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Video card upgrade - what do you guys think about this?

A

Attackbollen

Junior Member

Hi,


Thinking about upgrading my rig with a new video card.

Current setup:
AMD 64 3000+
1024Mb+512Mb DDR 400
6800GT 256Mb
3 HDs
SB Audigy 2
Socket 754 AGP
PSU Antec TruePower 380W


One option I?m exploring is to get a cheap socket 754 pci express motherboard, pick up a faster video card, and wait a while with CPU + memory upgrade.

Thinking about getting an x1900xt 256 or 512Mb, or a 7959GT 256 or 512Mb. Any otehr card I should consider?

What do you guys think - would my current setup (CPU, Memory) bottleneck those cards much? To the extent it makes it a useless upgrade (compared to sticking with the 6800GT I have now)? I usually game at 1600x1200, preferably with details on high and some AA/AF.

And will my PSU be able to feed the x1900xt enough power? Or do I need to go with the 7950GT instead (for this reason)?

I know the x1900xt is a tad faster than the 7950GT. The question also is, will that even show any on my rig (if it?s already bottlenecked a bit by CPU/Mem)? And what about 256 or 512Mb (on my rig, will that make much difference)?



Many questions, I know, thankful for all the help you might be able to offer.


And I assume all hope is lost in regards to any of the newer and faster video cards being released on AGP?




Cheers,

Attackboll
 
It looks like your going to need a power supply soon anyway, so i'd suggest a x1900xt for 240.00$ and a good 100.00$ power supply. It would be like 300 bucks for a 7950gt anyway right? Plus I think the x1900xt is faster. From what I'm told your cpu should be fine if you overclock it to 2.2 or 2.4
 
At 1600x1200 resolution the video card becomes the bigger factor than the cpu. A faster cpu might give you like 5% more performance with a high end card, but even with your current cpu it will be a noticeable upgrade. The x1900xt 256mb gives the biggest bang/buck, but if your PSU only has 18 amps on the 12v rail, it's not enough for the xt. Another good choice might be a 7900gs, if you get an aftermarket cooler and OC it to the limit. It may even run ok on your current PSU.
 
1)Get a new board and a 512mb 1900XT. OC the CPU to 2.4 or up.

2)A faster CPU will help a lot. In games like Oblivion and in all near future games, Core 2 Duo will bash the hell out of this CPU.
 
Originally posted by: munky
At 1600x1200 resolution the video card becomes the bigger factor than the cpu. A faster cpu might give you like 5% more performance with a high end card, but even with your current cpu it will be a noticeable upgrade. The x1900xt 256mb gives the biggest bang/buck, but if your PSU only has 18 amps on the 12v rail, it's not enough for the xt. Another good choice might be a 7900gs, if you get an aftermarket cooler and OC it to the limit. It may even run ok on your current PSU.
Click to expand...


Hmm... If I DID get a 7950GT for my rig, what kind of performance increase could I expect, in your opinion?


And do you guys think the Antec TruePower 380W would be able to feed the 7950GT enough power? Is that card much more power hungry than the 6800GT I have now?



/ Attackboll
 
In my opinion the 7950gt will give you about a 40% increase in frame rate over your 6800gt. As for your power supply. I'd say it be ok but you have 3 hard drives,so I'd say no.
 
Originally posted by: Attackbollen

Hi,


Thinking about upgrading my rig with a new video card.

Current setup:
AMD 64 3000+
1024Mb+512Mb DDR 400
6800GT 256Mb
3 HDs
SB Audigy 2
Socket 754 AGP
PSU Antec TruePower 380W


One option I?m exploring is to get a cheap socket 754 pci express motherboard, pick up a faster video card, and wait a while with CPU + memory upgrade.

Thinking about getting an x1900xt 256 or 512Mb, or a 7959GT 256 or 512Mb. Any otehr card I should consider?

What do you guys think - would my current setup (CPU, Memory) bottleneck those cards much? To the extent it makes it a useless upgrade (compared to sticking with the 6800GT I have now)? I usually game at 1600x1200, preferably with details on high and some AA/AF.

And will my PSU be able to feed the x1900xt enough power? Or do I need to go with the 7950GT instead (for this reason)?

I know the x1900xt is a tad faster than the 7950GT. The question also is, will that even show any on my rig (if it?s already bottlenecked a bit by CPU/Mem)? And what about 256 or 512Mb (on my rig, will that make much difference)?



Many questions, I know, thankful for all the help you might be able to offer.


And I assume all hope is lost in regards to any of the newer and faster video cards being released on AGP?




