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New Gfx card or system upgrade

B

blinky2004

Member
It's been a while since I've been here

Anyway my 128Mb 9800Pro died today (I thought it was on it way out. System crashed, wouldn't POST with the card in, swapped it for my spare 9600Pro and it works fine. Done all the usual checks).

My current setup

P4 2.4B @ 3.06GHz (170MHz FSB)
1Gb RAM (4x256Mb PC3200 @ 170/340)
MSI 865Neo2 FI2SR (non-Prescott but has PAT version)
Audigy 2 Platinum
WD 80Gb JD (Primary Master) - all HD's 7200rpm, 8Mb cache
WD 120Gb JB (SATA)
Samsung 160Gb (SATA)
Liteon 166S DVD (Primary Slave)
Liteon 52x CD-RW (Secondary Slave)
NEC2500 DVDRW (Secondary Master)
Hipe Type R 480W PSU
Windows XP SP2

In general the system is stable and fast enough for my needs but obviously I'm in need of a new graphics card which leaves me in a slight quandry.
From what I've read and my gfx card budget the obvious choice is a Nvidia 6600GT 128Mb card. The decision I'm struggling with is do I buy an AGP version or do I take the opportunity to ditch the mobo, processor and possibly memory and switch to AMD64 and PCI-Express? Would I gain much by doing a switch (other than aggro)? On the other hand I don't want to spend money on a graphics card and then have to replace it along with the motherboard and processor in say 6 to 12 months.

Are Nvidia still planning to continue making the NForce3 chipset for a reasonable amount of time? I wasn't sure if I've read that they'd switched production to NForce4 exclusively.

PS. I have no bias either way towards Intel / AMD, although I am less than impressed with the Prescotts.

PPS. I recently replaced a HEC 425W PSU because the 5V rail was dipping. With the Hiper all rails are above their rated values.
 
your system looks like it could run great for a couple more years. i would just buy a nice video card with the money you were gonna put into a major upgrade.

btw what psu are you using? you may need to upgrade that too.
 
At 3.06, you should be fine for another year at least. I'd take the 6600GT, because at that price point you really can't go wrong -- even if you upgrade the whole system 12 months from now, you're only out $200, compared to the big-time layout for a an entire system overhaul now, when you don't really need it.

Since your problem is a dead video card, why would you upgrade to an nForce3 board? Wouldn't it make more sense to make the leap into PCI-E and future-proof yourself?

-HC-
 
If you have the money, I'd upgrade to NF4/Athlon64. The way I see it:

AGP video card = ~200$ (which you'll end up losing when you do upgrade your mobo/cpu)

PCIE video card, NF4 board, A64 3000+ = ~500$ (and you're set for the future...)


And with the second option, you also get bragging rights, new toys to overclock, etc... 😀
 
In reply to some of your questions...

Power Supply is a Hipergroup Type R 480W True (max rating 520W), all rails are a little high. It has a cool ATX power connector which suports both 20/24 pin connector (the extra 4 pins detach) and has 2x12V rails. Recently replaced a HEC 425W PSU as the 5V rail had dropped to being a little low.

Video card definitely borked. Started acting up a few weeks ago with random corruption in 2D (multiple mouse pointers, coloured lines etc). I replaced the h/s+fan with an Arctic Silent Cooler and used to AS3. Now only a few random crashes in 3D. Tonight, crashed tried to reboot and wouldn't post. Tried clearing CMOS and removing a few cards - no go. Plugged in the MSI diagnostic D-Bracket. Lights showed it hung when initialising the video card. Tried unplugging the molex connector (which normally gives a text warning screen) still nothing. Swapped 9800Pro for 9600Pro and it worked fine.

I do play some games (Full Spectrum Warrior ATM) but not as much as I would like.... At the moment I mainly work from home so the most important thing is to have a stable system.

My monitor is a Dell 1901FP TFT. No problems with ghosting in games but when I play games I like to play them at 1280x1024 which is it's native resolution. The 9600Pro won't quite cut it at this.

The reason behind asking about Nforce 3 is if I decided to stay with my current setup and buy an AGP card I would like to have some upgrade path. I don't want to have to shell out again for another card.

UK prices are roughly:
£150+ for a 6600GT
£130-£150 for a 3200+ AMD64 Winchester
£80-£150 for Nforce4 boards
+ £xx for decent 3rd party cooler (e.g. XP-90)

I'm not interested in SLI - the benefits don't justify the outlay to me. There's also quite a price jump between 6600 and 6800 cards.

I know that with 4 DIMMS the AMD's drop the memory bus to 333MHz by default. Does this make much difference in practice. I know the K7 cores were affected more by memory latencies than by bandwidth (c.f. P4 optimised for bandwidth).

 
There are no current games that benefit from using PCIx vs AGP. SLI is really the only benefit, and mostly because you can buy one card and add a second later as a cheap upgrade.

Goind with Athlon 64 would be a major upgrade for you though especially if you OC it, and an SLI board has the potential for years of upgrading.

Keep your rig, add a budget card if you have no money. If you've got the money, go A64 and enjoy the awesome gaming performance.
 
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