graphics card

[Guest110]

i ran the crucial scan www.crucial.com and it has given me this card (http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.asp?imodule=CTVX1300AGP256MB) to upgrade to... will it make a difference to games.. i have a ATI radeon 9000 at the moment.. Is it going to be worth upgrading it........

[dbarrow]

Depends on several factors:
What games do you play? If you go for the latest, the newer game engines can take advantage of the newer cards.
Oblivion is unbelievable compared to the older Doom engines. Older games that can't take advantage of the power of the card will look better but won't have any wow factor.
How powerfull is your computer with the rest of the components?
Yes, the newer cards have much more power for rendering and all the shader effects but you have to have poop in the rest of the system to support it. 2gig of fast ram and a fast CPU or Dual Core clocked up a bit. Otherwise, you can crank up the effects and graphics but frame lag will drive you nuts. Putting the latest high power card into an old rust bucket machine will only frustrate you.
How's your monitor? If the monitor can't display all the card has to offer, you will have to cut back and throttle down. Refresh rates can be important ir you don't want ghosting and tears.

[Guest110]

an old rust bucket machine .....cheeky....:D

Well it is 3 years old.. my sons play command and conquer a lot.... i dont play games as such until the winter then i like to get stuck into a good RPG but not Oblivion it is collecting dust

Only got 1 gig ram
Monitor is one of those squishy ones.. AMD athlon xp 2400

[dbarrow]

Well it is 3 years old..

You are about up against the wall on this one...
Is it PCIe? You are really not going to see huge advantage on upgrading an AGP card.

The 3 year mark is about time to start planning on replacement if you are looking to upgrade to the latest and greatest in video. If games are your thing, choose the card and build the machine around it.

[Guest110]

My youngest son has just started work with the aim to save up and buy a dedicated games pc.. it is going to take him a while though..... he has only been working for a week

how would i know if it is pci or agp ?? please

[mylanta]

Bad card BM lots of problems with those...do an Nvidia 6600 or 6800 and you will see a difference.

[kern]

i ran the crucial scan www.crucial.com and it has given me this card (http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.asp?imodule=CTVX1300AGP256MB) to upgrade to... will it make a difference to games.. i have a ATI radeon 9000 at the moment.. Is it going to be worth upgrading it........

X1300 doesnt have the graphics processor power for the more demanding games.

heres the basics for choosing vid vards for gaming. (for more info, see my post "Choosing Notebook Graphics")

"Low" performance - ATI Mobility X 600 , X1300 , nVidia Go 6300 , 7200

"Better" performance - ATI Mobility X 700 , X 1400, nVidia Go 6600 , 7400

"Best" performance - ATI Mobility X1600 , X 1800(fastest) , Nvidia Go 7600 , 7800, 7900(fastest)

[Guest110]

newer cards are AGP x8 i believe... mine is only AGP X4

[kern]

newer cards are AGP x8 i believe... mine is only AGP X4

PCI Graphics cards use PCI slot on motherboard - older technology.

AGP Graphics Cards use a dedicated AGP Graphics card slot - old technology

PCI-E (express) Graphics cards use a dedicated PCI-E graphics card slot which has much higher transfer rates that AGP or PCI - latest technology

[Guest110]

Well i know mine is not state of the art although it was when i got it

[jflan]

Crucial is an excellent shop. Their memory configurator and support are great, but their video card inventory is limited.
If you want to shop around for some other options you need to verify what type of AGP(2x,4x,8x) slot you have. Let Everest or PC Wizard do a scan.
And then you need to know what your power supply specs are.
You've already listed your CPU and memory.

It may be possible to upgrade to one of the current entry level mid-range cards if you want to invest in this machine.
Here's a couple of synthetic benchmarks that I have run:
3D Mark 2001

ATI 9000 3181 3D Marks (XP2800) 1GB ram
PNY GeForce 6200 9540 3D Marks (XP3200) 1GB ram

The 6200 is a currently available low-endish card.
As you can see, it would be very easy to increase your machine's video performance.

BM, I'm assuming this is a mid-tower ? or are we talking about a notebook?
oops, I just saw that you have AGP 4x. Then for the most horsepower for that slot the choice could be Ti4200, Ti4400 or Ti4600.
No longer in production ...you would have to find used. These cards ruled in their day.

[dbarrow]

If the mobo supports AGP 8X, likely does, and if you want to go to the ATI camp:
X850XT Platinum cards are still around as well as X800 cards.
These can still be found in AGP configuration.

The question is, do you want to drop $200 or more into a machine that is nearing replacement time and then have a card that won't transfer to a newer mobo which will be PCIe?

I already had an X850XT PE in AGP that I had given to son (was a mistake when I built my machine with PCIe).
He built a box around it with an Asus P5P800 (still available). That mobo is AGP but has socket 775 and will take Dual Core cpus. We dropped in a cheap 805D and clocked it up nicely to 3.6. The expensive part was the 2g of super fast Corsair ram.
Unbelieveably fast and the video is awesome. Handles Oblivion maxed out with no lags.

If your son wants to scratch build a gamer, pick a top end vid card and build around that. Dual Cores rule and overclock easily. I would throw 2g of fast ram at it as the newer games are requiring (recommending) 2g to run full tilt maxed out settings. You can still build a decent gamer around the $1000 mark if you shop it out right.

BTW: throw in a high end Audigy card (like there is a lot of choice anymore) as the onboard sound chips don't really do the job on high end games and AC97 has been noted at failing to render the EAX surround properly. Son upgraded to an Audigy 4 (on sale with rebate) and it does make a difference.