New Graphics Card

I'm currently having terrible problems running games such as BF2, I know this is down to my old hardware. I Currently have the following.

AMD Athlon XP 2000+ SKTA processor

1GB DDR400 ram

Nvidia Fx5500 128mb GFX card AGP.

I'm looking to uprgrade my Graphics card to either an AGP 256mb Nvidia XFX 6800xt or an AGP 256mb Radeon Sapphire X1600pro. Firstly which card do you guys think will give better perfromance and secondly will I actually get a performance increase or will my Processor drag the pc down, although i am looking to get an Athlon XP 3200+ off Ebay in the near future, as this will save me switching Motherboard.

#405465

if you've ran down your options to 6800xt and X1600, I believe X1600 makes more sense.

#405493

careful man the x1600 has 128bit memory which is most likely going to bring your performance down....the 6800's are good cards as long as you get one thats not just the normal 6800 (u need something like a gt or gs).....what id personally do is switch to pci-express as this is means you wont waste money on a card that uses an already obsilete graphics interface

#405499

Yeah i had considered switching to PCI-Express but this would involve buying a new motherboard and getting a 6800/x1600 is just going to be a quick fix as i intend to buy a whole new pc in 6 months or so once i have a permanent job. I just can't cope with running BF2 at 30fps with everything in low at 800x600. I'm open to other ideas of GFX cards to buy its just that the 6800xt and x1600pro looked like the best for the money i want to spend which is about £80-£100 thats $150-$180.

#405505

go for the nvidia one....theyve got a lot of power...if you can try to get your hands on a 6800 ultra....theyre rare but really really cool

#405509

I don't think Memory (128-bit) would give major hit on performance.... only thing would be that loading time would increase a bit (since textures will take time to load in memory due to limited 128-bit width), but it wouldn't affect your framerates.

The thing is that, X1600 is better chipset when you compare to 6800 since it's current gen (as per GeForce 7xxx series). X1900 is High-End chip slotted against GF7800/7900... and X1600 competes with 7600/7600GT chips. So when you compare that, X1600 comes ahead from second level line of GeForce 6xxx series.

Unless you are optinng to switch for PCIEx board, I would say X1600 will be better choice for your current AGP solution.

#405511

After that i am leaning towards the ATi. I've had an X700 in one of my pcs for 6months and i can't really complain.

#405536

I don't think Memory (128-bit) would give major hit on performance.... only thing would be that loading time would increase a bit (since textures will take time to load in memory due to limited 128-bit width), but it wouldn't affect your framerates.

The thing is that, X1600 is better chipset when you compare to 6800 since it's current gen (as per GeForce 7xxx series). X1900 is High-End chip slotted against GF7800/7900... and X1600 competes with 7600/7600GT chips. So when you compare that, X1600 comes ahead from second level line of GeForce 6xxx series.

Unless you are optinng to switch for PCIEx board, I would say X1600 will be better choice for your current AGP solution.

um the x1600 is a lot better on pci-e than on agp (becuase of clock speeds and the fact that on pcie they use a 256bit memory interface) so it can be compared to the standards of a 6600gt in agp (it might be becuase it loses efficiency due to the pcie to agp bridge as the gpu may not have origanally been designed for agp natively) ....plus the 128bit difference does make a difference as for games like bf2 you need a high bandwidth because of all the high detail textures in bf2 this wont affect your framerate as much, true, but it will cause certain elements to take their time to arrive on ure screen (giving invisible walls in very high demand games)

personally i think you should just make do for 6 months.....because buying components that youll use for 6months tops and then spending more money on a whole new system is just a waste in my opinion....

but if you really really want to get a graphics card id have to say go for the nvidia one....it has more grunt than the x1600pro depending on which one you get.....

i currently have a his ati x800xl iceq turbo 256mb agp card and compared to my friends 6800gs, it was not quite as fast as the nvidia (tested both in my pc with up to date drivers) i felt gutted as it was cheaper than my card and had a much small fan on it...dunno if this will help you make ure mind up

#405542

Ive just realised that the radeon x800gto is about the same price aswell.

#405549

Frankly Speaking.... 6600GT beats X800 pretty fairly (I know cause I got 6600GT ).

