Upgrade

[jlpicard1413]

I want to upgrade my system ... currently I have a lowly Athlon T'bird 1.33 GHz with 512MB PC2100 (266MHz) DDR RAM on an FIC AD11 motherboard ... and several other things attached. The reason I am posting on this forum is because the graphics card I have is a Gainward "Golden Sample" Geforce 4 Ti4800SE. I am going to upgrade the motherboard, CPU and memory (on a budget of £250).... the new mobo would be a Gigabyte GA - K8NS (or K8NS Pro) with nForce 3 250 Chipset, an AMD 64 3000+ CPU and 2x256 (or 1 x 512MB) Corsair Value Select PC3200 DDR RAM. My intention is to keep my current graphics card. This is because I think I would have to invest a further £150 in a new graphics card to really notice a difference over the Ti 4800 .. albeit a Geforce 4 and not FX ... what I want someone to tell me is that although Geforce 4 is Direct 8 and FX is Direct X 9 that the Ti 4800 will be OK for a while longer ... and will give good performance with the above CPU and memory ...can anyone help on this please?
Thanks
JLP

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The FX ALL suck. Either go with the R9800PRo or GF6800 at the least, but only once you have a new PC.

If you do get a PCIe mobo, then the X700/GF6600 would be a good starting point.

If you play old bames the GF4ti will do for a while. Even for new games it will play, just don't expect any features or good resolutions.



- You need a licence to buy a gun, but they'll sell anyone a stamp <i>(or internet account)</i> ! - <font color=green>RED </font color=green> <font color=red> GREEN</font color=red> GA to SK

 

[rx7000]

Ill sell you my GeForce Mx440 PCI for 20 bucks, the FX series does suck, go back to the mx series when geforce knew what they were doing and get your self this peice of priceless historical performance!!!!

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT

 

[sweatlaserxp]

It kind of depends on what games you're playing. Your new computer will speed up your Ti card like a bastard- when I went from a 700MHz K7 to an Athlon 2500+ system, my Ti4200 was pushing double the framerates in Morrowind. That won't happen in every game, but you will be surprised. I was very impressed with the Ti4200's performance in Doom 3. I think you should wait until you've built your new system before you buy the card.

<A HREF="http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-10.html#doom_iii_special_preview" target="_new">GeForceFX 5900 Ultra: The Way FX is Meant to be Played!!</A>

 

[sweatlaserxp]

BTW since you're building that nice new PC you should buy a full gigabyte of RAM; Corsaif Value RAM is relatively cheap and it's really worthwhile to just buy the extra 512. I guess it doesn't matter if you don't play intensive games or don't work with very large amounts of data, but personally I would buy the GB. Just my opinion.

<A HREF="http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030512/geforce_fx_5900-10.html#doom_iii_special_preview" target="_new">GeForceFX 5900 Ultra: The Way FX is Meant to be Played!!</A>

 

[jlpicard1413]

Thanks for all the helpful advice people!
JLP