9800 AGP upgrade?

[monkey3ddd]

System specs: Athlon 2400, 1 gig of ram of 266 ddr ram, and a 9800se 256bit radeon. It's the one that is unlockable, I've done it and it works with no artifacts.

I'm thinking selling the 9800 for an x800xl, is it worht it? will I see any noticible diff?

Games: HL2, Godfather, Battlefront 2

Thoughts?

thanks in advance.

 

[Kromis]

I think you would be better off upgrading everything instead of your card.

Do you get good FPS in those games?

 

[Rock Hydra]

You might, see some difference. I upgraded from a GeForce FX 5900Ultra to a GeForce 6800 and unlocked it and I saw a huge improvement in games and a large increase in playability of newer games.

Though, physics/AI related things or things that are CPU intensive you might want to turn down....or crank your resolution/graphical settings so that your GPU is your bottleneck so you might not feel those effects. It's hard to say. 1280x1024 seems to be the sweet spot for games like HL2 or FarCry or Doom3.

 

[monkey3ddd]

For the time being, I'm ok with the system, not bad hl2 at 1280x1024, definately playable, mild stutter on ut2004 at times. I'm not playing much new stuff, waiting for ut2007 and the likes.. But as a stop gap what are thoughts on the move from 9800se to x800/
thanks.

 

[akshayt]

you will notice a significant diff i think

 

[Rock Hydra]

Yeah, prettymuch you'll notice a nice improvement.

 

[Insomniator]

I went from a 9600xt to a 9800pro on my p4 2.4/1gig and i basically just got smoother framerates in source but didnt up the settings or anything.

Average fps on the stress test went from like 50 to 75, which makes things much smoother in fights. I play at 1280 and everything is on medium
no aa/af.

 

[Killrose]

The X800XL will be bottleneck'd by your CPU and 266MHz sytem bus. But you will see some improvement, a bit smoother frame rates as others have mentioned. You will be able to turn up video eye-candy features that your 9800 would not allow.

 

[Sonikku]

My mother's system has a 9600XT, a gig of corsair ram and a Socket A 2400+. She's so limited by the 2400+ that she can max out the settings in world of warcraft with hardly any decrease in performance. (Difference between low and max is about 2-3)

You're too limited by your CPU to even bother upgrading your video card.

I would suggest you pay the $99 for the Athlon 64 3400+ /Gigabyte motherboard combo.

http://promotions.newegg.com/AMD/AMD_mobo/index.html

Your performance with your 9800 should increase quite noticably. If that still doesn't do it for you, consider an X800XL for $119.

http://shop.ati.com/searchresults.asp?dept_id=39

 

[mancunian]

Originally posted by: akshayt
you will notice a significant diff i think

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with you. :Q

 

[Captante]

The X800XL will be limited by your CPU, but you will notice significant performance increases in newer games.

 

[mancunian]

Originally posted by: Sonikku
My mother's system has a 9600XT, a gig of corsair ram and a Socket A 2400+. She's so limited by the 2400+ that she can max out the settings in world of warcraft with hardly any decrease in performance. (Difference between low and max is about 2-3)

You're too limited by your CPU to even bother upgrading your video card.

I would suggest you pay the $99 for the Athlon 64 3400+ /Gigabyte motherboard combo.

http://promotions.newegg.com/AMD/AMD_mobo/index.html

Your performance with your 9800 should increase quite noticably. If that still doesn't do it for you, consider an X800XL for $119.

http://shop.ati.com/searchresults.asp?dept_id=39

I disagree totally as I can't believe you're advising purchasing a A64 and an AGP board at this point in time, especially given the price drops of the last few days.


If you replace the board and chip, your frames will increase, your eye candy won't.


If you absolutely have to get an AGP card now, I'd get the X800XL, you'll notice a worthwhile difference now that this card has come down to a reasonable price.