Cheers,

Attackboll
Click to expand...

same cpu/graphics card as one of my backup gaming pc's.

been kind of going back and forth on my options as well, and i decided on an dfi ultra-d and 256mb x1900xt - but i have a spare socket 939 cpu so i don't have that consideration, making my decision a bit easier...

your cpu really isn't much of a bottleneck, unlike someone else is saying... with current games, anything above 2.2-2.4 ghz a64 (or equivalent) the gpu is the bottleneck unless you're running very low resolution. there are mulitple articles you can refer to (don't have them off the top of my head) where they tested this and reached that conclusion - in other words, even if you have a C2D, you won't see much, if any improvement in gaming performance. desktop apps you will certainly notice substantail differences, but gaming, not really. if you can overclock your a64 to 2.3-2.4ghz or higher you should be fine for the time being.

if you decide you want to spend money on memory, motherboard, and cpu then i would certainly suggest going C2D as this may change in the future, but other than that i certainly would not worry about it for awhile.

edit: here's one example i found (and this one specifically applies to Oblivion):

"At the same time however, keep in mind that once you crank up the graphics settings in the game, you shift the load from your CPU to your graphics card ? once you?re running at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 with HDR lighting, you?re probably not going to see much of a difference in performance regardless of what processor you have installed in your system. In our testing on the previous three pages you saw the Athlon 64 3500+ hanging with the latest and greatest AMD processors, the Athlon 64 FX-60, Athlon 64 X2 4800+, and Athlon 64 FX-57"

Article

here's another from over at Xbit:

"Everything we said in our previous article called Contemporary CPUs and New Games: No Way to Delusions! was absolutely right. It is true: you don?t need a high-end processor for real gaming with realistic settings and high image quality. The gaming performance will still be limited by the graphics card. The recommended system requirements mentioned by all the game developers are absolutely correct. Do not be surprised that the game developers mention Pentium 4 3GHz+ and Athlon 64 2GHz+ processors as the minimum suitable CPUs for comfortable gameplay, even though today we can get 3.8GHz Intel CPUs and 2.8GHz AMD CPUs easily."
 
Originally posted by: CaiNaM
Originally posted by: Attackbollen

Hi,


Thinking about upgrading my rig with a new video card.

Current setup:
AMD 64 3000+
1024Mb+512Mb DDR 400
6800GT 256Mb
3 HDs
SB Audigy 2
Socket 754 AGP
PSU Antec TruePower 380W


One option I?m exploring is to get a cheap socket 754 pci express motherboard, pick up a faster video card, and wait a while with CPU + memory upgrade.

Thinking about getting an x1900xt 256 or 512Mb, or a 7959GT 256 or 512Mb. Any otehr card I should consider?

What do you guys think - would my current setup (CPU, Memory) bottleneck those cards much? To the extent it makes it a useless upgrade (compared to sticking with the 6800GT I have now)? I usually game at 1600x1200, preferably with details on high and some AA/AF.

And will my PSU be able to feed the x1900xt enough power? Or do I need to go with the 7950GT instead (for this reason)?

I know the x1900xt is a tad faster than the 7950GT. The question also is, will that even show any on my rig (if it?s already bottlenecked a bit by CPU/Mem)? And what about 256 or 512Mb (on my rig, will that make much difference)?



Many questions, I know, thankful for all the help you might be able to offer.


And I assume all hope is lost in regards to any of the newer and faster video cards being released on AGP?




Cheers,

Attackboll
Click to expand...

same cpu/graphics card as one of my backup gaming pc's.

been kind of going back and forth on my options as well, and i decided on an dfi ultra-d and 256mb x1900xt - but i have a spare socket 939 cpu so i don't have that consideration, making my decision a bit easier...

your cpu really isn't much of a bottleneck, unlike someone else is saying... with current games, anything above 2.2-2.4 ghz a64 (or equivalent) the gpu is the bottleneck unless you're running very low resolution. there are mulitple articles you can refer to (don't have them off the top of my head) where they tested this and reached that conclusion - in other words, even if you have a C2D, you won't see much, if any improvement in gaming performance. desktop apps you will certainly notice substantail differences, but gaming, not really. if you can overclock your a64 to 2.3-2.4ghz or higher you should be fine for the time being.

if you decide you want to spend money on memory, motherboard, and cpu then i would certainly suggest going C2D as this may change in the future, but other than that i certainly would not worry about it for awhile.

edit: here's one example i found (and this one specifically applies to Oblivion):

"At the same time however, keep in mind that once you crank up the graphics settings in the game, you shift the load from your CPU to your graphics card ? once you?re running at 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 with HDR lighting, you?re probably not going to see much of a difference in performance regardless of what processor you have installed in your system. In our testing on the previous three pages you saw the Athlon 64 3500+ hanging with the latest and greatest AMD processors, the Athlon 64 FX-60, Athlon 64 X2 4800+, and Athlon 64 FX-57"

Article

here's another from over at Xbit:

"Everything we said in our previous article called Contemporary CPUs and New Games: No Way to Delusions! was absolutely right. It is true: you don?t need a high-end processor for real gaming with realistic settings and high image quality. The gaming performance will still be limited by the graphics card. The recommended system requirements mentioned by all the game developers are absolutely correct. Do not be surprised that the game developers mention Pentium 4 3GHz+ and Athlon 64 2GHz+ processors as the minimum suitable CPUs for comfortable gameplay, even though today we can get 3.8GHz Intel CPUs and 2.8GHz AMD CPUs easily."
Click to expand...



