1950PRO -> 8800GT - worth it with my specs?

[tcnjlion41]

Hey everyone, I just wanted to get your take on whether or not it is worth me upgrading from an ATI 1950PRO to a 8800GT? Just hearing that, I'm sure the answer is yes. Now factor in the fact that I have a P4 3.6GHz with 3GB of RAM and I have no intentions of upgrading my CPU/Mobo anytime soon. That being said, is my single-core P4 processor going to serve as a big bottle neck which in turn won't allow me to see much improvement in upgrading from the 1950 to a 8800GT? All recommendations are appreciated!!

 

[nanaki333]

i wouldn't bother

 

[Canterwood]

The cpu will be a bottleneck, but its still a nice upgrade to go to the 8800GT.

A 3.6ghz P4 isn't too bad.

 

[happy medium]

How about a 8800gs? Save yourself some bucks and get a much better card then the 1950pro. They are 155.00$ shipped at Newegg. Sell your 1950pro on ebay for 80/90$ and you got a good upgrade for 65$.
Down the line when you want to upgrade your cpu youcan reuse the 8800gs and get even better performance.

 

[heyheybooboo]

That 1950pro is not such a bad card - especially if you have a 512mb.

What resolutions do you like to run?

The 8800gt is almost ""twice"" the card but at lower resolutions you are really going to be hurtin' ...

 

[Mayor McCheese]

It depends what games you play. I have a 1950 pro 256 mb. I recently upgraded to an e2180 @ 2.7 ghz , but used to have a p4 3.0 ghz. My performance in Unreal Tournament 3 jumped drastically from unplayable jumpiness to a smooth 50 fps with settings on high.
Call of duty 4 increased an average of 10 fps on highest settings, and battlefield 2 jumped from 70 fps to 90.

If you plan on playing cpu intensive games like UT3, i wouldn't upgrade because your x1950 pro is already very bottlenecked for those type of games.

anyway that is my experience with the card and a p4 and dual core configuration hope it helps.

PS: If I were you, I would just wait to get a new card when you finally upgrade your cpu. Video cards are just too expensive to buy and not get your full worth. You already are not getting the full worth out of your x1950 pro. (a cheap mobo and cpu would still be a huge upgrade compared to a p4)

edited for clarity

EDIT: I play at 1280 x 1024

 

[Frugal1ty]

like everyone else is sayin, it depends on what you're playin. that being said i agree with happy medium on the 8800GS, it's a good deal (and you could use it in a new build later) regardless, that processor is gonna be draggin you down, so my suggestion would be just waiting until you want to do the full upgrade.

 

[krnmastersgt]

Not only what he plays but the resolutions too. But as it stands that P4 is going to bottleneck anything stronger than the 1950 imo.

 

[tcnjlion41]

Currently playing Lord of the Rings Online and in the past have been a fan of the Battlefield series. I'm playing on 22inch widescreen @ 1650x1050.

 

[Marty502]

My old single core Athlon was bottlenecking me with my x1950 Pro in games, needless to say a 8800GT would have been ridiculous. With a P4 would be even worse. Oblivion had the exact same performance at 800x600 than at 1280x960 with the single core CPU... and that was with a 2.5 Ghz A64 man. Much faster than your P4, man.

Don't waste your money.

 

[Frugal1ty]

i've maxed out the setting on my 22" with battlefield 2 running one 7900GS, which is comparable to your card. with my processor, opteron @ 2.2GHz, the fps don't usually dip below 40. i don't know how your CPU is holdin up, but i would just wait until you want to upgrade the motherboard memory and CPU, because whenever you get around to upgrading that an 8800GT quality card will cost less, and give a greater boost paired with a decent CPU. i've tried upgrading the video card before the processor before and i didn't see hardly any increase because of the bottleneck. but that was way back in the Radeon 9700 Pro days.

 

[octopus41092]

I use to run an X1950 Pro on an AMD64 2800+ and it was really bottlenecking my card. I upgraded to an X2 6000+ and now it's a lot faster. You should get your upgrades all at once.

 

[Extelleron]

It's going to be a big bottleneck. A single-core CPU simply isn't good enough for playing modern games, much less a Pentium 4 (although it may be better matched against the A64 now since of Hyper-threading).

Look here:

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182806/p-6.html
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6183967/p-5.html

With both Crysis & CoD4... they are unplayable on a single-core CPU at any decent settings.

In CoD4 with an 8800GT... the difference between a single-core A64 4000+ (which may be faster than that P4 in games) and a dual-core C2D @ 2.93GHz is 26 FPS vs 77FPS.

You can put together a dual-core CPU, motherboard, and memory for around $150 these days. There's really no reason NOT to upgrade... if you can afford an 8800GT, you can afford to upgrade the rest of your system.

 

[scheibler1]

I would start out upgrading your cpu/mobo. I had an athlon 64 3000+ and upgraded to an intel e2180 and overclocked it to 3ghz. Huge difference! I also have an 8800gt now and can run all these games at max settings:

Battlefield 2 1600x1200 max setting with 4xAA/8xAF
Company Of Heroes max settings 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF
COD4-max settings 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF
Counter Strike Source 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF
Medal Of Honor Airborne 1600x1200 4xAA/8xAF

the only game that is hard on it is crysis:
All high settings no AA/AF @ 1280x1024

The intel E2160 and E2180 chips overclock to 3ghz very easy and there is a sticky on here that tells you what settings to change...

Intel E2180 $80
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro HSF $30 (optional, but recommended)
Gigabyte P35-DS3L or Abit IP35 mobo $85

And keep your video card until you need to upgrade...or sell it and get an 8800gt, 8800gts 512mb, or 8800gtx