COMPUTER GURUS PLEASE

[LightningSpeed]

Trying to decide on a video card upgrade and cant decide.

System:
MOBO-MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD MS-6540
Processor-3.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
OS-Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2
Current VC- NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
Current RAM- Slot 'A0' has 512 MB Slot 'A1' has 512 MB1
AGP SLOTS NOT PCI-E
I do not know what PSU i have.

Budget: -$150

Uses: Gaming, movies, work.

I was considering a x850xt, but still trying to get some recommendations.

[sararose]

Wow. This sounds like an old machine. When you say "movies" do you mean creating and editing video and film, or just watching DVDs? If this is a gaming machine, I'd like to suggest some upgrades. The AGP slots is rough, considering the GeForce 7800 GS is currently the fastest AGP graphics card available through NVIDIA, and it isn't that much of a significant upgrade from your 7600 GS. Actually, I wouldn't call it an upgrade at all.

Also, do you have just an AGP or AGP 8x?

For video card, I would definitely recommend the GeForce 8800 GT (512mb) (PCI-E bus, however). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130318 It's right around the $180-$150 price range and probably the BEST video card for that budget.

If you're definitely sticking to your AGP chipset, again as I said above, I don't see too much of a sense in upgrading, since even the ATI cards for AGP are all 256mb, which you already have.

If, however, you have an AGP 8x bus, then I would say the ATi Radeon X1650 PRO (512mb) is a pretty decent upgrade. http://ati.amd.com/products/radeonx1650/radeonx1650proagp/specs.html

DEFINITELY want to upgrade to atleast 2gigs of ram while running Windows XP Home (probably a 1gig card in both slots).

And a processor upgrade for sure. I suggest an Intel Core 2 Duo processor (no less then 2gigs) for sure. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115052

These are probably the best upgrades for the least amount of spending. This will get you a solid gaming PC to work off of. Might not run you DirectX 10 any time soon, but it should do very well for the majority of high end PC games out right now. :) Good luck!

[LightningSpeed]

yes it is AGP 8x, and yes it is a 4 year old machine, but i feel it is still capable. Thanx for the tips guy!

[sararose]

Oh great then! Then I would def go for the Radeon X1650 PRO I posted. That was the cheapest I could find it online, but it's still $50 over what you wanted to spend. :(

Edit: Nvm! Found it for under $150! http://ati.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=28249799/search=Radeon%20X1650/st=product/sv=title

And don't worry about it being 4 years old! It's a desktop PC, and the beauty about that is it's ALL upgradeable! I have a 6 year old Dell XPS gaming machine with almost the same specs as you have listed, and all it needed was 2 gigs of ram, a new video card, and a reformatted hard drive and it was up and running like new! I gave it to a friend of mine after I built my new gaming PC and laptop. :)

[LightningSpeed]

funny how they have that at circuit city. Good find tho! BUT YOU THINK THATS BAD?? CHECK THIS CRAZINESS OUT http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3805427&CatId=2234
I might wait a little and get that! However, while reading reviews and such i ran into a piece of info that i dont know if it is true, maybe you will have some insight. ATI is for AMD and Nvidia is for Intel, True or False?

[sararose]

funny how they have that at circuit city. Good find tho! BUT YOU THINK THATS BAD?? CHECK THIS CRAZINESS OUT http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3805427&CatId=2234
I might wait a little and get that! However, while reading reviews and such i ran into a piece of info that i dont know if it is true, maybe you will have some insight. ATI is for AMD and Nvidia is for Intel, True or False?

Oh thats a good find!

Umm... it's not really true nor is it false. A few years back, AMD and ATI "joined forces", and now ATI is basically made under the AMD brand. Both ATI and NVIDIA make and sell basically the same thing, and either can run on AMDs and Intel processors. It all comes down to which brand you prefer! I have had the opportunity to own both AMD and Intel processors, along with ATI and NVIDIA video cards. One of my first gaming PCs was an old AMD + ATI Radeon Compaq. :lmao: This was before HP bought Compaq, and needless to say... it was a piece of crap! After that, I had owned the first Dell XPS gaming machine, which was an Intel processor with another ATI Radeon. Now I build my PCs from scratch, and both my boyfriend's and my own gaming PCs run on GeForce video cards (even my laptop has a GeForce). HOWEVER, my gaming machine and laptop run off Intel Duo 2 Core processors, while my boyfriends is an AMD Athlon Duo Core processor. Both run games like a dream, and I also use my computers for Graphic Design and Video Editing software like AfterEffects and Premiere.

[LightningSpeed]

Im sorry for calling you "guy" in my first reply lol had no idea. Anyways, im still looking around and i find many HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 AGP 4X/8X, but different price and company. such as this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3855381&Sku=A271-3850&SRCCODE=SHOPPINGDF&cm_mmc_o=2mHCjCmtB55bETCjCVqHCjCdwwp
Any differences besides price and the obvious missing cooler from the HIS one.

