Is it time for new comp?

[boozie]

I use my computer pretty basically just for gaming. Here's a quick summary of my specs:



p4 2.53 gHz Northwood (on intel mobo =/)
1 gb maxed out ram
128 fx5200


Right now I play BF2 fine on low settings and company of heroes which does not like my computer very much. Single player is ok on very very low settings and multi is a no-no atm.

A: investing into agp now kinda sucks

B: my mobo only supports 4x (don't quite understand if that means any upgrade will be half as good as it's potential or not)

I have money to spend but wonder if I should just get a new AGP and wait on a new computer for 6 months++.

With this computer will a new agp card save me for gaming? I dont' really plan on playing bf2142 though it'd be nice to be able to. Just looking for some better bf2 and much better company of heroes.

 

[TanisHalfElven]

how much money ?

 

[MX2]

Anything will be better than an FX5200. Buy a used 6800GT and have fun! That PC still has some gaming in it and the 4x AGP thing is not something that should concern you. The real world difference as I understand it bewteen that and 8x AGP is just about nil.

Used 6800GT on FS/T anywhere from $120-$150 would be a wise investment for now.

 

[XJustMeX21]

a new computer deffintly wouldn't hurt but spending some money on a video card would make a huge difference if you game much. all 8x agp cards are backwards compataible to 4x motherboards.

 

[TheCanuck]

Overclock that P4, buy a 6800GS & unlock the pipes and you'll be good for another 1 - 2 years:

6800GS for $135 AR

I was in a similar boat -- only an Athlon XP 3200+ w/1gb ram...so I got one of those 6 months ago for $200 and it plays everything out there at high settings. Also, there's very little difference between 4x and 8x agp -- maybe 1 - 3 fps.

 

[boozie]

money doesn't really matter. I could spend anywhere from 1500-1700 for a new system and keep my old monitor.

Ok so AGP 4x doesn't mean much. ty for that info cuz that had me pretty paranoid.

I can't OC due to intel mobo.... well i'm sure there's a way but i'm definitely not going down that road.

For new gpu, is $200 too much money to be spending on AGP???

I kinda have been eyeballing the 1950 pro and could easily wait for prices to drop to normal after release. or will my bottleneck be ram/cpu after i upgrade to a low price 256 bit card?

 

[Ayah]

Don't bother with AGP. It's seriously outdated. You should move to a new system if you don't even have AGP 8x support.

 

[Maximilian]

Dude, a cheap old 9800 PRO from 3 years ago would be leaps and bounds ahead of that fx 5200. The 5200 was not designed to game, i got similar framrates from a geforce 2 mx from 5+ years ago, dont know why as i would imagine the 5200 should be better but there ya go. Get somthing cheap thats AGP to tick you over.

6600GT would be good. Dont spend more than $150 though, not worth it with only 1GB of ram to play with. If you can get an X850XTPE or a varient for real cheap then that would be an awsome deal, i havent checked prices recently though. See the 6600GT isnt considered a very powerful card around here anymore (not that it ever was but it was pretty decent) its slightly better than the 9800 PRO and the performance you will see in games vs the 5200 fx will be huge.

When i went from an fx 5200 to a 9800 pro it was WOW!! SPEED! Since going from 9800 pro to x1900xt its just meh...

Anyways get cheap AGP to tick you over, then build a new system completely from scratch after the next gen graphics cards are out, or whenever you want really. Could wait forever for new tech, DX10, quad core, CSI, etc etc.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: TheCanuck
Overclock that P4, buy a 6800GS & unlock the pipes and you'll be good for another 1 - 2 years:

6800GS for $135 AR

I was in a similar boat -- only an Athlon XP 3200+ w/1gb ram...so I got one of those 6 months ago for $200 and it plays everything out there at high settings. Also, there's very little difference between 4x and 8x agp -- maybe 1 - 3 fps.

only your video card is really weak. upgrading that will give you like better than 4x your current performance.

depends what resolution you game at but upgrading the AGP and o/c'ing looks to be an excellent plan if you want to keep your computer for just another year or so.

and there is zero practical difference between AGP 4x and 8x

 

[boozie]

well I can't even oc agp card w/ an intel mobo can I?

I know you can't OC the cpu w/out doing crazy stuff with old intel mobos.

Unfortunately bf2 is pretty cpu intensive, but I still think a new agp card will help a ton.

