Should I upgrade my video card?

[Muscles]

Computer Specs:

P4 3.0C (Originally had it OC'd to 3.5 ghz but now its back on stock.)
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
1gb OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev. 2
PATA WD 7200rpm w/8mb cache HD
Powercolor Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
Audigy 2 OEM
Fortron 400W PS
21" Philips CRT Monitor

I'm a hardcore gamer that mostly plays First-person-shooters. I'm eagerly anticipating nextgen titles mainly including Quake 4. Right now I'm killing time playing Quake 3 and CS:S. My frames aren't as good as I'd like in CS:S and I believe my vid card is to blame as the bottleneck.

I'm having a real hard time deciding what I should do. These are the options I've come up with thus far. If you would like to help me then please choose what you would do and why.

A) Sell the 9800 pro and buy a AGP 6800GT (The AGP thing is why I hate to do it because it isn't future proof although I'm wondering if the performance increase is worth it or not)
B) Wait. Keep what I have and do absolutely nothing.
C) Buy an entirely new PC ideally around the time when nextgen ATI cards are out and prices have dropped a little more.


I welcome everyones opinions! Thanks

 

[BillyBobJoel71]

get the 6800gt now, its going to be too long before the next gen cards drop.

 

[Muscles]

SuperTyphoon: Did you have something similar to a 9800 pro in your system before getting that BFG 6800GT? If so I'm curious about how much of a performance boost there will be.

 

[Soccerman06]

Your 9800pro should last you awhile more. Games are now starting to push the 6800gt, and at $300 or so, theres no point in upgrading just that card. Your cpu will slow down the system anyways (intel bah). My old system runs any game at medium settings quite well and I dont expect it to be overan by new games until the spring time or even-dare I say it-summer (UT07).

Id say wait a couple months, let the next gen cards come out, along with cheaper A64/X2 and possibly if you wait long enough (summer 06) you can get on the M2 boards/cpus and ddr2. That would make you more "future proof"

 

[Fern]

I'm a hardcore gamer that mostly plays First-person-shooters

Get the 6800GT or comparable ATI. Forget about CPU bottlenecking. You want that for FPS games anyway, they are all mostly GPU dependant.

I went from a 9800pro (128mb ram) at 9800XT speeds to a 6800GT (256MB). I noticed a BIG improvement even with my cpu downclocked to XP 2500+ levels. I usually run it at better than XP 3200+ speeds.

I don't kow what rez you run at, but most 6800GT's OC to Ultra levels if you need to. I don't need to OC cuz my monitor is smaller.

Can't comment on Q4, aint here yet.

Fern

 

[sundev]

I think you should go with A. You can probably sell the 9800Pro for $100ish, and find a 6800GT for $250ish. So you're only paying $150 more for much better performance...

I was in a similar situation a few months ago. I had a 9700Pro with my A64 3200, and decided to upgrade to a 6600GT. I noticed a HUGE performance gain, and I'm guessing since the 6800GT blows the 6600GT away, you will notice a big difference too, especially with higher resolutions and AA/AF turned on.

It's only $150 more, and since you're a hardcore gamer you will most likely put the extra horsepower to good use .

 

[Muscles]

The biggest question in the back of my mind was would I get enough performance boost to warrant a gpu upgrade and I guess that's answered. Thanks for the input.

 

[hans030390]

Get 2gb ram, OC your cpu again (if possible) and sit and wait for either the 7800gt (or mid-range card).

For now, your 9800 will be fine until then.

 

[kmmatney]

I would wait until August 11th, when NVidia announces a bunch of new cards (or so I've heard).

 

[Muscles]

Originally posted by: hans030390
Get 2gb ram, OC your cpu again (if possible) and sit and wait for either the 7800gt (or mid-range card).

For now, your 9800 will be fine until then.

Sitting and waiting for more nextgen cards to come out is completely pointless unless I want build an entirely new PC. The nextgen cards don't support AGP and rightly so they shouldn't.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Get a 6800GT and upgrade to 2GB of ram. That should provide adequate performance in games.

 

[hans030390]

Oh, my mistake, I forget about AGP and PCI-E sometimes...

In that case, yes, get a 6800gt now.

 

[videoclone]

OMG YOUR REALLY INTO GAMES

And your running an Intel system lol ...

the 9800 Pro is a great card...

I think you may want to just wait and get a whole new system with a 6600GT -PCI

This time make sure its an AMD Athlon64 system ... thumbs up for the 90nu 939 cores .. they are around 30% faster then intel when it comes to games dollar for dallar

an A64 2800+ Blows away an overclocked P4 3.5Ghz in games.