[LightningSpeed]

Also i just checked my PSU, it is a 300watt peak unit, will i need to upgrade my PSU before i can use this card?

[Crazy Asian]

I have a damn good AGP card called XFX 7800 GS. Too bad you cant find those unless you pay an arm and leg for it. Even on Ebay there extremely rare to come by. This thing kicks ass meaing I can play COD4 and pretty medium level, WoW, FEAR, and I actually managed to run Rainbow Six and Crysis on it. Not sure how. There's another good AGP card called Gainward 7800 GS 512MB but that's only in the Euro Market. Never was a real fan of Radeon series card for the AGP.

[Crazy Asian]

oh and upgrade your PS. You definetly need a new power supply to keep up with the card. I just bumped mine to 450 and it runs fine.

[LightningSpeed]

Hows this for a new PSU?
http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0276315

[Crazy Asian]

is your org ps have the fan sticking on top of the case or behind the case?

[sararose]

Im sorry for calling you "guy" in my first reply lol had no idea.

Haha, no problem at all. ;)


Any differences besides price and the obvious missing cooler from the HIS one.

It's all really just different manufacturers who are using the same GPU chipset of the ATI/NVIDIA. Some have different specs then another will. You just have to search around, and make sure you get what you want from that specific manufacturer's build.

[sararose]

Also i just checked my PSU, it is a 300watt peak unit, will i need to upgrade my PSU before i can use this card?

Yeah, I would definitely upgrade your power supply, especially if you decide to get a +512mb HD video card.

Edit: Crazy Asian beat me too it. :lmao:

[LightningSpeed]

Man o man im gettin excited!!!

[Crazy Asian]

I really need a new pc. Damn starcraft 2 is coming out and I know AGP card's will implode. Fawk. If you can run wow at 60-100 FPS then you really are set. I run mine at like 60 at peak but when raiding I was at 50 sometimes and under heavy crazy stuff it dropped to 20 but my freaking MOBO is crap.

[LightningSpeed]

sc fanatic eh? ya i cant wait for sc2 either, but sc has always been easy on computers. Do you remember what kinda computer you were playing startcraft for the first time on? i had a OLD SCHOOL gateway with probally less that 64mb of ram and no GPU lol, hopefully they can do something magical so we can play on our AGP cards!

[Crazy Asian]

Right now, my AGP card runs SC at full strength. I had a pretty bad ass Dell that I used to run SC but the current pc makes it look obsolete.

The next comp I know will run two games at once but it's seriously gonna hurt me badly. 2 BFG Geforce GTX 280 running, 4 GBs of RAM, 500GB Hardrive, ThermalTech Case, ASUS Maximus Motherboard, Intel Core 2 Quad...you dont even know how much that sets me back.

[sararose]

Yeah but you can't really compare old Starcraft graphics to the new. Starcraft came out in 1998; ten years ago!

This is directly from the SC2 website:


Will StarCraft II take advantage of DirectX 10? What other graphical goodies are included?

The game will be compatible with DirectX 10, and we're still considering whether there will be exclusive DirectX 10 graphic effects, but the graphics engine will also be very scalable to ensure that a wide range of different systems will be capable of running StarCraft II. The new engine is also capable of rendering very large units, as well as large numbers of units on screen together. Havok physics have been integrated into the engine for added realism as well.

I know some people believe, based off the isometric in-game "top-down" view, there's little to no "3D" technology involved, but it's completely the opposite. The entire game is going to be made with 3D graphics and rendering software along with Havok physics (I LOVE Havok physics!!). I'm so SO so so excited for this and D3 now. You guys can be sure to see me sleeping in line over night infront of Gamestop for the release of both of those games!

[Crazy Asian]

I Was supposed to get the Korean version of Starcraft 2 since Korea gets theres early but its coming out in Sept or something. BOOOOOO

[sararose]

"Coming out in September" you mean. You forgot the quotation marks... because Blizzard NEVER releases anything when they say they "plan" to! :lmao: I am not one to complain, however, since they do it to perfect their games, and I *HEART* Blizzard big time!

[LightningSpeed]

OK LADIES AND GENTS THIS IS DECISION TIME!

A.http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3805427&CatId=2234

B.http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3855381&Sku=A271-3850&SRCCODE=SHOPPINGDF&cm_mmc_o=2mHCjCmtB55bETCjCVqHCjCdwwp

Which one!?!?!??!

