Newbie needs advice on upgrading

[polygeny]

Hi:
I have an 4 year old Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz processor on an MSI motherboard
with a Radeon XT (256MB) videocard which has served me very well
over the year. The XT was worth about $450 when it came out.

Over the past few months or so, while playing half life 2:episode one
and other games, I am noticing that my system cannot handle the increased
requirements (e.g., slow fps on hl2: ep 1, fear etc). So I think I need an upgrade.

Is a 3.0 Ghz processor really that slow for gaming ? I also don't have a PCI express
mobo - so I cannot upgrade to the latest video card without upgrading the motherboard.

Is it better to wait for DX10 cards to come out before I purchase a new video card ?

Any system recommendations ? What do you have that you are satisfied with ?

Thanks!

 

[Bobthelost]

The CPU is getting on, but it should be sufficent for current games. How much RAM do you have too? 512mb is too little, 1GB is ok, 2GB is best (i'd only buy second hand now, not worth it otherwise)

The normal thing that causes slow fps is the graphics card, do you know what model it is? Either way 4 years is really getting on for GPU technology.

If you want to go for PCIe you'll have to buy a whole new system, new CPU, motherboard, RAM and GPU, not to mention new PSU (or adapters). All told you'd be building a new PC. If so we'd need to know how much money you can spend. If you want to pospone a rebuild for a while then make sure you've got 1GB or 2GB of RAM and then buy a 6800 or X850 on AGP secondhand and stick it in.

 

[RussianSensation]

P4 3.0ghz is still a decent performer. I am assuming you have Radeon 9800XT, however, you can also have a 9600XT card which is 2x slower. You can always get a Geforce 6800GS, X800XT or a similarly performing card from last generation (ie. 6800GT/Ultra, X850Pro, etc) for around $160-170 and wait until you do a full system upgrade when you absolutely have to, especially if your system has 1 gig of ram already.

Most likely than not for almost all of today's games the graphics card matters a lot more and even though your P4 3.0ghz will not deliver A64 4000+ or Core 2 Duo 6700 framerates, the graphics card is what is causing severe slowdowns in games like FEAR.

Your other option of course is to start from scratch, but that implies a greater budget.

There will not be DX10 cards for AGP so do not worry about that.

 

[customcoms]

for $450 it better be a 9800XT. in which case, I would add more ram and call it quits on that rig. Then upgrade when DX10 stuff is out.