Need HELP picking a Video Card!!!

[makor26]

Ok, my system:

Epox EP-8K7A+
1.33Ghz Athlon Thunderbird
ATI Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz
256 DDR SDRAM

I'm looking for a new video card. I was looking at the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, but wasn't sure that would be overkill for my system? In other words, can i take full advantadge of this card or would the 9000 or 8500 be more appropriate? Any help and recommendations are are appreciated. Thanks.

 

[rb56]

I would think that the 9700 Pro is more than you need for your current system, but if you are looking at upgrading CPU, etc. down the road it may very well be the way to go. I don't know how much difference you would see with an 8500 or 9000 in terms of performance.

rb56

 

[makor26]

I am definitely upgrading the motherboard, cpu, etc in the future, but i wanted to make sure the video card would even work with my current system and that i would actually see a significant increase in performance with the 9700 versus my current video card, with my current system.

 

[anandfan]

You should go to http://www.madonion.com/ and download the free 3dmark2001 benchmarks. Not only will it show you how fast your current card is, it will also show results from similar cpus with different video cards. That way, you might get some idea how much performance you'll gain. (the download is big ~40Mb).
You could also just browse the user reported test results if you don't want to download.

 

[Athlon4all]

R9700 Pro will have room to grow with a faster CPU, but it'll certainly top everythiong else still even with a "lowly" T-Bird 1.33.