Recommend me a card for an aging system!!

[KlokWyze]

This will be the last upgrade to my PC to use it for just a little longer & I wanna get the biggest bang for my buck.Just trying to play Halflife 2, CSS, etc... maybe a few others.

Asus A7N8X 2.0 mainboard
Athlon XP 2500+ OC'ed @ 2.1 GHZ
1GB Dual Channel Ram

I have a ATI Radeon 9200 in here now, but I am looking for something @ or around $100 shipped that will bring significantly better performance. I was looking @ the Sapphire Radeon X1650 PRO... But if there is a better card for the money let me know!!

Radeon X1650PRO 256MB

Radeon X1650PRO 512MB

 

[Sinn707]

Hi, since 7900GS would be overkill for your CPU, 7600GT would be a good choice. It outperforms X1600's series, costs about the same and fits pretty much perfect with your system. Here's the link:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130017

Good luck.

 

[JustaGeek]

I have been using NVidia GPU's for the past few years, and still have an AGP 7800GS working great on my wife's computer, paired with E6600 and 2GB 667MHz RAM.

Go for 512MB Video RAM, and if you don't mind spending a little more, get X1950PRO

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814102071

I used my 7800GT on my system with 2.6 GHz P4 w/ HT and 1.5GB PC2700 RAM and it improved the performance significantly, so your OC'd XP 2500 should not be too much of a bottleneck.

 

[KlokWyze]

Oh yeah, I left out the most crucial bit of information:

The mainboard has an AGP slot, not PCI Express....

Justageek: that x1950PRO costs more then I want to spend, but it would be awesome...

 

[Sinn707]

This should do it then:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130076

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: KlokWyze
Oh yeah, I left out the most crucial bit of information:

The mainboard has an AGP slot, not PCI Express....

Justageek: that x1950PRO costs more then I want to spend, but it would be awesome...

I would go with X1650PRO 512MB then.

NVidia 7600GS might be performing a bit better, but going with ATI will help you avoid a lot of potential problems with driver cleaning/incompatibility. You don't need this kind of problems with the system that is working fine, and you will be amazed with the graphics performance improvement anyway.

Go with 512MB - you won't be disappointed, some games play much smoother with that amount of VRAM.

 

[Sinn707]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek

Originally posted by: KlokWyze
going with ATI will help you avoid a lot of potential problems with driver cleaning/incompatibility.

I've been with Nvidia since Riva 128 back in 97 I have yet to experience one problem of any sort when it comes to drivers, the original dirver uninstall tool always worked great for me, maybe I'm lucky, but I doubt it.

I'm also positive that he doesn't play games on resolutions over 1280x0124 so it would be pretty tough to use over 256mb of vram, but that's just my thinking, the choice is his.

 

[JustaGeek]

I have used NVidia exclusively, too.

But for just an "additional breath of fresh air" for 1 year it is not worth the risk, IMHO. I've read a lot about the "remnants" of the ATI drivers and conflicts with NVidia drivers.

He would have to clean the system from all the ATI stuff, and it might cause issues.

For a little performance difference, if any, and for about 1 year, he will be fine with X1650PRO.

Why 512MB? Because of added flexibility. He might want to upgrade his monitor to 22" 1680x1050 in the meantime, and playing e.g. Quake 4 with compressed textures will cause jittering.

The 512MB is cheaper, too, 75 bucks AR! Well, the choice is clear...

 

[Sinn707]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek
I have used NVidia exclusively, too.

But for just an "additional breath of fresh air" for 1 year it is not worth the risk, IMHO. I've read a lot about the "remnants" of the ATI drivers and conflicts with NVidia drivers.

He would have to clean the system from all the ATI stuff, and it might cause issues.

For a little performance difference, if any, and for about 1 year, he will be fine with X1650PRO.

Why 512MB? Because of added flexibility. He might want to upgrade his monitor to 22" 1680x1050 in the meantime, and playing e.g. Quake 4 with compressed textures will cause jittering.

The 512MB is cheaper, too, 75 bucks AR! Well, the choice is clear...

Yeah, you know what, you are right. It's not worth the potential trouble, given the circumstances of this case. I'm just used to getting the absolute best for your money, but here an extra 300 3dmarks won't benefit much and in theory may cause some headache.

Go with the X1650pro.

 

[KlokWyze]

Thanks for the heads up about the potential problems. I hate dealing with bs like that... like I can't even update my current video card because it needs .net framework 2.0, but I can't update the .net framework!!!

I'll be ordering the X1650PRO 512 from Newegg today. Thanks for the help.