Best AGP System upgrade for my X1950XT

[Chefuk]

Hi all first time here

anyway, at the end of July i'll be getting my Bonus. After tax it should be about £500. I've just paid £150 for my X1950XT and a Zalman VF900-CU cooler. My only upgrade in two years. I now realise the rest of my system is seriously bottlenecking it so want to upgrade the rest of my rig. Here's what i have.

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe Motherboard
Pentium 4 3.00Ghz Prescott (1mb cache) Aerocool Heatsink and twin fans
2048 DDR SDRam (2 x 512mb Kingston 166mhz 2700, 2 x 512mb unbranded 200mhz pc3200)
550W 30A PSU
Radeon X1950XT 256mb AGP
160GB 7200RPM IDE HDD
Custom case 3 external fans (1 on side, 2 on back)
19" CRT from 2000

So what are my options? £500 should cover an AGP mobo, new CPU + HS&Fan, 2GB Memory, a Sata HDD?

Would £500 cover a PCI-E system or would another Graphics card be out of reach?

I'm unlikely to be able to add to this fund so £500 is all i have to work with.

Much apprecited for your time and effort

 

[KermitM42]

save your £'s or however you say it and build a pci-express system.

 

[RussianSensation]

Here are some options out there.

1. Get a new monitor, 22-24 inches, so you can transfer the workload from your cpu towards your graphics card at higher resolution and image quality settings. This will reduce the impact of P4 cpu bottleneck, while providing you with more usable space in other aspects of your computer use like movie watching. I highly doubt your year 2000 CRT is even capable of providing acceptable refresh rate at 1600x1200. Plus after 7 years of use, its brightness has certainly degraded. This is a component that lasts a while and if you have $$$ to burn, I'd upgrade this item first.

2. Save your $ and instead increase anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering to the maximum at the current resolution levels you use. Although your card will be somewhat cpu limited, some games are far less cpu limited than others. At the very least, you'll be able to get higher image quality for "free" in a sense.

3. Your other possibility would involve finding a hybrid board for C2D, AM2 or S939 (not recommended due to lack of upgrade option for quad core) which supports both AGP and PCIe. Of course the PCIe would have to support at least 8x or it will bottleneck the graphics card. However, I strongly advise not to get an AGP board.

4. Upgrading everything to PCIe. I know you just got this card, but your other option might be to sell off your mobo, ram, videocard and just start from scratch. If you were already going to sink $$$ into a new mobo and cpu, might as well reduce the cost of upgrading to those components. Since you got a good deal on the graphics card, you might not even lose any $ on resale of X1950XT.

All things considered, your system is still pretty good given that it has 2GB of RAM. I would possibly look into overclocking your processor to 3.6ghz.

 

[vailr]

Can you upgrade the CPU on the existing mboard? Possibly requiring a bios update?
To an C2D E4400, for example?
If yes, spend the money on: new CPU and an 19" LCD monitor (which, screen size wise, will be the equivalent of a 21" CRT monitor.).
About $130 + $170 = $300 (in US dollars).
If no: Add the price (equivalent of ~$60 USD) of an ASRock QuadVSTA, or other similar VIA chip (or Intel 865 chip) AGP/DDR/Socket 775 board.
Or alternatively, wait until the July 22 Intel price cuts, and go with quad-core CPU for $266 USD.

 

[Chefuk]

Cheers guys, alot to thinnk about

Mobo is socket 475 forgot to say, just in case that helps.

 

[vailr]

Originally posted by: Chefuk
Cheers guys, alot to thinnk about

Mobo is socket 475 forgot to say, just in case that helps.

Intel has "socket 478" or "socket 775", but none of what you said.

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: vailr

Originally posted by: Chefuk
Cheers guys, alot to thinnk about

Mobo is socket 475 forgot to say, just in case that helps.

Intel has "socket 478" or "socket 775", but none of what you said.

It's 478.

You could also get the ASRock 4Core Dual VSTA motherboard: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/...t.php?prodid=MB-011-AK which will allow you to upgrade to C2D but keep using your current RAM and Graphics card.

This would be a good (and cost efficient) way to transition slowly from AGP and DDR, while upgrading to 775 in the meantime.

Cheers,
KT

 

[tungtung]

For the time being if you want to keep your AGP card ... that ASrock board that is suggested by"KeithTalent" would probably be your best upgrade path in the AGP world, since it will allow you some transitional period before moving completely to the new PCI-e platform.

That being said looking at your current config, the only thing that is seriously worth keeping is indeed your graphic card, well the PSU/case/HD/optical are still worth keeping to some degree. However that being said, I would suggest if you can try get a trade for your video card to get a similar (or same) one on the PCIe flavour. That way you'll be able to get the whole benefit of a whole new platform, because to be honest I don't think using that ASrock board will give you the best possible performance for the new chip that you're going to get.

Just my two cents.

 

[crimson117]

Another vote for selling the AGP card and migrating to PCIe and Intel 775.

 

[jkresh]

Dont sink money into an agp system, either sell would you have and go pcie or wait until you can afford a complete upgrade.

 

[Chefuk]

Sorry i meant 478.

Ok, i chucked on a £30 fan so if i can get £100+ for the card then i'm happy. The PCi-E version is only £90 compared to the £120 i paid for the AGP one. Or do you think its worth selling the whole rig as one (what would it be worth roughly?)

My bonus pay goes in at the end of August not July so i'll be waiting a little bit longer aswell.

Thanks again.

 

[AvatarReborn]

Sorry I disagree with the suggestion of an AsRock MB !

I purchased the 939-Dual SATA][ and had many small issues with the board.... I have just replaced it with an A8N-SLI prem, since I feel there is no real world gains going AM2 (Yes I know he has intel)

However I agree he would be best off waiting and saving more cash for a CORE DUAL setup with PCIe and ram.

Don't waste your coin..

 

[KeithTalent]

Originally posted by: AvatarReborn
Sorry I disagree with the suggestion of an AsRock MB !

I purchased the 939-Dual SATA][ and had many small issues with the board.... I have just replaced it with an A8N-SLI prem, since I feel there is no real world gains going AM2 (Yes I know he has intel)

However I agree he would be best off waiting and saving more cash for a CORE DUAL setup with PCIe and ram.

Don't waste your coin..

Well I actually owned that specific motherboard I recommended (which is why I recommended it) and it worked wonderfully. Not really sure what your point is to be honest.

I was just going by what the OP stated:

I'm unlikely to be able to add to this fund so £500 is all i have to work with.

So getting this motherboard would allow him to use his existing GPU (which is a great card) his existing RAM, and allow for a CPU upgrade to C2D. After that there would probably be enough to upgrade his monitor, which I think would be a much more important upgrade anyway.

I mean what is the point of upgrading everything to some uber-fast PCI-E machine if you are going to keep playing on a 19" CRT?

Anywho, just my opinion.

Good luck OP!

Cheers,
KT

 

[Chefuk]

KeithTalent. Very valid point and you have dragged my back in to the i don't know what to do stage again lol.