 

[RedLetterDay]

I think right now it would kind of be a waste to upgrade to PCI-E, mainly with DX10 just on the horizon. Your best bet is to probably buy a higher end AGP card (shouldn't run very much), and enjoy gaming on that until DX10 is fully integrated to video cards.

 

[TheCanuck]

Video cards can be O/Ced no matter what mobo /chip you've got -- just use Rivatuner to unlock it and o/c it. The 6800GS is a very good overclocker and most of the BFG ones are capable of unlocking the extra pipelines which can allow you to reach 6800 ultra speeds.

Best bang for you buck right now is to buy the 6800 for $135 and then save your money for a quad core system with DX10 GPU. You'll be amazed at how much faster your system runs once you replace the 5200 -- those things are dogs.

 

[nitromullet]

Well, I've gone back and forth with a couple of people on this topic, so I'll try to present this as balanced as I can. First of all, there is no one "right" answer to this question, it depends on what you want out of your rig and how much you want to spend... Knowing that, you have three options:

1) Now that some decent AGP cards are falling in price, going with either a used 6800GT, X800XT, XL, or X850XT wouldn't be a bad idea in your situation. That 6800GS isn't a bad option either. Most importantly, keep the cost somewhat close to $150, don't get tempted by the 7800GS as it is a rip off.

2) You can build a new rig. For the $1500-1700 you mentioned earlier, you can build yourself a rig that would bring you tears of joy after playing on an FX5200. Should you go this route, ask AT forums for opinions before you buy, not after... I can't tell you how many times we get people asking for opinions about hardware that they already paid for... Anyway, the main drawback to this approach is that new video cards from both NVIDIA and ATI will be out within 3-4 months, which will raise the bar yet again for video card performance. As far as the rest of the system goes, I don't think that there is anything terribly significant on the horizon worth waiting for now that Core 2 Duo is out in full force. Once thing to consider with regards to the next generation of video cards coming out would be to opt for an eVGA branded video card... eVGA has a program called step-up that lets you upgrade your video card to a better card within 90 days of purchase for only the difference between your current card and the card you want (a pretty sweet deal IMO). That does limit you to NVIDIA cards only as eVGA only sells NVIDIA cards.

3) You can build a "sidegrade" rig... Basically, the idea behind this is that you build yourself a fairly cheap PCI-E rig. You can generally find pretty good deals on socket 939 Athlon64 chips and motherboards that will excede the performance of your P4 (but, not by a wide margin). I call it a "sidegrade" because the underlying platform isn't that much faster than what you already have, but it would upgrade you to the PCI-E standard, which will allow you greater video card options with better price/performance ratios than AGP cards have. The viability of this option is pretty debatable and would require some research to find the best prices. I think you can make this aproach work, but you really have to know your hardware and probably have a bit of luck finding the sweetest deals around.

 

[aka1nas]

I would actually suggest biting the bullet and going with a DDR2 AM2 or Core 2 Duo platform. You can build an excellent gaming machine for far less than $1500.

 

[Maxspeed996]

Originally posted by: aka1nas
I would actually suggest biting the bullet and going with a DDR2 AM2 or Core 2 Duo platform. You can build an excellent gaming machine for far less than $1500.

Good advice. But if it were me , I'd upgrade my vid card , and save that money until the dx10 cards come out , and then build a new system..by then DDR2 memory prices will have hopefully settled down. If not , you'll at least build a system with the latest video card technology out , and be set for a while.

 

[boozie]

will I be using the same power cord that plugs into my fx 5200? Just making sure I won't need to get a new psu just for a new agp card.

 

[nitromullet]

If you get an AGP card you can use the same cord, however you need to make sure that your PSU can supply the power the card will need. What kind of PSU do you have?

 

[Maxspeed996]

Originally posted by: boozie
will I be using the same power cord that plugs into my fx 5200? Just making sure I won't need to get a new psu just for a new agp card.

If you've got a decent 350watt power supply you should be good to go with most of the higher end AGP cards..a few say 400 watt minimum....

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: Maxspeed996

Originally posted by: aka1nas
I would actually suggest biting the bullet and going with a DDR2 AM2 or Core 2 Duo platform. You can build an excellent gaming machine for far less than $1500.

Good advice. But if it were me , I'd upgrade my vid card , and save that money until the dx10 cards come out , and then build a new system..by then DDR2 memory prices will have hopefully settled down. If not , you'll at least build a system with the latest video card technology out , and be set for a while.

