Do I/Should I make this upgrade?

[memo]

I am thinking about upgrade my Gainward Geforce 3 Ti200 to a Radeon 9600 Pro Card. My gaming needs are pretty much Age of Empires 3 that will be coming out soon and something like the Fifa sports lines. I have been looking at this Gigabyte card. The reason I chose this was because of the passive heatsink, I need the box to be pretty quiet in this room.

There seems to be a 128MB and a 256MB version of this card, does anyone have any experience with why this is so? I haven't been able to find a review on the 256 MB version either.

So should I make this upgrade? Is it going to be worthwhile upgrade from my current set up? I currently have an Athlon XP 2100+ with 1GB or RAM. Are these specs good enough to take adavantage of the new video card if I get it?

Are there any other fan-less video card options out there? I don't think I want to buy a 3rd-party heatsink and remove the stock fan, probably more work than I want to do.

Thanks guys and gals.

EDIT: Actually now that I think about it, it may not even be a Ti card, it might just be a plain Geforce 3. I also have an Epox 8RDA+, will the mobo be versatile enough to take advantage of the card?

 

[fstime]

Go with a Nvidia 6600, not sure if they make AGP versions though, not sure..l..

 

[ohnnyj]

If you are going to play AE3 then look into the nVidia cards as they support PS3.0 which the engine for the game uses. And if you want to run the game at a decent framerate with high image quality you may want to look at the 6800 series.

 

[Cheesetogo]

Age of Empires is a lot different than an fps, so I don't really think it will be that demanding on the gpu.

 

[Amplifier]

I've only seen the 6600 in pcie.

 

[memo]

Originally posted by: Cheesetogo
Age of Empires is a lot different than an fps, so I don't really think it will be that demanding on the gpu.

I was under that impression too, but I've look at some of the ingame screen shots and they look pretty intense, but I didnt think I would need a 6800 to run it well as ohnnyj suggests 🙁

 

[RobotOfHatred]

6600GT would be good for mild-mannered gaming.

I wouldnt suggest that upgrade, that card will be pretty much obsolete in, say 3 or 4 months.

 

[ohnnyj]

Originally posted by: Amplifier
I've only seen the 6600 in pcie.

The entire 6800 line is plentiful in PCIe. In fact I am running two 6800GTs right now.

Originally posted by: memo

I was under that impression too, but I've look at some of the ingame screen shots and they look pretty intense, but I didnt think I would need a 6800 to run it well as ohnnyj suggests 🙁

I cannot say for sure as the game is not yet out, but I find it hard to believe that you will be playing a game that looks as good as AOE3 does at a high res and high quality settings on low-mid range hardware. If you don't mind say 1280x1024 w/no AA or AF then it might (and I say might) be o.k. It is really too early to tell.

 

[nitromullet]

quote:
Originally posted by: Amplifier
I've only seen the 6600 in pcie.



The entire 6800 line is plentiful in PCIe. In fact I am running two 6800GTs right now.

out of context ohnnyj...

He's looking for a AGP 6600. like this one.

However, I would suggest going with an AGP 6600 GT instead of the vanilla 6600.

 

[memo]

Originally posted by: ohnnyj
If you are going to play AE3 then look into the nVidia cards as they support PS3.0 which the engine for the game uses. And if you want to run the game at a decent framerate with high image quality you may want to look at the 6800 series.

does anyone else concur with this statement? AoE3 is going to be the main game i want to play.

 

[Cheesetogo]

If that is the main game you want to play, you might want to get a small upgrade now, land then see if it's enough once it comes out. If it is not, then you'll have a new line of graphics cards to choose from and the 6 series will be condiderably less expensive than it is now. AOE3 should not be that hard to play, though, even with the graphics that good, rts's are much easier to play on a computer than fps's. I don't know why exactly, but I can guess to some of the reasons. One would be that the maps are very small compared to an fps. An example of a game like that would be Sim City 4. The graphics are good, there are alot of details and cars/people moving around, but it runs fine on my dell P3 with intergrated graphics. The computer is 5 years old, but still runs the game fine.

 

[memo]

bump for thoughts from the morning crew 🙂

 

[Tweakin]

Not sure how demanding that game is, but I just went from a 9600xt to a 6600gt, and at the resolutions we (my son and I) play at (10x7 and 12x10), I don't see any difference in fps. As for image quality, I like the ATI better, and even though both of mine are in for service right now due to my fault, I still just sent back my 9600gt for a refund. I don't think I will ever change again.