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"Upgrade advice welcome"

Hi, note to those who have been following the 256-512mb graphics thread i started, I did well at my art exhibition and now have £500+ to spend upgrading my PC. Wahoo.

Anyway here are my current specs;

AMD Athlon XP2000+ (1.67ghz) processor

512 ram

nvidia ge force 4mmx 440-se

Dont need any peripherals just a kick ass machine that will do Half life 2 and the rest of the upcoming games justice.

Cheers Dedhed.

The photo of the card shown on E-bay was exactly the same as the the photo of the Sapphire Radeon 9800 pro card in PC Zone magazine so im pretty sure that its the right one. But I'll post again with the details when it arrives and I know for sure.

Ordered a 9800 pro a couple of days ago from E-bay for £130 with free postage which is good. This should keep me going nicely while i save like mad for a brand new PC. Thanks to everyone who gave me advice. Cheers

Miserableman wrote:
> Safedisc_V3 wrote:
> Get a 9800 Pro - they cost around £140 and outside of the
> X800's and the new nVidia cards, this is one of the fatestes video
> cards you can buy.
>
> This is the correct answer.


I know. I am always right ;-)

Safedisc_V3 wrote:
> Get a 9800 Pro - they cost around £140 and outside of the
> X800's and the new nVidia cards, this is one of the fatestes video
> cards you can buy.

This is the correct answer.

PCI Express is basically a new and very fast connection that will replace AGP, and PCI [URL]http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1152234,00.asp[/URL] So upgrading now will mean that in the future you will need to replace your motherboard, graphics card and any other PCI devices you might have. So spending money on a X800 now in AGP form would be silly especially if you have to upgrade 6 months time for PCI Express as you will not be able to use AGP.

I think I might take your advice and get the 9800 pro for now, keep the rest of my budget and keep saving to get a super pc in a few months time. By the way what is PCI express? I've never heard of it. Anyway thanks a million for your advice so far, guy's its been really appreciated. :)

Dedhed take Safediscs advice and get a 9800 Pro as a X800 Pro or XT is going to take half of your budget away. To be honest you PC is not too bad anyway, so an upgrade to 9800 Pro might make do for the moment especially as Halflife 2 etc are not out yet. You could then save the £500 you would have spent and upgrade latter this year Dec time or early next year or whenever PCI express comes out. Otherwise you will be doing a big upgrade now and then in 6 months time another big upgrade to get PCI Express.

How about the X800 Pro for about £300? Yes, I know it's 'only' got 12 pipelines as opposed to the XT's 16, but it'll still be much faster than a 9800 pro.

Saying that, I've got a 9800 pro running at standard clock speeds, and it can handle just about anything I can through at it currently. But that's the key - it's probably only got another 6 months or so left in it, until the software starts to get the better of it.

In your position, as someone else said, I'd wait a few months for the PCI express boards (socket 939 isn't pulling its weight yet, so don't worry too much about that) and go for an Athlon 64 CPU of sorts, 1gb RAM, PCI Express board and PCI Express version of X800 (or possibly X600, although that probably won't offer much gain over a 9800 pro).

All so complicated. :)

Dedhed wrote:
> My maximum budget is £630 i'd love to have a grand for all the
> flashiest things but £630 is as far as I can go. If i get the
> x800 xt pro for £345 that leaves £285 for everything else
> RAM upgrade, Processor and MoBo.Any other ideas?

Get a 9800 Pro - they cost around £140 and outside of the X800's and the new nVidia cards, this is one of the fatestes video cards you can buy.

Yes, the 9800 XT is a bit quicker, but the price difference between the two cards simply doesn't warrant the small-ish performance gap. And anyway, you can easily overclock a 9800 Pro to the speed of a XT, with stock cooling.

My maximum budget is £630 i'd love to have a grand for all the flashiest things but £630 is as far as I can go. If i get the x800 xt pro for £345 that leaves £285 for everything else RAM upgrade, Processor and MoBo.Any other ideas?