Inexpensive upgrade for ATI X800Pro?

[AndrewR]

My video hardware is among the longest lasting video cards I've ever used, having been in my system for over 18 months at this point (can't even remember when I bought it, actually -- may have even been 2+ years ago).

Anyway, I keep looking for an upgrade that won't break the bank to boost my ability to play modern games, specifically HL2 (bought the Orange Box on Black Friday), but the only cards I seem to find at a decent price (<$100) offer little to no advantage over the X800, unless I'm wrong about the benchmarks that I've seen (took at look at the massive comparison on Tom's Hardware).

For example, I just found an ATI X1600Pro for $45, but it appears to be worse than the X800 across the benchmarks. The X1650Pro, another find at $50, draws too much current based on the box (38A on 12V, I have the Antec Earthwatts 380w which has 20-something). I looked at the recent releases from ATI (2400, 2600, etc. -- not the newest ones), and their framerates are just as bad.

I don't know enough about the Nvidia offerings so what can someone recommend for a less-than-top of the line system on a less-than-top of the line bank account? Thanks in advance.

 

[Martimus]

The cheapest new card you can get that has a definite advantage over the x800 is the HD 3850 at $170. You can find a last generation card for under $100 though. Here is a X1900XT that should be a definite upgrade to the X800 Pro.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...?Item=N82E16814102022R

I just updated my X800 XL to a HD 3850, but it has some cooling and perhaps power issues, so I am not sure it was worth it. It is SO MUCH FASTER than the X800 XL, but my computer is deadlined for a couple of weeks because I had to RMA it. I ended up buying a new PSU just incase that was the issue for $70, so it cost me quite a bit as well.

 

[zeroburrito]

the 3850 may even need less power than your x800xl. its on the very low end of power consumption.

 

[Killrose]

I have an X1800XL, 2gig DDR2 and a 3600+ X2 Brisbane OC'd to 2.6gig and I have not had problems with it running on my 380watt Antec earthwatts, so don't worry too much.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: zeroburrito
the 3850 may even need less power than your x800xl. its on the very low end of power consumption.

The X800 XL actually has very low pwer consumption. Anandtech shows the full system at load at less than 200W, and their test system includes a Athlon 64 FX-55.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2299&p=2

You may be right about the power consumption of the HD 3850 not being an issue on my system, but my PSU only had 15A 12V rails, so it was a possible problem. I went with a PC P&C 470W PSU with a 26A 12V rail. Hopefully that will fix the problem, along with the new card. I also replaced my RAM as I had overclocked the RAM for the first time for about 2 weeks before this happened. (I ran DDR400 ram at DDR420 speeds). I'll run the old set through MEMTEST when I get the card back, and see if it passes this time. (Before it would shut my computer off about halfway through the test.) If not, I'll replace them with the new set, and run it again. The only other times my computer would shut down was while playing games (Oblivion), so I thought it may be my new GPU. The fan would never rev up on the card, even when I was running the GPU at full load. Maybe it was overheating and causing my computer to shut down (Which is the way I have it set in my BIOS). I am not sure what the issue was, but I hope I fixed it by throwing money at it. I probably never should have upgraded at all. Would have saved me $500.

 

[tshannon92]

/off subject!

I just replaced my x800pro with an HD3870 (after building a new box) I loved that x800 for so long. I remember when it came out I bought 3 flavors of the 6800 up to the ultra? And I hated them all i dunno why. I then bought the x800 pro and went for almost 3 years with it and aside form SM3.0 I could've kept going because I went back to XP...

I was able to give it to my father in law so itll see another 2 years of life, LONG LIVE MY X800!

 

[Killrose]

In the $100 price range the 8600GT 256mb GDDR3 is hard to beat. Above that there is the 512MB 8600GT and then the 3850 series would be the next stop but that is further above your price range. Other than that you could get an X800xt/X850 on the used market for $50-$60 range and for anything HL2 based they smoke right along.

 

[Syntax Error]

I would prefer a last-generation X19xx card of a 79xx card over the 8600GT. Especially for gaming at higher resolutions.

 

[AndrewR]

Hmm, thanks for the thought, folks. Maybe I'll see what happens with the used market after Christmas.