Is the 9800GTX worth it?

[Dark Comet]

Is the 9800GTX worth it? It is even much better than the 8800GTX. It has less VRAM.

Also does anyone know why my PC crashes when I play games. It just stops working and the colour chages to 2 bit or something and I have to system restore to get it back. I have a 7100GS if that will help. It happens with alot of games ands it really putting me off upgrading. Am i better off to go with Vista as I have XP now or will this create more issues?. I am going to have to buy a new O/S soon anyway because I have XP OEM and I plan to upgrade my old Motherboard.

System specs are;
AMD 4600+
1 gig RAM (667 mhz CL5)
Geforce 7100
Nforce 4 Motherboard
Some poor power supply
Win XP 32bit

I know the Graphics card is worse then bad but this should not cause the system to crash should it? On games like WOW and two worlds demo it does. I have up to date graphics card drivers.

 

[teeko]

Maybe this review will help. I know it opened my eyes on a few things about the 9800gtx http://en.expreview.com/2008/04/03/geforce-9800gtx-review/

 

[Dark Comet]

Thanks,
Maybe it would be better to buy two cheap 8800 GT's and put them in SLI?

 

[SpinachEater]

Sorry to hear about the crashing. That could be due to a ton of things but seeing that you go into 2 bit mode and it sounds like it happens only during graphic intensive processes, your vid card seems like the most likely culprit. Maybe it needs to be tossed. It wouldn't hurt to run some CPU and RAM tests just in case though.

Upgrading the OS won't fix that problem. It is hardware related.

Just looking at your system...if you upgrade to 2GB of RAM you will notice a good speed boost in everything. More RAM is always a good thing but don't go past 3GB in your case since you have a 32-bit OS. 2GB is the sweet spot for XP.

Now to answer your Q, the 9800GTX is definitely worth the upgrade if you are going from a 7000 series. If you had an 8800 anything it isn't worth it since it is basically a new 8800GTS version.

If you plan to upgrade I would look at either the 8800GT or 9600GT instead. Price/performance is top notch with the 9600GT so I would lean towards that. Why not a GTX? Because with your older CPU, it would hold back the power of a GTX ever so slightly so in the end you would have more GPU than what your system can use.

 

[nukchebi0]

The PSU is causing the crashes.

 

[Dark Comet]

I ran a RAM test for a few hours and got nothing wrong. I was thinking about a 8800 GTX because I will upgrade everything in the end anyway and don't want to have to buy another card when I want to play games like Crysis and Oblivion.

So do you think i'm pushing the card too far? Its hardly better then an onboard card so i'm not shocked.