Upgrading video cards?

[Spike]

Ok guys, I am in the mood to upgrade. My current system core is a AthlonXP 1800+ on a ECS K7S5A with a Radeon 8500 (64mb) as my graphics. I am also using 512mb of DDR-2100. I plan to upgrade everything I have listed above in the next 4-6 monthes as it has been a while since I have done this. I am just curious what I should upgrade first. My inclination is to upgrade my graphics to a 9800 pro (Yes, I am going for the best even though the 9700 pro's are getting cheaper) as I would see the most improvment from this being a very hardcore pc gamer. The reason I am posting this in the video forum is this... I have heard that running the 9700 pro or higher on 4x agp instead of 8x does not really do that much to performance. I probably can't upgrade my mobo and video at the same time, so I wanted to do video first, would this be ok? I was probably going to get a Epox 8hkrd+ (or however the letters go) eventually so I could use the 8x agp just not right away. I figure I can do this one part at a time as the socket size is still the same and I can just run my mobo at 266 FSB till I get a new cpu and ram. Anyway, just curious about running the 9700/9800 on such a old but faithful mobo with slow agp. Thanks

-spike

 

[JBT]

I too will be running a 8X AGP card on a 4X AGP mobo. As far as I can tell it should work just fine and the extra perfromance from the 8 X is negligable. so you shouldn't notice much perfomance loss at all. any one who actaully does have a 8X card on a 4 X mobo care to shine some light as I interested too.

 

[rogue1979]

8X or 4X AGP won't be an issue. Using a Radeon 9700 Pro or 9800 with an AMD 1533MHz cpu will seriously limit the performance of the video cards.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: rogue1979
8X or 4X AGP won't be an issue. Using a Radeon 9700 Pro or 9800 with an AMD 1533MHz cpu will seriously limit the performance of the video cards.

Um, could you please explain this? How would a 1.53ghz limit a graphics card? I know that I will see only a few hundred fps on quake 3 as opposed to like 300-400 as that is a CPU bound engine, but on other games...? thanks

-spike

 

[eklass]

agp 8x comes from the agp3.0 spec, which states 8X and 4X are compatible...

so as long as your mobo supports 4x you'll be fine

on the performance issue... not much takes advantage of 8x, but it's all about future-proofing... 8x will help in the future

 

[Spike]

I plan to get an 8x mobo soon, I just was trying to decide what to upgrade first as money is not a ever-flowing thing I think I am going for the 9800 pro especially since it will work on the 4x until I can upgrade. I am still curious on how much my cpu will limit my card, I thought a 1800+ would still be ok with the 9800 pro till I can upgrade, though some people seem to say no

-spike

 

[Spike]

I guess I should clarify one of my original questions... I am going to do a complete upgrade, but only in steps. Would I notice a bigger performance improvement on games if I upgraded cpu/mobo or video card right now? keep in mind that I will upgrade cpu/mobo/ram/video soon, just only one at a time. thanks

-spike

 

[Spike]

bump me baby

 

[KickItTwice]

Here's a link to one of the articles here at Anandtech that shows CPU scaling for the Radeon 9700.Link Notice that UT2003 dm-antalus @ 1280 x 1024 shows really not much of any gain in performance when going from a 1533 MHz CPU to a 1800 MHz CPU and this is even without FSAA or AF turned on. So buying a motherboard and faster CPU won't do diddly for you if your into playing graphically intense games running at desently high resolutions with a desent amount of AA and AF. It does depend on the game too. Some games are so CPU bound. Personally I think you'll see a lot more performance gain with the video card. You may need to get a CPU and motherboard next time around though.

Also I'd like to add that I have an AMD XP 1800 and 9700 pro and I get around mid 40's fps on average playing Unreal 2 (sometimes in the 60's). I'm CPU bound so I can't get higher FPS,... But I can run 4XAA and 8XAF and still get mid 40's and the game looks gorgeous. I turn off the AA and the AF and I still get about the same frame rate. It takes a very small hit. Also, I'm running U2 at 1024 X 768 resolution w/ 32 bit color.

 

[Spike]

Thanks for the reply KickItTwice and the link. I was looking for information like that, now I just need to get me some money...

-spike

 

[KickItTwice]

Glad to be of help. Here's a Link to a video card article over at tomshardware that shows the Radeon 9700 pro in comparison to the Radeon 8500. Granted, if your playin Quake 3 at 200 fps or whatever, you won't see any improvement, but if your playing the graphic intensive games I think you will see improvement similar to what is shown in the benchmark tests.

HeHe I love using the Quake 3 example because it shows the senselessness of screaming high refreshrates being displayed on an 85 Hz monitor.

 

[rogue1979]

My Radeon 9700 Pro was plenty fast on a 1800MHz AMD cpu. I overclocked the card to 370/340, and in most situations it blazed of course. But when running 8X anisotropic and 6X FSAA in Unreal 2003, I saw a significant raise in framerates after upgrading to a 1700+ at 2100MHz. I can only assume that at 1533MHz the difference would by that much more noticable. Yes, I am sure your Radeon 9700 Pro will run as fast as you need on your current cpu, but it will run faster on a faster cpu.

 

[Spike]

Originally posted by: rogue1979
My Radeon 9700 Pro was plenty fast on a 1800MHz AMD cpu. I overclocked the card to 370/340, and in most situations it blazed of course. But when running 8X anisotropic and 6X FSAA in Unreal 2003, I saw a significant raise in framerates after upgrading to a 1700+ at 2100MHz. I can only assume that at 1533MHz the difference would by that much more noticable. Yes, I am sure your Radeon 9700 Pro will run as fast as you need on your current cpu, but it will run faster on a faster cpu.

I don't doubt it will run faster with a better cpu, I was just curious if I would still see an improvement anyway and whether or not to upgrade my cpu before my vid card. as long as I can start running the latest games back up at 1600x1200 again I will be happy.