3850 AGP vidcard in Abit IC7-G/P4 system question.

[azsun]

I'm running an older system (WinXPPro/Abit IC7-G/P4 3.0G Northwood/6600GT vidcard) and would like to know if there would be any problems with installing an ATI 3850 AGP vid card in my system.

My PS is an OCZ 520W.

The 3850 appears to be the best (read: last?) AGP option for me right now as I'm not prepared to invest in a total system upgrade at the moment. I have heard that the Catalyst drivers don't work well for the AGP option and that a sub-set of Catalyst drivers should be used.

Any known issues with doing this??

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Yeah you should be just fine.

To be honest, for $30 more (After rebates) you could have an:

AMD x2 4400+ 2.3Ghz Brisbane $46.99
Thermaltake TMG A3 AM2 92mm cooler $13.99
PCchips A33g AM2 motherboard $33.99 after MIR
2GB OCZ GOLD DDR2 667mhz $14.99 after MIR
8800GS $64.99 after rebate and promo code EMCAHBABB

Seriously, might spend that LITTLE bit more and get yourself a cheap budget build that thrashes your current build. Just reuse the case, PSU and drives.

One core on that 4400+ is an A64 2.3Ghz. A 2.3Ghz Athlon 64 is comparable to a 3.8Ghz Pentium 4. Not to mention its a dual core. Much faster DDR2 ram and the 8800gs which is just as good as the 3850 in most games.

That processor will hold you back bigtime in any game you want to play. That video card is WAY too fast for that processor. Your performance might not jump up AT ALL.

 

[azsun]

My son has a ASRock 775 Dual-VSTA mobo he just upgraded from that I can use this video card in.

He was running a 3.2G P4 in it but the mobo takes dual core Conroe processors so I could find a relatively inexpensive cpu to drop in and get much better performance then what I have now.

The ASrock says it supports "dual core", and since it says it also supports the Conroe line of Intel cpu's I'm assuming a "core duo" Conroe processor would work fine unless there's some difference between "dual core" and "core-duo"

So any socket 775 Conroe "core duo" cpu should work in this ASRock mobo then, yes?

 

[cmrmrc]

yes any Core 2 Duo processor would fit in the 775 Dual-VSTA...

since you're getting that motherboard, might as well go with a pci-express video card.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: cmrmrc
yes any Core 2 Duo processor would fit in the 775 Dual-VSTA...

since you're getting that motherboard, might as well go with a pci-express video card.

I agree in principle (no sense investing in AGP these days). There is a proviso. Not all PCI-e cards out there run correctly in the PCI-e(16) slots on AsRock's various "Dual" mainboards. Their web site has a list of what works for certain. The 3850 might not be one of them.

 

[mancunian]

Actually, I *think* this is one of the extremely rare cases where an AGP 8x card would perform better were he to use the Asrock board, as I believe that the motherboard in question's PCI-E slot looks physically like a 16x slot, but actually runs at 4x.

However, the very idea of buying a core 2 chip and an AGP card seems rather odd to me, purchasing current gen hardware at the same time as purchasing something pretty outdated now isn't such a good idea. And I don't mean that as a slight to any AGP users, there are a stack of guys running a high-clocked X2 along with a HD3850 who are perfectly happy, because such a system is well capable and the two components are a good match. But a high-clocked X2 is much better than your P4, which is not able to push the 3850 to its full potential.

I'd just get a cheap P35 board if you want to use a Conroe with a new graphics card, or put up with PCI-E 4x performance. But then why spend good money on a nice card...

So Scholzpdx's suggestion would seem by far the most sensible, despite you stating that you don't want to do a system rebuild.

Bottom line, if you don't want to do a system rebuild, you'd be wasting your money for the most part in buying the 3850. Either stick with what you've got or pick something up that is an improvement on what you have, but which isn't the 3850.

Perhaps see if you can find a 2nd hand 7800GS, that'd most likely give you a decent enough boost.


As a side note, I loved Asrock boards, my previous one was a Dual Sata 2 939. I wasn't very happy when I discovered that they'd gimped the PCI-E slot on the 775 Dual-VSTA.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

The Dual SATA 2 was based on the ALi chipset, which was an AMD-specific part, AFAIK. I've never heard of any chipset for an Intel MB that had both AGP and the real PCIe at the same time. AsRock probably had no choice about "gimping" one or the other of the two video busses.