My friends running CS-Srouce on a 3200+ 939 with a Geforce4ti4200 and it runs fine. CPU does allot.

Nuff said.

 

[Muscles]

Originally posted by: videoclone
OMG YOUR REALLY INTO GAMES

And your running an Intel system lol ...

the 9800 Pro is a great card...

I think you may want to just wait and get a whole new system with a 6600GT -PCI

This time make sure its an AMD Athlon64 system ... thumbs up for the 90nu 939 cores .. they are around 30% faster then intel when it comes to games dollar for dallar

an A64 2800+ Blows away an overclocked P4 3.5Ghz in games.

My friends running CS-Srouce on a 3200+ 939 with a Geforce4ti4200 and it runs fine. CPU does allot.

Nuff said.

LoL Noob. I had a P4 2.4B a long time ago before athlon 64's were so popular and my motherboard died so I replaced it with the best socket 478 board you could get, the P4C800-E deluxe. Later I wanted more power and didn't want my expensive mb to go to waste so I bought a refurb 3.0C and I'm glad I did because it's lasted me a long time now for cheap. That's why I'm still on an Intel based system.

I think what I'm going to do is wait until Quake 4's release and buy an entirely new system.

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: videoclone
OMG YOUR REALLY INTO GAMES

And your running an Intel system lol ...

the 9800 Pro is a great card...

I think you may want to just wait and get a whole new system with a 6600GT -PCI

This time make sure its an AMD Athlon64 system ... thumbs up for the 90nu 939 cores .. they are around 30% faster then intel when it comes to games dollar for dallar

an A64 2800+ Blows away an overclocked P4 3.5Ghz in games.

My friends running CS-Srouce on a 3200+ 939 with a Geforce4ti4200 and it runs fine. CPU does allot.

Nuff said.

With the on die memory controller a stock speed 2800+ might be faster then a 3.5GHz P4, but not by a significant margin and would never obtain "Blows away" performance unless it was overclocked.

I run all P4 systems because I paid less then $50 each for 2.53b, 2.26b, 2.2a and a second 2.53b that all hit a minimum of 3.2GHz at stock voltage. They are running all my games just fine. I will happily upgrade to a socket 939 when the prices are competitive to what I have paid so far. Put the P4's on a $50 motherboard and run the memory dividers for 400MHz+ DDR performance. What else is out there for $100 that even comes close? That's four decent motherboard cpu combos for less then $400.

Athlon 64 is great, but that doesn't mean a higher speed northwood is a piece of crap that can't game.

 

[BillyBobJoel71]

I did not have a 9800 pro myself, but my grandpa has the same processor as me and he has the 9800 pro. i played halo, bf2 and doom 3 and the performance is better by lightyears, especially in doom 3.

 

[Munky]

I was in a similar boat as you a few weeks ago. I had a AXP 2.4ghz (not exactly a slouch either) and a 9800p OC'd way beyond XT speeds. The games ran well at 1024x768 medium settings, even with AA/AF. But, I felt it was time to upgrade the gfx card, so at first I decided to get a x800xt AIW when they had all the rebates going on for it. But then I changed my mind, and decided to build a new rig altogether. So, I switched over to A64/PCIE, and bought a x800 vanilla, which is a big improvement over a 9800p, although not quite as fast as a x800xt.

The point is, you should sell your current system while it's still worth something. A 6800gt will give you a nice improvement even with your current rig, but I think that it's better to buy new tech when it's available (A64/pcie) than to waste money upgrading old tech (P4/agp), which you will probably end up replacing next year anyway, only it will be worth even less money by then.

 

[piddlefoot]

get the video card, 9800 isnt going to like bf2 anywhere near a gt6800, and if your a HARD CORE GAMER , like alot of us, you wont be able to resist so dont stuff around get the card, agp is still lingering, and will be phased out but that dont mean they wont run upcomming games, they are afterall very powerfull video cards, and the mx440 range still runs crap, what direct x was that...
The video card is the way to go gamer, or your gunna lag bad dude.
Online gaming its a good idea to have good cpu, ram , and video card or your ping/latency will be adversly affected.

 

[Lucien1964]

You will still be able to buy a new cpu with a agp based motherboard. Get the video card you will be happy with that for a while. Sell the 9800 pro for around a 100 bones and get a refurbed ATI x800 xt PE for 250. the total upgrade will be 150. Cheap and fast.