Who said this? We all said the same thing overclock your cpu to 2.2 or 2.4..
 
Originally posted by: akshayt
1)Get a new board and a 512mb 1900XT. OC the CPU to 2.4 or up.

2)A faster CPU will help a lot. In games like Oblivion and in all near future games, Core 2 Duo will bash the hell out of this CPU.
Click to expand...

Originally posted by: munky
At 1600x1200 resolution the video card becomes the bigger factor than the cpu. A faster cpu might give you like 5% more performance with a high end card, but even with your current cpu it will be a noticeable upgrade. The x1900xt 256mb gives the biggest bang/buck, but if your PSU only has 18 amps on the 12v rail, it's not enough for the xt. Another good choice might be a 7900gs, if you get an aftermarket cooler and OC it to the limit. It may even run ok on your current PSU.
Click to expand...


q]Originally posted by: happy medium
It looks like your going to need a power supply soon anyway, so i'd suggest a x1900xt for 240.00$ and a good 100.00$ power supply. It would be like 300 bucks for a 7950gt anyway right? Plus I think the x1900xt is faFrom what I'm told your cpu should be fine if you overclock it to 2.2 or 2.4[/quote]ster.

 
There are two versions of the Antec TP 380, an earlier version with 18 amps on the +12 and a newer with 24a on the 12+. I have the later one so you should at least open the case and check on which one you have. The later version with its 24a is obviously preferred, but with 3 HDs, you are going to strain that with a higher end vid card as well.
 
Originally posted by: CaiNaM
Originally posted by: happy medium
Who said this? We all said the same thing overclock your cpu to 2.2 or 2.4..
Click to expand...


Originally posted by: akshayt
In games like Oblivion and in all near future games, Core 2 Duo will bash the hell out of this CPU.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...

The only games conroe cpu's help with are flight sims as of now. I would think most games comming out this holiday season will be optimized for duel core cpu's to some extent though.
 
Originally posted by: WT
There are two versions of the Antec TP 380, an earlier version with 18 amps on the +12 and a newer with 24a on the 12+. I have the later one so you should at least open the case and check on which one you have. The later version with its 24a is obviously preferred, but with 3 HDs, you are going to strain that with a higher end vid card as well.
Click to expand...


Alrite, I'm staying on my AGP system a while longer.


I however picked up a Gainward GeForce 7800GS+ SilentFX Golden Sample 512Mb DDR3 AGP...to help ride out the storm..(to be able to play some of the current games, like Oblivion, and it will prob help a bit in BF2142 as well. Just couldn?t help myself? 🙂

The card I bought is the version with the 7900GT core (default at 450Mhz core/1250Mhz RAM, 24 pipes/8 vertex shaders). Have it clocked at 490/1360. Can go up to 530/1440 at least, but want to play it safe. I don't think it makes that much of a difference in most games anyhow, especially since it?s coupled with a A64 3000+..what do you guys think? Or will that extra Mhz still make a major difference?

The card is working fine with my current Antec Sonata - 380W True Power PSU, no problem there. The temp inside the Sonata also went down about 10 degr C (about 18 degr F), maybe the dual slot solution is to thank for this? My old card was a PNY 6800GT 256Mb (single slot).


In most games, I seem to at least have doubled my fps (and I can game at a higher detail level than before), which kinda makes the card a worthwhile purchase. I can actually play games like Oblivion and Prey now.. 😎


/ Attackboll
 
Originally posted by: Attackbollen

Alrite, I'm staying on my AGP system a while longer.


I however picked up a Gainward GeForce 7800GS+ SilentFX Golden Sample 512Mb DDR3 AGP...to help ride out the storm..(to be able to play some of the current games, like Oblivion, and it will prob help a bit in BF2142 as well. Just couldn?t help myself? 🙂

The card I bought is the version with the 7900GT core (default at 450Mhz core/1250Mhz RAM, 24 pipes/8 vertex shaders). Have it clocked at 490/1360. Can go up to 530/1440 at least, but want to play it safe. I don't think it makes that much of a difference in most games anyhow, especially since it?s coupled with a A64 3000+..what do you guys think? Or will that extra Mhz still make a major difference?