But yes, it's true that AGP interface surely cripples X1600... but still, I wouldn't agree that comparision of X1600 with 6800GT even on AGP interface. Firstly, X1k series have renewed architechture compared to X700/X800/X850. Secondly, Memory isn't entirely responsible for Invisible walls (offcourse unless you set Texture size to HIGH/Maximum in your game settings, in which case Game demands more GPU ram). Most of the games, even today do not take full advantage of GPU ram, because large amount of people opt for better chipset card with moderate memory because it's cost affective.

In the games which I've played, only Doom3, Quake4 and FEAR let you use upto 512m of your GPU ram (on which my Card slogs due to only 256m RAM).

Anyway, I would agree that it makes more sense to wait for some time and upgrade your MoBo to one with PCIex (or probably even SLI).... and if you are planning SLI, only option remains is nVidia. On PCIEx, I would blindly go for 6800GT or 7600GT.

#405558

No it doesn't.... the x800 has double the pixel pipelines and higher clockspeeds. Go look at some benchmarks man.

http://www.amdzone.com/modules.php?op=modl...rtid=145&page=1

http://www.tcmagazine.info/articles.php?ac...age=1&pagenum=5

It beats the 6800 in every instance. If it beats the 6800... guess what else it beats?

Go with a x800 XL.

Or this is good too http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16814102002

SLI is overrated. get a 7900GT and you will be set. and yes i am speaking from experience

#405686

Ok so i managed to earn £100 today and i've decided its more worth it to upgrade to a nforce 5 socket AM2 motherboard and an athlon 64 processor. I'm going to get a MoBo with a Geforce 6150 onboard which, from the benchmarks i have read appear to have better performance thatn my current card. This also means i will have a PCI-E slot on my MoBo so i can upgrade to a new GFX card when i come into some more money.

#406133

Hey guys, i was just browsing and i've discovered that Intel have made some huge price cuts on there pentium 5xx series of processors. I can now find a 531 ( that's 3.0Ghz) for just £46 ($85) which is about the same as a Sempron 3000+. So sureley i can get better performance from a Pentium on the LGA775 socket? Seeing as the Sempron is a Celeron rival. Dosn't this make alot of sense to buy the pentium?

#406455

I'd say, forget pentium and go for Core... in fact Core 2.

Core2 seems to be getting a serious bite out of AMDs. And the best part is to stay competetive AMD have recently cut down prices on their processors (because it seems Intel have slotted Core 2 processors at pretty comptetive costs to AMD).

Anyway, the bright side is... even if Core 2 remains out of your Budget. You can get a good AMD processor for lower price now. So I'd suggest you check out latest price offerings from AMD and Intel, and then decide your shopping.

As said on Anandtech review... "With the launch of Core 2, Intel have made their Pentium D lineup OBSOLATE in one day"... so why go for something that's technology of yesterday. I kinda regrest opting for Intel Pentium D now, since I wish I would have waited another year and saved money for better processor. Core 2 architecture was making round since it's Testbed (beta) versions, and the final product is really tempting.

here.. maybe techies around here would like to read these :

Intel's Core 2 Extreme & Core 2 Duo: The Empire Strikes Back

Conroe vs. AM2: Memory & Performance

#406458

Good news, I managed to get myself a Nforce 4 motherboard, a sempron processor and a pci-e geforce 7600gs for a little over £115

#409713

Good news, I managed to get myself a Nforce 4 motherboard, a sempron processor and a pci-e geforce 7600gs for a little over £115

how the hell did you manage that?.....tell me how ! haha

#409768

"m planning on buying the New Quad Xeon 3Ghz Mac Pro and having trouble on choosing the right video card. here are the chooses:

1. 2x Nvidia Geforce 7300 GT 256MB

2. 1 ATi Radeon X1900 XT 512MB

And why thay don't have the Geforce 7900 GTX Or 7800 GTX, why are thay downgrading the video cards.

And also how many hard drives do you think I should get I saved up $5,000 for a new Apple computer but I can't go over that amount.

#410178

What are you going to be using it for? For general usage, 2 drives should be sufficient I would think.

#410184

Hey Skyline, this might help you decide on Hard Drives as well as Video Card in your new Mac Pro : http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2811

Besides, I think advice in that article sounds fair... as it will help you save some serious bucks in adding hard drives.

#410213

how the hell did you manage that?.....tell me how ! haha

Ebay. lol

#410267

i personally prefer radeon over nvidia

#425284

i don't understand ati's naming and products...nvidia's i know have x200, x600 and x800 [with +, GT and other name addons] where x is the generation of card....i dont understand how to compare them with ati's

#425365