Ok I can't decide what to do so I thought I'd see what other people think. I've pretty much decided it's time to upgrade my videocard for 2 reasons.
1) my 9700 pro AIW isn't really cutting it at 1600x1200 my dell 2001fp.
2) my video card seems to be dying. I'm getting intermitant crashes in games where either the VPU recovery kicks in or I just loose video compleately. I've tried upgrading drivers etc and can't get it to go away so I suspect it's video card.
The problem is I upgraded my motherboard and processor about 8 months ago or so. At the time I decided to with a socket 754 3000+ and the nforce 4's weren't really readily available at the time. So I got an nforce 3 board which of corse has agp slot on it.
I'm happy with the motherboard and processor still as far as the performance goes but I'm also dubious of spending money on an agp video card now since I'd pretty much have to get a new Pci e video card next time I ended up upgrading. Not something I'd really be looking forward to.
So basically 2 questions
1) Do I stick with agp and my system I'm otherwise happy with or bite the bullet now and upgrade the motherboard at least and get a pci e board.
2) I've usually spent around 200$ on video cards. What would you guys sugguest for 200 give or take 50$. Given my current experience with my ati dying and my roommates seeming to have the same fate I'm leary of another ati and general have prefered nvidia anyway (other than the fx's which the didn't do well on). I'd have liked a 6800 gt but the prices don't seem to be dropping as fast on those as I hoped and no 7 series replacement has materialized yet.
System specs.
MSI k8n MB http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo_Platinum&class=mb
athlon 64 3000+ s754
1gb GeIL pc 3200 ram (dual channel kit with 2 512's)
segate baracuda 7200.7 160gb sata hd
ATI 9700 AIW pro
dell 2001fp
Goal is obviously to get some that is going to handle 1600x1200 for my monitor reasonably well with out breaking the bank. Doesn't need to do 100fps with full aa/af on but running 1600x1200 with basic settings and tolerable frame rate would be a nice min. Most of my gaming lately has been eq 1, WoW with an occational shooter. The F.E.A.R. demo looked nice but my sytem was practically a slide show at 1600x1200.
1) my 9700 pro AIW isn't really cutting it at 1600x1200 my dell 2001fp.
2) my video card seems to be dying. I'm getting intermitant crashes in games where either the VPU recovery kicks in or I just loose video compleately. I've tried upgrading drivers etc and can't get it to go away so I suspect it's video card.
The problem is I upgraded my motherboard and processor about 8 months ago or so. At the time I decided to with a socket 754 3000+ and the nforce 4's weren't really readily available at the time. So I got an nforce 3 board which of corse has agp slot on it.
I'm happy with the motherboard and processor still as far as the performance goes but I'm also dubious of spending money on an agp video card now since I'd pretty much have to get a new Pci e video card next time I ended up upgrading. Not something I'd really be looking forward to.
So basically 2 questions
1) Do I stick with agp and my system I'm otherwise happy with or bite the bullet now and upgrade the motherboard at least and get a pci e board.
2) I've usually spent around 200$ on video cards. What would you guys sugguest for 200 give or take 50$. Given my current experience with my ati dying and my roommates seeming to have the same fate I'm leary of another ati and general have prefered nvidia anyway (other than the fx's which the didn't do well on). I'd have liked a 6800 gt but the prices don't seem to be dropping as fast on those as I hoped and no 7 series replacement has materialized yet.
System specs.
MSI k8n MB http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_spec.asp?model=K8N_Neo_Platinum&class=mb
athlon 64 3000+ s754
1gb GeIL pc 3200 ram (dual channel kit with 2 512's)
segate baracuda 7200.7 160gb sata hd
ATI 9700 AIW pro
dell 2001fp
Goal is obviously to get some that is going to handle 1600x1200 for my monitor reasonably well with out breaking the bank. Doesn't need to do 100fps with full aa/af on but running 1600x1200 with basic settings and tolerable frame rate would be a nice min. Most of my gaming lately has been eq 1, WoW with an occational shooter. The F.E.A.R. demo looked nice but my sytem was practically a slide show at 1600x1200.
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