Need recommendation on Geforce 6600 upgrade

To be honest, that Pentium D is not really that good of a CPU to warrant a decent upgrade option. Will it work, yes, but it will not be a substantial upgrade. If you have the funds, upgrade the entire computer to an AMD Phenom/Athlon II. If you can only upgrade the video card, go for the 4670.

what size monitor are you playing on and what resolution? Also what games are you playing?

Yeah, just get an HD4670. It's appropriate for your processor and you'll probably need a new PSU for something more powerful.

The monitor is a 21 inch Gateway (1680x1050)

Would love to play some of the more current games (Reign of Fire, LFD2), but having obvious system problems...

I need the system to last 1 more year - the 4670 still the right way to go?

Again - thank you for taking the time to provide this advice!

Get a decent 500w unit and buy your self a decent gpu that is equal to or greater than a 4670 512/1gb. The cpu is crap but far better than a single core.

Hmmm... is that a crossfire motherboard? You may want to check to see if there are any BIOS updates that will allow it to utilize a faster CPU. Anyway, the issue I have is your weak PSU. You may be able to use a Radeon 4670 on there, but that may be cutting it close as far as power and a single 4670 certainly isn't meant for gaming at 1680x1050.

I say get a decent PSU and a Radeon 5750 that you can use in your next build. True, a 5750 would be held back by your CPU, but if you plan on building a new system in a year, you can reuse the PSU and 5750 while adding another 5750 for Crossfire.

If you don't want to upgrade your PSU right now but still want to game at 1680x1050, go with a GT240. It's more expensive than the 4670, but it offers more performance and uses less power.

The GT 240 is terrible for its price. He can get an HD5670 for that kind of money and it should also be ok for that PSU.
Neither are particularly good for 1680x1050 however so you would need to lower your resolution in most games. For that resolution I'd recommend an HD4850 or better and for anything like that you will need a PSU.

Run into Best Buy and grab a BFG GTS 250 OC for $115. (They're still selling the 9800GTX at the inflated price of $135)
You may want to bump up the PSU to a hefty 550 watt ($80 or so), so for around $200 total you can be running hard and gaming fast!

The 4850 is a nice card and I considered buying it, but with all the hoopla surrounding ATI and their drivers I'm sticking with Nvidia for now.
ATI doesn't have much on the shelves in my area, and the 128 bit based 5770 is way too pricey for what it is..and that's about the tops in the ATI local offerings dept. right now.

Just go buy your self a decent PSU first before any thing else or both at once. Don't be held back by that crappy psu that you have now and get your self a better value card like a GTS250 or a 5670 and screw the rest.

Ouch man, don't you know the 5670 is only 128-bit interface? Pipeline problems don't do a thing for me.
Go GTS 250 and get the full 256-bit

Please learn the difference between GDDR3 and GDDR5.

Memory Interface Width is irrelevant if you're comparing ATI vs Nvidia. ATI uses less bus width but uses faster GDDR5 RAM - so in the end it balances out vs Nvidia's larger bus width and slower GDDR3 RAM. The ATI 4770 has a 128bit interface vs the 256bit interface of the 9800GT, and the 4770 performs better than the 9800GT in majority of applications due to its faster GDDR5 RAM.

In terms of real world performance, the 5770 performs almost equal to the 4870 or GTX260. It's priced at around $150, making it the same price as the 4870 and slightly cheaper than the GTX260. It's an attractive option since it supports dx11, consumes much less energy at load and especially at idle, and runs cooler too.

Learn the difference between bus size and actual memory bandwidth and which actually matters before trying to give people advice.

+1^

GDDR5 @ 128-bit is better than GDDR3 @ 256-bit

@ fdyert, all of the suggestions above are possible options, but most will require a power supply upgrade, if you stick to the 4670 512meg, you should be fine with the current PSU you have. Bottom line here, don't get anything higher than the 4670 unless you plan on upgrading the PSU and also, i wouldn't consider upgrading to anything higher than a 4670 unless you are going to upgrade your entire PC within the next year...

Everyone - thank you!

Amazingly helpful thoughts, and I'll post my direction and results here after I finalize my upgrade plans.

Thank you again.

Everyone -

A recap: I installed a 9600 and a larger power supply. Was able to purchase both for around $130.

Windows 7 experience index jumped from 3.8 to 5.1 -- still pretty low, but much better than before.

Thanks for all of the great advice - you made this project possible!

Regards,
Fred

Best answer selected by fdyert.

The experience index isn't a very good measure of actual performance.

Have fun with your new card