ATI 9700 Pro AGP - Upgrade?

[trabpukcip]

I have an old machine with a 9800 pro and nForce3 150, the reason why you can't set AGP 8x is because your AGP Driver is not installed. I had to manually install the chipset drivers piece by piece to get everything working ie. right click on each .inf file in the driver package.

That should fix that problem because the card is not even working at AGP 4x this way it would be working at PCI speeds which is not always noticeable but can cause a lot of stutter and lower performance. I had this problem a year ago and the nVidia Chipset driver package wouldn't install on its own, so thats when I was forced to do it piece by piece which worked.

Also make sure your bios is set to AGP 8x.

Once you have done all that the SmartGART should be set to 8x and performance should improve.

 

[nemesismk2]

Originally posted by: geobatman
Hi guys,

First, my computer is:

AMD Athlon Socket 754 64bit 2800+ 1.81ghz
Gigabyte GA-K8NS Socket 754 NVIDIA nForce3 250
1 gb of ram (i think its no name)
Seagate Baracuda 7200 250gb
Enermax case with Enermax 350 power supply (don't know model, cost around $100)
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro (bought around the time it came out)
Dell UltraSharp 1905FP

In my windows settings i have resolution at 1280x1024.

Comments/Questions

1) I play WoW and run it at default settings at 1280x1024. It plays well on default settings except when your in main cities and there are 50-100 people around you. FPS drops from avg 40-60 to 5-20. If i drop resolution to 1024x768 i get about 5 fps max in all situations (although for both resolutions, it never goes past 60, ever.) I also can play Counterstrike:Source at auto-detect settings, with around 30-50 fps.

Q: Without moving to PCI-E, what video card can I purchase that will give me a solid bump in fps? The general consensus is that the 6600 GT isnt a big enough upgrade over the 9700 pro and anything past the 6800 GS is far too expensive in Canada. What do i do? I can't even find the 6800 GS in Canada, and its already around 300 (CDN) with tax. The 7800 GS is cheapest 450 canadian with tax. The ATI high end AGP cards are never under 400 dollars, hitting 600 with tax. This is from common stores like tigerdirect.ca and canadacomputers.com. Either way I wouldnt go higher than the 6800 GS because then I can just go PCI-E.

2) I downloaded 3dmark2005 (from official site) and ran the free download which does not allow you to change anything. My score was around 750 the first time and 850 the second time. Is this normal?

All in all, I don't play on leaving World of Warcraft/CS:Source for 1-1.5 years or so. I'll still like to try other late 2005-future games, but they dont need to be in amazing quality.

My budget is 250 MAX canadian dollars (would have to be a hell of an upgrade), although i'd really like to spend as little as possible to get what i desire =)

The following review features a system approx the same as yours, the MSI Geforce 6600 GT AGP puts in a very good performance against the Radeon 9700 Pro, Geforce 5900 XT and Radeon 9600 XT.

Your score of 850 with 3dmark 2005 is too low for a Radeon 9700 Pro which should be giving you a score of atleast 2200. Are you sure you didn't download 3dmark 2006 because the Radeon 9700 Pro scores around 700 with 3dmark 2006?

 

[Dean]

edit...I should have noticed you already found the X800XL