[Quitch]

I saw these over at Overclockers.co.uk and I have to admit to being sorely tempted. They're DVI only though, and for some reason my monitor has no DVI port. Nothing a DVI to VGA adapter couldn't fix.

I was thinking I could do with a new PC this year, but the ability to extend the life of the existing one at minimal cost would be a real boon, considering this house is still missing some furnishings . But I'm not sure if my CPU is now a little over the hill, or could continue to go strong. At least until everyone starts using the Unreal 3 engine that is. I'm thinking more running 2006 games like Company of Heroes at decent settings.

I've currently got:

3Ghz Pentium IV w/HT
1GB DDR 400 RAM (dual-channel)
128MB Radeon 9800 Pro (AGP)
Creative Audigy 2
MSI FISR-Neo2

My upgrade options have pretty much been nil, since PCI-E has replaced AGP and my processor was purchased during a blip when AMD hadn't brought out a better product than Intel because they were running out the last of the Barton range and now Intel are using a new slot AFAIK... anyway, a decent processor upgrade really costs you.

I can get this card for £135 over at Overclockers.co.uk complete with a dual slot cooler (already fitted), or for £15 more I can get it without the cooler but with 512MB on-board memory (I don't think my system will last long enough to need this), and I'm sorely tempted. I've had to scale down settings on many of my recent purchases, and I think it's more the graphics than the CPU. But is it worth it? Will I see a benefit, or am I better off just saving up for a new PC? Still, a new one would probably cost me £2000 (anything less and it's not worth it, would be out of date too soon) and I wouldn't get it much later.

Would I see a benefit?

[satein]

Honestly, I am not a gamer (only do minesweeper and spider for game play), but I think it worth doing it if you are a gamer!!

For £135-£150 upgrade to buy yourself more pleasure and enjoy over the year of waiting is really really worth it. Taking it like this, if you wait for 150 days, the upgrade will cost you £1 a day but if you wait over a year (300 days) it's just 50p a day .

Anyway, if it was me I would not tempt to get the 512MB card since it would help if you are playing with higher resolution. Also, you can have chance to enjoy trying the Vista (may need system memory upgrade too).

Regards,

[Quitch]

Oh no, in terms of cost it's not a problem for me, but what I don't want to do is upgrade my card only to find it wasn't worth it because no sooner have I tried to change a setting I find the CPU chokes and it was a waste of money.

I don't think the additional memory on the second card will help me. I suspect my CPU would die long before I could run the kind of game or resolution which requires that sort of memory. Where as the two slot cooler, that is something I would care about.

[Jawed]

I would hold out a bit to see if there's much chance of the rumoured AGP version of X1950XT being true. It being a quiet time of year, prices should shift downwards as well.

Also you'll prolly find plenty of people willing to talk about this based on their own experience on the forums at www.rage3d.com

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33879053

Jawed

[Quitch]

I'm not so sure, not with the CPU I have. Damnit, I missed out on the A64s by a mere month or two!

[Cowboy X]

You should do alright , based on the performance that THG got using an XP 1.83ghz , you should do better and now at last hyperthreading will help somewhat in newer titles . When a game gets cpu limited , just turn up the AA and get it for 'free' .

[Windfire]

Originally Posted by Quitch

I saw these over at Overclockers.co.uk and I have to admit to being sorely tempted. They're DVI only though, and for some reason my monitor has no DVI port. Nothing a DVI to VGA adapter couldn't fix.

Would I see a benefit?

I've completed quite a bit of reading on this same upgrade. I've got a 6800GT.

First, you would see a massive performance improvement from the 9800 Pro to the x1950 Pro. Massive. My 6800GT would walk over your 9800 and I would see a dramatic upgrade going to the x1950 Pro.

Caveat: You absolutely need to verify your PSU is up to the challenge. They recommend 30 amps on a single-rail PSU or 22 amps on 2 rails on a multi-rail PSU. The card has two power connectors. Now, these values are based on a fairly loaded machine, so you can get by with less.

I've found that most older PSUs do not provide this power. Even my Antec True Power 480 only provides 28a in it's single rail--which would be good enough.

[Quitch]

I got myself a quality band PSU which far outstripped the power required by my computer at the time. Back then I was kicking myself for so vastly overestimating the demands of the machine, but now...

I think I'll go ahead and order it. By the time the AGP XT does, or does not come out, it might not be worth it any more.

I'll probably get some more RAM while I'm at it. I've started to leave things like Steam in the system tray.

[Cowboy X]

Originally Posted by Quitch

I got myself a quality band PSU which far outstripped the power required by my computer at the time. Back then I was kicking myself for so vastly overestimating the demands of the machine, but now...

I think I'll go ahead and order it. By the time the AGP XT does, or does not come out, it might not be worth it any more.

I'll probably get some more RAM while I'm at it. I've started to leave things like Steam in the system tray.

I'm not so sure that you should bother with the extra ram unless you plan on making your current system a second system later on . The reason being that I don't think you need to get stuck with DDr1 ram . I am in a similar position , I have some very good DDR 400 ( 2 x 512 ) but I dare not go to 2gb and be stuck with more DDR1 ram .