My only concern is that the rest of his rig won't last him until Dx10 cards reach reasonable prices. 1GB of RAM is a little iffy for some of the newer games and DDR prices have gotten so bad that he would be better off spending a little more and going with a DDR2 system than adding RAM to his current machine. I would go PCI-E now and get a reasonably fast current-gen card and upgrade in 18 months. The advantage is that with 2GB of RAM and a new platform you can switch to Vista whenever you want, even if you are still running a Dx9 card.

Even with a newer AGP card, Vista will be painful to game on with 1GB of RAM. My idle mem usage is about 650MB with a fresh Vista install, so about 400 MB or so more than a fresh XP install.

 

[shimsham]

save your bones for complete rebuild when vista comes out and things settle down. if youre happy playing on low, then a used 6800gt for around 130 would be a good upgrade without breaking the bank but still giving a reasonable boost that would match the rest of your rig fairly well.

really as someone suggested above a used 9800pro would also give good bang for the buck at half the price of a gt since youre coming from the dreaded 5200. hell, i got a 6200 that will mod to a 6600 laying around that id sell you. pm me if interested (although im heading to new orleans and wont be back until tuesday, so dont expect a reply until then).

 

[AndrewL]

1GB of ram I think is still sufficient, theres only a few games I can think of that have ever gotten my commit charge over 1000 megs. Ram prices are so horrible right now i would not go down a route that would require me to buy memory. I say he should get a used 7800gs for under 200 or like the others mentioned the 6800gs, x850xt, etc.

 

[boozie]

new mobo = not an option i'm willing to take unless i'm going all out

It sounds like a decent route however my xp is ghetto rigged (bought this comp from a friend who wasn't using it anymore for $50) and if i format I will have to buy a new xp version and i'm not wasting the money for that unless I'm getting a nice top of the line computer.

My psu is somewhere between 400-450 watts and I'm not sure what exactly it is. The amp requirement I can figure out on my own, but the actual cord for power is something I don't understand at all.

IE.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102606

in the specs it says:

"The power supply should have a specialized 12V graphics card power connector (adapter included)"

I'm assuming that's the same thing that's currently in my 5200?

I swear i'm not as dumb as it seems i've just never built a computer before and have only really installed ram.

 

[happy medium]

I agree with the 6800gt used for 130.00$ or the x850pro for 140.00$ The 6800gt is faster by about 10 /15%. As seen here http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2290&p=6

Either one of these cards should give you 3 times your current performance

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: aka1nas

Originally posted by: Maxspeed996

Originally posted by: aka1nas
I would actually suggest biting the bullet and going with a DDR2 AM2 or Core 2 Duo platform. You can build an excellent gaming machine for far less than $1500.

Good advice. But if it were me , I'd upgrade my vid card , and save that money until the dx10 cards come out , and then build a new system..by then DDR2 memory prices will have hopefully settled down. If not , you'll at least build a system with the latest video card technology out , and be set for a while.

My only concern is that the rest of his rig won't last him until Dx10 cards reach reasonable prices. 1GB of RAM is a little iffy for some of the newer games and DDR prices have gotten so bad that he would be better off spending a little more and going with a DDR2 system than adding RAM to his current machine. I would go PCI-E now and get a reasonably fast current-gen card and upgrade in 18 months. The advantage is that with 2GB of RAM and a new platform you can switch to Vista whenever you want, even if you are still running a Dx9 card.

Even with a newer AGP card, Vista will be painful to game on with 1GB of RAM. My idle mem usage is about 650MB with a fresh Vista install, so about 400 MB or so more than a fresh XP install.

Vista is painful to game on anyway
i don't think ANYbody is gonna game on Vista for a long time. . . .

There won't be ANY 'full' dx10 games for a couple of years . . . and in the meantime DX9 games are dog-slow on Vista compard with XP.

i predict a lot of dual booting O/Ses for at least the first year Vista is out -- for gaming.

we have plenty of time to get a DX10 card . . . nvidia's mainstream DX10 cards should be out this Spring

 

[Modular]

Cut and Dry IMO...

Get the 6800gt/gs in the AGP flavor. Wait for all this new tech to drop in price, then upgrade all at once in a year or so.
PCI-e is about to get a re-vamp into PCI-e 2.0, so there's no reason to upgrade now.

Also, 1024 RAM is PLENTY for pretty much any game out there. BF2 has some slight improvements with 2048, but nothing all that noticeable. Upgrade that video card and you'll feel like you're playing on an entirely new computer. Trust me, my first card was an FX5200. I went ahead and got a 6600gt and wow what a difference.