Should I buy this Graphics Card?

[DirkTerblanche]

Hi all

I can get the AGP XFX 6800 Xtreme 512mb (DDR 3) for $58 second hand.
I live in South-Africa and it is a good deal around here. I want to know if would be worthwile spending this money on my current PC. I plan to overclock the graphics card from 350/1000 to 425/1100 .

Motherboard: MSI k8mm-v
CPU: Athlon 2800+ @ 2.2Ghz
Ram: 1Gb ddr 400
Graphics: Nvidia 6600

I think I have damaged the 6600 though with a overclocking attemp (My friend said it was the 6600 GT and I read lotsa reviews on what people overclocked that card to and so I overclocked my poor 6600 to that and from that time It crashes and gives me artifacs). I also have a spare radeon 9250 which I have used for many years and I believe that card is used up because Im getting artifacts at stock speed (under clocking that at the moment), btw I have not overclocked the radeon 9250.
I must still find the right clock speeds to underclock my 6600 to for it not to crash anymore.

All my friends are telling me not to waste my money on a graphics card for this PC but I want to pass this 1st pc of mine along to my little brother in a year and it would nice if I can give him a "balanced PC" .

Thank you for your input

 

[batuchka]

Listen to your friends :

Single core (Socket 754!)
AGP expansion slot for GPU
DDR RAM platform

sad to day, the sun has long gone down on your current platform and best not to pump anymore $$ on it @@

 

[number13]

the 6800 Extreme is a lot of improvement over the 6600( twice the bandwidth and twice the M/textels per second), but if you have damaged the card, well how long do you think it will last, as for OCing, that seems like a big jump, it is a extreme edition so I would guess it' OCed already(are you sure you want to do that) but then you are using older hardware and I never OCed AGP graphic cards, yes you are not going anywhere fast with that computer, how much life do you think it has in it really

 

[DirkTerblanche]

Thanks for the replies

I think I didn't damage the 6600 after all.
I believe I were getting instability problems because I overclocked my AGP bus to 85mhz with ClockGen when I was overclocking my CPU.

The XFX Extreme 6800 is based on the 6800 XT I believe according to what I have read.
Therefore it also have 8 pixel pipelines.
Like you have said it does have double the bandwith 128bit vs 256bit.
The other difference is the memory (speed and size)
The 6600 is 300/550 at stock vs 350/1000.

I have decided to stick with the 6600 because it seems not to be damanged.
If it turns out to be damaged indeed, then I don't think If I will be happy with an underclocked radeon 9250.

I know that the life is ebbing away from this PC.
I dont want to let go of my faithful friend though.

I am still running windows xp.
Do you think I should upgrade to windows 7 or will windows 7 eat to much of my ram and cpu making my computer abit slower for general use and games I might want to play.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

I dont think Win7 will even boot off one gig of ddr man
although googling it got me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7#Hardware_requirements
so you could run 32bit it seems, hardly worth it though, upgrade to a better xp rig if budgets tight?
Moto

 

[DirkTerblanche]

I believe it would be able to boot.
It boots with 512mb according to these people:

http://mintywhite.com/windows-7/7news/update-windows-seven-7-512mb-ram-under-normal-use/

This is also an interesting test-case:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/how-well-does-windows-7-handle-512mb/672

So I am sure that it will boot.
I were just wondering if it will slow my pc down to much.

Im guessing Windows 7 will use about 500mb of ram with 1gb available.
The more ram you have, the more Windows 7 will use (up to 1.5Gb I believe).

Maybe I should stick with windows xp just to get the most out of my machine.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

I would say thats probably best, However, it may be that someone else chips in with a better veiw later on, fingers X'd and all
Moto

 

[asteldian]

Windows XP is a great system, hell the only reason I moved to Win 7 was because of the 64bit so I could use more RAM for gaming.

Just save all your money and put that blessed grandfather pc of yours to rest when you can. There is nothing that can be done to make that pc 'balanced' now so don't blow any money on it

 

[DirkTerblanche]

Haha
Right , thanks for the advice.

Will try my best to save up.

 

[number13]

Win 7 will not install with less than 1G RAM, I know I tried on my laptop and had to buy more mem, it may boot, but it will not install