is tied up.

NP I'll keep you posted, only prob is Amazon.com is projecting a 3 week delivery time, must be out of stock.  

Valve does a good job of getting their games to run on older hardware, but this might be pushing it. The 6800GT is about as good as the 7600GT, which were at one point the height of AGP cards. I'm not sure your P4 will be able to handle the 4670. Hopefully you'll get your card and we can all find out. Can you post your current settings and frame rates? I to would love to see what they go to.

How do you display frame rates in L4D2?

Figured out how to enable the console and show frame rates.

Did some reading and improved my frames by disabling vertical sync and setting model detail low. Here are my current settings:

Aspect Ratio: Normal 4:3

Resolution: 1024x768

Display: Full

Anti Aliasing: None

Filtering: Trilinear (setting this from Bi to Tri seemed to improve frames)
Vertical Sync: Disabled

Multi Core Rendering: Not available

Shader Detail: Low

Effect Detail: Low

Model Detail: Low (setting this from med to low improved frames slightly)

Paged Pool Memory: High

After changing the two settings above my frames in Dark Carnival went from the 30's with no hordes and teens sometime 20's with hordes to 40's and 50's with no hordes, 20's and rarely teens with hordes.

I will post the numbers after I get my new card.

I know some of you asked for my results when I received my new video card so here are the results in brief:

System:
P4 3.4 ghz
2gb ddr ram
old vid card - BFG Nvidia 6800GT OC 256mb AGP
New vid card - HIS HD 4670 AGP 1gb ddr3

My original goal was to extend the life of this old system for a year or so and improve my frames in L4D2 and some of my racing sims.

In short, my results in L4D2 were good, went from res of 1024x768 all low settings and frames 20's to 30's to 1280x1024 all but effects detail high 2xAA and 4xAnt with frames in the 30's and 40's plus the new gpu let's the graphics in this game really shine. In heavy hordes my frames drop briefly, I'm guessing this is a system cpu/memory bottleneck, I expected this though.

All sim racing games showed great improvement, again I was able to bump up the res and still get better fps. Only sim that has me scratching my head is rFactor. Game stutters and gets low fps from open to close, except when moving the mouse! Move the mouse, and the game smooths out and gets high fps, stop and it drops like a rock.

Tried numerous fixes, still no go. Probably an issue with this card, I'll keep trying to find a solution.

Thanks again to all who responded to my original post for help, overall this card has helped me achieve my original goal.

Thanks for the feedback. I expected the newer card to handle some things better like AA/details. These things are not CPU dependent and matter solely on which GPU your using. I'm pressed you were able to move up a whole resolution. For L4D2 you've managed to increase all details and go up a res AND enable 2AA. I would guess you would consider this money well spent.