What's the next step?

[whattaguy]

Hello everyone, fellow geek here posting for the first time.

Here's my system:

Asus P4T533-C Motherboard
P4 2.4B OC'd to 2.66 CPU
1 gig PC800 RDRAM
Gainward GeForce3 Ti200 video card
1 160 gig Hitachi 7k250 8mb
1 160 gig Samsung 7200.7 8mb
SBLive Soundcard
Aardvark DP2496 professional recording card x2
Thermaltake 480 Silent Purepower PSU

I've had this system for about 2 years now, and I have no big complaints about it. I just changed the HDD's a few weeks ago from 2mb drives. Anyway, I'm thinking that my weakest link is my video card, but also think that going for a 9800pro might be overkill. What's the next step up from what I already have? Thanks a bunch.

 

[Markfw]

Welcome to the forums !

What do you use your PC for ? How much do you want to spend ? What in particular is slow now ? Then we could easily give better advice.

 

[oldfart]

Welcome to Anandtech!

It depends on what you are doing. If you are playing games, yes a new video card would be nice. If not, I'd leave it as is.

 

[CJP]

Definately a new video card would make a big difference if you game. You can get a Radeon 9800 Pro for a good price right now. I went from a Geforce 3 Ti500 to a Radeon 9800np and it helped alot. I think you could add a 3.06 533fsb P4 to that mobo as well which would help a bit. With a Gig of PC800 you're fine capacity wise.

 

[whattaguy]

Thanks! I feel all warm and fuzzy inside now.

I built my rig mainly for my home studio to record music, but I love to game every now and then with my youth kids. I just noticed some hiccups when playing MVP Baseball 2004. Sometimes it would just exit and go back to Windows by itself. Kinda frustrating. So what's the next step from my card? Is it the 9800pro...seems like a hop, skip, and a jump. Thanks for the quick replies! You guys are awesome.

 

[oldfart]

9800P is a good upgrade. Be careful. There have been some 128 bit cards floating around. Make sure you get a 9800 Pro with 256 bit bus.

 

[Markfw]

What OS are you running ? Didn;t see that or mention of the drivers. Might be problems there. If not, then just make sure you de-install the video card, but don;t reboot. Then run driver-cleaner, then shutdown, swap to 9800 pro, and install.

 

[whattaguy]

Oops, forgot to mention that I run this on XP Pro. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Xemus]

Are you compiling music, or just recording it? For compiling, the CPU is the most limiting factor, so you may want to look into that.
The 9800 Pro would be an awesome upgrade, if you're gaming. General Windows use, it wont do much for you. For about $100-200 more (that what you will get the video card for), you could upgrade the CPU, Mobo, and RAM and get an overall boost, but if it's bearable now, I would stick it out and just upgrade the video.

 

[whattaguy]

I'm compiling. I record up to 8 different tracks at a time in Cakewalk Sonar 2.2XL. Thanks.