The card is working fine with my current Antec Sonata - 380W True Power PSU, no problem there. The temp inside the Sonata also went down about 10 degr C (about 18 degr F), maybe the dual slot solution is to thank for this? My old card was a PNY 6800GT 256Mb (single slot).


In most games, I seem to at least have doubled my fps (and I can game at a higher detail level than before), which kinda makes the card a worthwhile purchase. I can actually play games like Oblivion and Prey now.. 😎
Click to expand...

:Q Wow, great AGP card, but for what you probably paid for it you coulda...
 
Of course it works on that PSU. I'm glad he bought what he did, as it was the easiest thing to do in his case. That 380 with 24a is better than my Enlight 420 with 18a on the 12+, and I'm running a comparable 7900GS on that. That being said, I am sure my PSU is holding back my rig from bein totally stable. I had the Opty 144@ 2.8 in that rig until I added another HD and the 7900GS, then it started to get flakey until I backed it down to 2.4. Time to upgrade my PSU, but since its not my main rig,I will wait a bit longer.
 
He might not be able to oc his CPU much or at all with that PSU?
Also, aren't the 7800s much more power hungry than the 7900s?
 
Im currently in the same quagmire attackbollen. Im on an AGP 939 setup right now. I got my 6800 GT AGP RIGHT before I decided to do a full upgrade on my computer. so while everyone else was already enjoying the PCIe experiance, I was stuck with a great card, but a dead VGA BUS.

Sooner or later your going to have to upgrade to PCIe, and jumping to a 939 PCIe system in a few months would have been affordable, but powerfull solution.

But at least this way when you go a full ground up build, you'll have an excuse to splurge!
 
akshayt, depending on what type of 3000+ he has, I wouldn't push for a big O/C. I just replaced a 3000+ Newcastle with a 3400+ Venice. That Newcastle was a dog for O/C'ing, as I could squeeze at most 200 mhz out of it. I haven't even tried the Venice yet, but it does run cooler. Depending on what he plays, the GPU might be a bigger bottleneck than the CPU anyhow. Reading some charts on power draw, it indicates both the 7800GT and 7900GT at 112 idle, so maybe someone else can answer this one definitively.

I still say my Asrock DUAL SATAII was my best hardware purchase in quite a few years, offering both AGP and PCIe.
 
A 3000+ Venice should do 2.4-2.5GHZ with stock voltage.

Mine did 2.7GHZ with 1.48v. God bless that little CPU, may he RIP.
 
Originally posted by: hmorphone
Originally posted by: Attackbollen

Alrite, I'm staying on my AGP system a while longer.


I however picked up a Gainward GeForce 7800GS+ SilentFX Golden Sample 512Mb DDR3 AGP...to help ride out the storm..(to be able to play some of the current games, like Oblivion, and it will prob help a bit in BF2142 as well. Just couldn?t help myself? 🙂

The card I bought is the version with the 7900GT core (default at 450Mhz core/1250Mhz RAM, 24 pipes/8 vertex shaders). Have it clocked at 490/1360. Can go up to 530/1440 at least, but want to play it safe. I don't think it makes that much of a difference in most games anyhow, especially since it?s coupled with a A64 3000+..what do you guys think? Or will that extra Mhz still make a major difference?

The card is working fine with my current Antec Sonata - 380W True Power PSU, no problem there. The temp inside the Sonata also went down about 10 degr C (about 18 degr F), maybe the dual slot solution is to thank for this? My old card was a PNY 6800GT 256Mb (single slot).


In most games, I seem to at least have doubled my fps (and I can game at a higher detail level than before), which kinda makes the card a worthwhile purchase. I can actually play games like Oblivion and Prey now.. 😎
Click to expand...

:Q Wow, great AGP card, but for what you probably paid for it you coulda...
Click to expand...


Yeah, true, they are not exactly giving away limited edition cards 😎 . I would estimate I paid (local prices) about 40% more than I would a pci-ex card of similar performance. But think it was worth it, I don't want to do I major upgrade (mainboard, CPU, RAM, GPU) until like 12 months into Vista, and prob then to the 2nd generation of DX10 cards (and to a dual-core CPU)..


Gainward apparently is not allowed (by Nvidia?) to make many units of this card, so it's a limited edition (perhaps cuz Nvidia wants to sell more of its stuff, on new mainboards...make people upgrade quicker if the faster cards don't come on AGP..). Anyway, that's the only logical reason I can think of why they won't let Gainward market it properly either (give it a more correct name, like 79xxGT..something...). Guess it doesn't matter performance wise 🙂 but it is interesting how things are done..



/ Attackboll
 
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