Heres where i stand.

[KrAkPoT]

Right now i can get a brand new Radeon 9800 Pro (visiontek) for 300 USD...from one of my friends who is going to hook me up.
Now should i wait im running 512 Pc-800 ram on a 1.8 Gig intel Alienware machine.. will this slow me down? OR should i upgrade to a Soyotek Platnium edition mother board and get pc 3100? or pc 2700 ram along with a new processes i can still get the card anytime from my friend?
any suggestions?

 

[T9D]

..

 

[Jeff7181]

That 1.8 will be choking on the 9800's dust =) I 2nd the motion for a new processor.

 

[KrAkPoT]

Thats true i need an upgrade but my mother board only supports up to a 2.0 gig proccesor so i need to upgrade my board =(

 

[NYHoustonman]

Just my opinion, but I think virtually any processor would be a bottleneck for the 9800 pro, I mean these cards are just so fast these days...It's insane. Have you given AMD a thought? Or are you strictly an Intel person? Either way, that 1.6 ghz will hold you up.

 

[Harabecw]

My Asus mobo can accept up to 2.8ghz (2.4 originally) with bios updates. check that.

 

[KrAkPoT]

checked bios update it will only enable me to go to 2.0 gig not a very far leap from 1.8

 

[Jeff7181]

Go a head and get the video card now... you will see an improvement (depending on what card you're using now)... and the longer you wait to get the processor n motherboard, the cheaper they'll be. Unless of course you pop for a new 800 Mhz FSB and 875 chipset mobo.

 

[Viper96720]

Sound like he's got a 423pin CPU

 

[KrAkPoT]

the mobo im running is the Intel Desktop board Dbg850 not sure which version thats all it says on the alienware manual but i know bother version dont go above 2.0 gig

 

[aggressor]

I have a XP 1900+ and a 9800 Pro. Every game runs great, even with AA\AF turned on.

 

[KrAkPoT]

Yeah, but isnt the XP 1900+ eqevilant to a intel 2.4?

 

[selfbuilt]

Originally posted by: KrAkPoT
Yeah, but isnt the XP 1900+ eqevilant to a intel 2.4?

Ah, no. The 1900+ is AMD's performance rating for their chip, and is supposed to reflect the equivalent performance of a Pentium 4 if it were running at 1.9GHz. In reality, these numbers are only approximate, and it would depend on what applications you use. Even with the AMD family clock speeds vary, for example, the new Barton core AMDs run at a slower clock speed than the Thoroughbred cores, but have a larger cache to compensate.

If you are going to upgrade, I would say it is more important to get a 333MHz FSB capable processor (2500+ and up) and run it sync with PC2700 RAM. The 9800 Pro is overkill for slower systems (you won't see the performance benefit over a 9700 Pro, or even a 9500 Pro, on P4 1.8 system).

 

[kylebisme]

sure you will notice a performance benefit over a 9700pro, not nearly as much as with a top of the line cpu but it will still be there, espeicaly with aa and af cranked as those are both done entirely on the card. regradless, the deal is 300$ for a visiontek 9800pro which i think is very hard to pass up even if it was going to be running on an little 1ghz p3 or such.