Best Card For My System

[ehandsome]

Hello Everybody

I was thinking about graphics card that is best for my system for maybe year and a half. This is my system configuration:

Intel Pentium Prescott 3.0 HT 478
Asus Motherboard P4P800 SE
Twinmos Speed Premium 2x512 MB of Memory in Dual Mode
Gigabyte GeForce 6600 Turbo AGP 128 MB 400/1000 Mhz
Maxtor DiamondMax 10 250 GB SATA Hard Disk 16MB cache
Enermax Noisetaker 420W PSU

I was planing to buy Radeon X850 Pro Agp version, because my weakest link is graphics card. I know about the new Radeon 1950 pro Agp series card but
I would not wan't to spend much money, because I will probably later on upgrade the whole configuration to PCI-E interface. So this new card would be like for another year and a half until I upgrade. What do you guys think, from the charts I can see that X850 pro like kicks my cards butt.

 

[ehandsome]

C'mon guys some information here please, i would like to hear some of your thoughts on this.

 

[Slobogob]

The 1950 would be a noticeable upgrade. The 850 would be an upgrade in speed but not by too much. You woud loose SM3.0 though.

If you plan to upgrade anyway, save the money and invest it in a few months in a whole new PCIe platform.

 

[ehandsome]

Radeon 1950 pro agp is very good card but my system would bottleneck that card also I would have to buy some more Twinmos memory sticks if I wan't to keep Dual Channel mode and upgrade my memory to like 2GB. I think that X850Pro Agp interface card is kinda good for maybe 1 year to keep this configuration. And in games I think I would get a good FPS - card's price ratio.


About Shader 3.0 tehnology, even if I have the card that supports it, i even cannot use shaders 3.0 because my card is too slow and secondly there are two games that i know are shader 3.0 compatible. Oblivion and Gothic III

 

[angry_ducky]

Radeon 1950 pro agp is very good card but my system would bottleneck that card also I would have to buy some more Twinmos memory sticks if I wan't to keep Dual Channel mode and upgrade my memory to like 2GB. I think that X850Pro Agp interface card is kinda good for maybe 1 year to keep this configuration. And in games I think I would get a good FPS - card's price ratio

1) Your CPU wouldn't bottleneck the X1950Pro.
2) If you want 2GB RAM, you could buy another two 512MB sticks, and you'd still have dual channel.
3) It's not possible to upgrade a s478 system to PCIe, as there are no s478 mobos with PCIe.

You're right, though; the X850Pro should hold you for another year, but if you go with a new build, you won't be able to recycle any of the components, except for the hard drive.

 

[ehandsome]

2) If you want 2GB RAM, you could buy another two 512MB sticks, and you'd still have dual channel.
3) It's not possible to upgrade a s478 system to PCIe, as there are no s478 mobos with PCIe.

If I upgrade my memory thats another 150$, plus card is another 100-200$, and I know that there isn't a s478 mobo that supports PCI-E. I was aiming for X850 Pro agp card. And there will or there already are 1950 Pro agp cards from GeCube and Powercolor but i'm not aiming for that card. I just wan't a solid performer on AGP interface until I will change all of my current configuration, move to PCI-E interface but not for another year.