[slammedvw]

actually if i remember correctly starcraft came out in 1994, perhaps brood war was 98? anyways, the machine i was using when i first got starcraft was a 486 with 16mb of ram (486 is 66mhz for those of you who dont know) and it actually ran quite well once it loaded, so as stated before, its a low resource game, and the new one and old one are completely different so you cant assume you wont need much to run it.

personally i wont touch nvidia or intel, but, im also a heavy overclocker, and amd's tend to take better to overclocking than intels. as far as nvidia, i just plain dont like nvidia cards, any nvidia cards i have owned have not performed as well as their ati counterparts. my recomendation is dont buy a new card if you are still running agp. agp is a dying technology and you will spend more money on a slower agp card than if you upgraded to pci-e. your best bet is to just go ahead and upgrade your mobo and processor so that you can get a pci-e card. take a look at microcenter, prices have dropped quite a bit on pc parts. when i built my current machine i got a pci-e HD3850 512 mb vid card, amd 5000+ black edition, 4 gb ddr2 corsair xms memory, and an abit crossfire motherboard with ati chipset for right around 550 bucks. considering what prices were for much slower hardware a year ago thats pretty damned good.

[slammedvw]

OK LADIES AND GENTS THIS IS DECISION TIME!

A.http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3805427&CatId=2234

B.http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3855381&Sku=A271-3850&SRCCODE=SHOPPINGDF&cm_mmc_o=2mHCjCmtB55bETCjCVqHCjCdwwp

Which one!?!?!??!

the specs on those appear to be mostly the same, however, the cheaper card has no core clock or memory clock speeds listed, so i would assume considering the price difference that the sapphire will be a slower card. ive noticed sapphire has a habit of doing that, release a card cheaper with lower clock speeds. my vote goes for the HIS if your absolutely set on getting AGP.

[LightningSpeed]

Found it.

The card is a Radeon HD 3850 with 512MB of on-board memory that’s clocked at 1700MHz (effective) and has a core speed of 700MHz – these are slightly higher than the reference Radeon HD 3850 clock speeds of 670/1660MHz.

What does this mean? compared to the HIS one, is it a BIG DIFFERENCE? or worth saving the extra 40-50 bux?

[LightningSpeed]

is your org ps have the fan sticking on top of the case or behind the case?
It is behind, i just saw this reply sorry.

[LightningSpeed]

well heres another candidate, i don't know what to do?!
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=3805441&sku=H231-3880&srkey=HIS%20H385F512ANP%20Radeon%20HD%203850%20HDM I%20Dual%20DL-DVI%20(HDCP)%20512MB%20(256bit)%20GDDR3%20AGP

[YoTa_BoX]

http://www.pricewatch.com/

This website is my bestest friend :)

give it a look over.

[YoTa_BoX]

also...Ati has come along way as far as driver support goes...i remember not to long ago they seemed to have really bad driver support.


I'm running a ATI 2600 XT atm and i love it so far. I use to be a die hard Nvidia fan but it was mainly due to ATI just not really being on the ball (cough for lack of better words cough) about their driver updates. All seems to be better now though.

[slammedvw]

yeah ill certainly agree there. that used to be ati's shortcoming, driver support. not to say that was an issue. anybody who was big into tweaking never really had issues because they kne their way around the software enough to get the cards running right, but by no means did ati used to be as plug and play friendly as nvidia.

[LightningSpeed]

http://www.pricewatch.com/

This website is my bestest friend :)

give it a look over.

Nice site, definitely will use this in the future, but as for video cards, i think tigerdirect and newegg are basically the lowest possible prices besides deals on ebay or amazon for used/refurbished ones. Thanks tho

[sararose]

...i think tigerdirect and newegg...

I love newegg! Definitely a great and dependable site!

[Nex]

Trying to decide on a video card upgrade and cant decide.

System:
MOBO-MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD MS-6540
Processor-3.00 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
OS-Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2
Current VC- NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS
Current RAM- Slot 'A0' has 512 MB Slot 'A1' has 512 MB1
AGP SLOTS NOT PCI-E
I do not know what PSU i have.

Budget: -$150

Uses: Gaming, movies, work.

I was considering a x850xt, but still trying to get some recommendations. umm a AGP card LOL your performance would only be video but not even great HD video.

[LightningSpeed]

its ok, just dont feel like dishing out $500+ for a new comp thats all, trying to use up as much life as i can on this machine. Thanks.

[Nex]

its ok, just dont feel like dishing out $500+ for a new comp thats all, trying to use up as much life as i can on this machine. Thanks. well actually parts are more cheaper than ever for decent performance. just gotta know what to build. if you decide to build one holla at me lol cya.

[Nex]

the x850xt ati is kinda decent. it can hold CS source well but on Call of duty 4 you may need to super lower the res and graphics. My friend had one on his old comp and he was running a AMD 3500+ OCed to like i think 2.5ghz. but for a game like SC2 i doubt it. Try C&C3 T wars first and see how that goes. RTS games use hella alot of power.