Video Card Upgrade Question.
 

What I have currently for a PC set is:

P4 3.0
1 GB of RAM (Belive it's DDR2)
200 Hard Drive space
ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB (AGP)

I'm looking to upgrade my vid card to something better. Any recommendations of a new ATI or nVidia card? My funds for a new card are $300.

Games currently playing -

Counterstrike: Source
Empire at War
Everquest 2

If you can, upgrade your mobo to include a PCI-E prot and grab a Gefore 6800GT. Sure value and plenty for the games you're currently enjoying.

if you want to stick with agp, you have a few options.

geforce 7800GS - $299 (best performer)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130275

geforce 6800GS - $225

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130264

if you do upgrade to pci express,

radeon x850xt - $169

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102483

geforce 7800GTX - $285

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130256


really, for agp cards, i'd say it's almost a toss-up, but for x16 cards, i'd go with the radeon, hands down, mostly because i'm cheap.

I'd say keep what you have. A 9800 can still go a long ways.

Without getting PCI-E (You pretty much have no options), you can't go much farther without needing a new mobo in the next year or so.

You should be able to hold on to that until 2007 and then ask yourself this question. You don't NEED to play UT2K7 at 10,000Hz Refresh Rate on 500,000 px by 250,000px resolution.

Or Quake 4 at a resolution above 640x480. =\

I have a fucking 6800 Vanilla, and I can't run it at a consistently playable framerate at anything above the absolute LOWEST settings. ;_;

My FX5600 can still play anything just fine. The biggest problem though is the motherboard (and thus a new machine, basically). I've been holding off on buying a new machine. It's hard to not wonder "What would this run like on a new computer?" but the cost of "upgrading video cards" is really a lot bigger picture.

really? half-life 2? quake 4? f.e.a.r.? i wouldn't be surprised if your 5600 or even the 9800 could play those, but with the exception of hl2 for the 9800, you'd have to make some pretty serious cuts in quality if you want smooth frames.

I'll try (cant this weekend, out of town) to bring up the net graphs and post some stats for it. Oh: And I don't overclock either.

People just put too much trust into a video card and believe it is what makes or breaks a gaming experience.

yeah, i know... i have friends who wonder why their nice geforce 7800gs doesn't render half life 2 too well, but they have an athlon xp 1800 and 512mb of RAM, so gee, i wonder why!

though i do overclock-- i can see tangible benefits from overclocking my video card, since my cpu / ram is not the bottleneck in most cases.

i just wish there'd be some new hard disk technology that would blow the current stuff away. then the biggest bottleneck of all would be removed (loading times).

My ATI 9500 softmodded into a 9700 runs most games including Doom 3, HL2, and Quake 4 fairly well. Quake 4 I could run at 800x600 at med quality. I assume with his 9800, stuff runs even smoother.

However, this is an upgrade thread. Your best bet would be getting a PCI-e motherboard (look to the future) and then buying a decent graphics card for $150-$200 which would blow your vid card out of the water.

I don't remember the price, but I remember hearing good things about x800 GT2. Supposedly could be softmodded into an x850 which is always fun.

Thank you for the input. After some reasearch, I decided to go with a 7800GS and upgrade my monitor from a 15 inch to a 19 inch so that I could have a 1600 x 1200 resoltuion.

There's still a long way you can go on AGP from the 9800. A 6800gs/gt is a good 2.5x faster than the 9800pro, and has more features (like SM3.0 support), not to mention has twice as much ram. PCI-E is nice for future upgrades, but hardly required since there's still plenty of AGP cards on the market that perform extremely well.

They're trying to make AGP obsolete.....nVidia was nice to offer than new 7800 model for the AGP to give us something else to look forward to.

6800GS

Come on guys, make thoughtful suggestions. It will run everything MAXED out and costs 125 dollars.

What's the point of suggesting "THE BEST, MOST EXPENSIVE LINE OF CARDS!! 7800!!"

1. the 7800 is what, 50-60 bucks more?
2. he wants to run in 1600x1200 res for new games. the 6800GS won't do that very well!

I don't think there are 7800s going fo 175-185, yet. But then again, don't underestimate the 6800GS simply because its a little older, its still a good card capable of handling today's games.

A quick question to you guys, I have a computer running a 1.1GHz AMD chip, 1gig memory, and an ATi 9200 128MB video card. Yes this is not the greatest computer in the world, but what level of graphics do you guys think this thing can run CoD2 at? Turns out I can actually max out my graphics (although im kind of limited to 800x600 resolution) with little to no major slowdowns, a few occasional freezes when I start but they go away as I get into my session. Any one got any idea how a 9200 is pulling maxed graphics on CoD2 when some people say a 9800 could only pull med-high graphics?

see, i couldn't ever do that. 800x600 is too pixely... i'd have to turn on some massive aa to even stand it.

also, i'm kind of a freak about framerate consistency. i hate an fps of 40 or 50... it's all jerky and terrible. that said, i hate an fps that's above the refresh rate of my monitor too, because it tears. now if i could lock games at 30FPS, i could stand that! but a lot of games don't support something like that.

This is not a professional response, but ive noticed that some newer video cards are being released as "value" cards. Most stats are the same, but the gpu and sometimes ram has been sliced. Also some older cards are just better. A friend and me both have identical machines, except he has a 9800 and i have a 9600 all in wonder pro. I am the one getting the better refresh rates, my gpu is faster, and i have more onboard ram to the video card. What im trying to get at is the 9800 you speak of could have been on of those "value" cards, or they are just having problems with their CPU. Again im not a pro on this, just bringing up a trend im seeing.

I don't know the kind of horse power you are looking at, but I'd suggest an X800GTO, unlocking some pipelines, and overclocking it.

Anything cheap, anything 256MB.

peace.

Uh, why? The Radeon 9800 Pro he has now will beat the crap out of, say, a 256MB Radeon 9250. Lots of memory is pointless when it's tied to a slow obsolete chip.

I'd suggest a GeForce 6800GS. 7800GS cards are faster, of course, but they're also $150 more expensive, and the speed gains will mostly be lost on a Pentium 4 computer.

Another great suggestion.

QFT.

:megaman:

6800GS, or x800GTO are the way to go. If you want to be real cheap a 6600GT might do it.

My X850xt, tied to 1GB RAM and Athlon XP @ 2.4GHz eats HL2 alive at 1280x1024. Plays FEAR about as well as can be expected, CoD2 demo ran ultra-smooth... I need to DL the Quake 4 demo again and try it out with this card... Got mine for $250.