I went from an XP2600 with a 9800pro to an XP2600 with an X800GTO and the difference was noticeable. I unlocked the GTO to an XL with 16 pipes and it was well worth the upgrade. Faster frames, no real performance hit with eye candy switched on.

In fact, that GTO was so good I decided to keep it when I upgraded my board and chip a couple of months later. I now run an A64 Venice @ 2.6Ghz with the GTO and it runs great.

I got the Asrock Dual board so that I could replace the AGP card with a PCI-E one when I felt like it. I haven't felt the need just yet, the unlocked GTO will keep me going another couple of months, after which I'll perhaps go for a high end PCI-E card.

The Asrock board is by far the most stable board I've had. I've previously owned Asus, A-Bit and DFI boards.

Never thought I'd say that about an Asrock product, but if you think a faster chip is the way forward, at least pair it up with that motherboard.

You'll then at least have some kind of upgrade path for your graphics.

 

[Sonikku]

Originally posted by: mancunian

Originally posted by: Sonikku
My mother's system has a 9600XT, a gig of corsair ram and a Socket A 2400+. She's so limited by the 2400+ that she can max out the settings in world of warcraft with hardly any decrease in performance. (Difference between low and max is about 2-3)

You're too limited by your CPU to even bother upgrading your video card.

I would suggest you pay the $99 for the Athlon 64 3400+ /Gigabyte motherboard combo.

http://promotions.newegg.com/AMD/AMD_mobo/index.html

Your performance with your 9800 should increase quite noticably. If that still doesn't do it for you, consider an X800XL for $119.

http://shop.ati.com/searchresults.asp?dept_id=39

I disagree totally as I can't believe you're advising purchasing a A64 and an AGP board at this point in time, especially given the price drops of the last few days.

A Athlon 64 3400+ with a compatible motherboard and a X800XL is a pretty decent upgrade over a Socket A 2400 with a 9800pro for $220 in my opinion. AGP be damned. The issue at heart is that if this was a long term investment, an entire new machine would be more logical. But not for just a cheap upgrade to get another year out of an aging machine, $220 for a total upgrade is pretty reasonable. It's not like he's paying for the AGP motherboard.

 

[mancunian]

It is if he pairs it with the X800XL, but not if he keeps the 9800pro in there.

And as for squeezing life out of an old machine, when I upgraded, the difference between XP2600 + 9800pro and XP2600 + X800GTO modded to 16 pipes was GREATER than the difference between XP2600 + X800GTO and A64 @ 2.6Ghz + X800GTO. The processor speed mattered, but not as much as the graphics capability.

That is still the case now. So in a year's time, if the OP has for example an X2 4200+ which is overclocked by a few hundred Mhz on a board with PCI-E, the machine will still have upgradeable graphics and would probably be okay for games given that these days, an A64 3200+ is considered good enough to drive a Radeon 1900XT.

So yes, an A64 3400+ is a decent upgrade in terms of actual gain, but not in terms of the money it would cost. And yes, it's not like he's paying for the AGP board, but then again there are not so many people these days who would WANT to pay for an A64 board with AGP. 6 months ago I would have agreed that AGP was still viable for a new build but it just isn't anymore, the price gouging on AGP cards is horrendous. The 'selection' has been somewhat 'streamlined' in the last 6 or so months.

Bottom line, graphics cards upgrades normally are the biggest performance gain if you are a gamer.

 

[mancunian]

So, to the OP, I'd just chuck the X800XL in with your XP. Maybe you can overclock the XP, which would help even more.

But you'd see a nice enough difference by upgrading only your graphics card.

 

[Munky]

It depends on the game and settings. For example, in games like HL2, FarCry, and Doom3, the athlon XP would hold back a x800xl from maximum performance, even at settings like 1280x1024, with 2xAA. As you increase the stress on the gpu by adding 4xAA, the cpu would make less of a difference, and the x800xl would allow playable fps where the 9800p would not. In other games, like Chaos Theory and Riddick, you'd be heavily gpu limited, and the cpu wont matter much anyways.