[Quitch]

Oh I keep every PC even after retirement. Rennovated this house with my IT nerd girlfriend and there's LAN ports in every room. Plenty of places, and uses, for old machines Passively cool it and it'd make for a good media PC.

In my old age I've become more lenient about letting stuff sit in the system tray, so that's using RAM, and the worst that can happen is the file cache gets a lot more memory to play with.

[Cowboy X]

Many are now jealous of you ........ an IT nerd girlfriend . Good for you .

[Quitch]

She games too

[WaltC]

After two years, I just updated my own MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum 939 AGP box at home as follows:

Motherboard bios 1.C (Much better bios revision than the 1.8 bios I had been using, 1.C required for proper A64 San Diego support, as well as 939 x2 support. I'm going to wait awhile on x2, though.)

A64 3700+ (@2.79GHz with stock AMD cooler. This is a 939, 90nm San Diego, with 1mb L2, replaces my 130nm A4000+ with 1mb L2. Seems much faster in about everything I run, which surprised me.)

2 gigs DDR-400 (I now have the mboard populated with 4x512mb double-sided DDR DIMMs, which the San Diego mem controller handles with ease at full speed. The addition of the second gigabyte of ram made all the difference in running Gothic 3 for me--like night & day. I've never seen a game where the addition of ram made such a huge difference. Also, VISTA on my other partition runs much faster than it did with 1 gig of ram.)

Creative Labs x-Fi (probably superfluous, as my former Audigy 2Zs sounded about the same. However, have not used it that much yet.)

x1950 Pro AGP w/256mbs onboard ram (I was very surprised to see that this card, which only runs as an 0.8v AGPx8 device--whereas the x800xt it replaced is an AGPx4-x8 device--runs rings around my former x800xt. I haven't yet figured it out, but Gothic 3 loads and saves just about 2x as fast as the game did for me when running the same version of Gothic 3 under the same amount of system ram with the x800xt. In all respects I consider the x1950 Pro a worthwhile upgrade.)

I'm satisfied that this should hold me for probably most of this year, if not longer. Very happy with everything thus far.

[Cowboy X]

Originally Posted by Quitch

She games too

Rub it in why don't you .

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by Cowboy X

Rub it in why don't you .

How do we know she's not a robot? A girl robot.

[Quitch]

So this baby turned up on Wednesday and I picked up a four pin to six pin converter today, rushing home happy looking forward to some graphical goodness...

... the sodding converter doesn't fit! I do not believe it! Surely there can't really be multiple types of four to six pin converters? It said on the back it was a four to six pin for use on PCI-E video cards, well I know this is AGP, but surely six pin is six pin, right? Apparently not. The card has two square holes and four holes with cut corners, while the converter has three squares and three with cut corners.

Oh my that pisses me off.

Before I start desperately buying converts from around the globe, which is strange, the converter or the graphics card?

[WaltC]

Originally Posted by Quitch

... the sodding converter doesn't fit! I do not believe it! Surely there can't really be multiple types of four to six pin converters? It said on the back it was a four to six pin for use on PCI-E video cards, well I know this is AGP, but surely six pin is six pin, right? Apparently not. The card has two square holes and four holes with cut corners, while the converter has three squares and three with cut corners.

Oh my that pisses me off.

Before I start desperately buying converts from around the globe, which is strange, the converter or the graphics card?

I'm surprised the card didn't come with its own molex-to-6-pin adaptor cable. Seems odd, I think. Mine did, and has worked fine.

[Quitch]

I got myself the HIS ICEQ3 X1950 Pro and it doesn't come with a converter, alas.

[Quitch]

Finally got a converter than fitted and very happy with the card. Able to crank those Dark Crusade settings to max, even using ini tweaks for AA and better quality skins. Awesome

Now I can face Darkstar One without everything set to Low.

[Ollo]

Quitch, I'm in the same boat as you were some weeks ago. I have a similar system (AXP 3200+, 1,5 GB ram, 9800 Pro) and am not sure if I should sink any more money into this aging system. However, I do have the upgrade twitch, but I am not ready yet for a completely new system. How do you feel about your system now that you have used the new card a bit? Do you notice the difference a lot, and if so, in what games? Do you think you are much CPU limited? Please feel free to be as elaborate as you can

[Quitch]

Yes, I'm very happy with this purchase, really added some life to the system and for quite a low price.

I've been able to boost all the Dawn of War settings to max, where as before shadows were a big no-no.

In Galactic Civilisations II I can now make use of anti-aliasing, which is great because those shimmering ship edges used to cheese me off.

In Counter-Strike: Source I have upped the resolution, can use anti-aliasing, and HDR no longer cripples my system.

The card wasn't enough to save me in Supreme Commander where CPU is king. Alas, my CPU has no upgrade path, I'd need to replace the motherboard, and then I lose the AGP slot...

All-in-all I'd recommend it. Glad I picked up the RAM since I've moved over to Vista and it's proving quite useful.

[Ollo]

Ok, thanks! Looks like I'll have to get one then