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Upgrading my dad's video card for him for Christmas

W

whistleclient

Platinum Member

I'm sorry to add to the ubiquitous "upgrade video card" questions, but I've been out of the video card upgrade game for a while, so I'm clueless about the current lines.

Here's what I need: Help upgrading my dad's video card for him.

-He likes FPS like the Call of Duty series but his current video card (Geforce 5200) can't run them.
-He's not a bleeding edge guy (he still has AGP) so we're not shooting for Crysis.
-A playable framerate on the Medal of Honor/ Call of Duty series and he'll be fine.
- <$200 would be best. any more than that seems silly for an AGP system
- no double slot solutions, preferably something fairly quiet instead of the geforce vacuum cleaners of several years ago

I was thinking this:
SAPPHIRE 100209L Radeon X1950GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 8X HDCP
for $130. The only thing that worries me is the power requirement (450w w/ 30amps on 12v), as my Dad lives in a different state and I can't check his PSU.

Any other suggestions?





 
I bought my dad that very card for the same reason 2 months ago. He's a COD/BF2 fan. It has plenty of performance, but I think his stock clocked AMD64 3200+ might be bottlenecking it.

As for the power requirements, yeah that could be a problem. Is there any way you can get someone else(family member/friend) to check the psu?
 
Sounds like the X1950GT isn't a bad choice for your needs.

If you can wait 2 weeks or so until more details about Nvidia and ATI's next
product models appears (rumor has it that there will be new cards from
both of them sometime within 2 weeks), that'd be better.

Maybe ATI will have a better 2000 or 3000 series AGP card, and maybe
NVIDIA will have a usefully competitive AGP offering.

Even if the new models DON'T have any card that's useful for you, the sheer
pressure of people upgrading to newer models like the 8800GT, the new ATI 3800 series,
etc. should drive prices down on the older models like the X1950GT etc.

You might also see if you can find a CHEAP motherboard with PCI-Express
for like $50 or so that will take his current CPU/MEMORY, in which case
it's tempting to see if a $150 range PCIE video card might not be a better
investment than going with AGP for similar $200ish cost.

Check out Call Of Duty 4 demo benchmarks etc. I assume the newest
one would be the most taxing. Seems like your choice would probably play
it well though I didn't see the exact benchmark.

Also relevant is if he will want to play 1280x1024, or if he'll want to play
1600x1200 or whatever. Obviously higher resolutions are more challenging for the cards.

 
Originally posted by: sliderule


As for the power requirements, yeah that could be a problem. Is there any way you can get someone else(family member/friend) to check the psu?
Click to expand...

I might have to ask my mom to check the PSU. This could be interesting. One wrong step and I'll be getting the energy efficiency rating for the toaster oven.


Originally posted by: QuixoticOne


If you can wait 2 weeks or so until more details about Nvidia and ATI's next
product models appears (rumor has it that there will be new cards from
both of them sometime within 2 weeks), that'd be better.
Click to expand...

Great idea-- thanks.


 
3850 is supposed to come out in agp. that is supposed to be very low power and will significantly best anything agp has out right now, even 1950xt.
 
Originally posted by: tangent1138
I was thinking this:
SAPPHIRE 100209L Radeon X1950GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 8X HDCP
for $130. The only thing that worries me is the power requirement (450w w/ 30amps on 12v), as my Dad lives in a different state and I can't check his PSU.
Click to expand...
Stable power is your primary concern. X1950GT power consumption is in the ballpark of 60W~65W under full load and requires two external power connectors.

Your secondary concern is motherboard/chipset compatibility, as there are a number of complaints with current Rialto-bridged Radeon x16xx and x19xx cards being glitchy on older AGP 8x motherboards, or at least ATI's drivers for those products, particularly involving VIA chipsets.

That is a lot of potential uncertainty to deal with from a different state.
 
1950gt is so much faster than 7600gt though especially for newer games like COD4 or anything unreal based engines like MOH. I would definitely look into his power supply or even get him a cheap used one. 3200+ isn't a bad cpu and can easily feed 1950gt but newer games tend to favor multi-core cpu's. Anything is better than 5200 though.
 
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