Couple of upgrades

[Scarface]

Hi all, I am new here and hope you guys can help me with something.
I want to upgrade my video card to something a bit better but without spending alot of money. I currently have a ATI Radeon 9600xt, what would be the next step and how many £'s is it gonna cost me, if you need to know anything else, just ask

While on the subject of upgrading, my mobo is a bit fudged, could you recommend another that is reasonably price and works with 400 DDR Ram and an AMD 64 3500+ cpu. My current motherboard is an Asrock 939A8X-M (yeah nasty huh).

Thanks again in advance.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Is that an AGP or PCI video card?

Probably, as it's quite an old model, it's an AGP card.

AGP cards are a bit thin on the ground now but this card would be worthwhile upgrading to. It costs £106.00.

Edit: Just checked, that motherboard takes an AGP card.

If you say your motherboard is faulty you'd be better off getting a socket 939 board that takes a PCI card and buying a PCI video card.

 

[Scarface]

Is that an AGP or PCI video card?

Probably, as it's quite an old model, it's an AGP card.

AGP cards are a bit thin on the ground now but this card would be worthwhile upgrading to. It costs £106.00.

Edit: Just checked, that motherboard takes an AGP card.

If you say your motherboard is faulty you'd be better off getting a socket 939 board that takes a PCI card and buying a PCI video card.

Yeah it's AGP but... I have a spare PCI slot and also I did wanna upgrade my mobo (read second part of my first post), any other suggestions, and yeah that card looks nice, wasn't really intending on spending 100 quid though.

 

[Scarface]

Edit: Just checked, that motherboard takes an AGP card.

If you say your motherboard is faulty you'd be better off getting a socket 939 board that takes a PCI card and buying a PCI video card.

Any suggestions with a good price?

 

[floppybootstomp]

You can't put the new generation of pci (or more commonly, pci-e) video cards in an old style pci slot, it has to be a dedicated video card slot.

Ok, lemme take a look at what's still available in socket 939 boards with an eye to budget.

 

[Scarface]

Ahh right, didn't know that, and thanks for helping me out, could you recommend a PCI vid card too, thanks.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Had a quick look and this is a bargain:

DFI Socket 939 LAN Party at £65.00

And with budget in mind, here's a video card for £59.00 7300 GT

There ya go, £132.00 inc. postage and you're cooking with gas

 

[Scarface]

Thanks You see the vid card, do you think it would be ok to go for a 7300 but a different manufacturer like a XFX GeForce 7300LE 256MB DDR / PCI-E / DVI / TV-OUT or a Asus EN7300GE/HTD/256M GeForce 7300LE 256MB DDR2 / PCI-E / SLI / DVI / TV-OUT which I can get for around 30 quid or are they alot worse performance wise?

 

[floppybootstomp]

9600XT Vid card:

Core: 500Mhz
Memory: 300Mhz
Pipelines: 4
128Mb memory.

7300LE:

Core: 450Mhz
Memory: 325Mhz
Pipelines: 2
256Mb memory

Taking into account the improved architecture of the pci-e card/bus, I'd say the two cards would perform equally, which makes it almost pointless, although that DFI board is a HUGE improvement on what you have, you will notice the difference probably more from the motherboard's performance than the video card.

But if money's an issue, sure, why not? It's still an improvement overall.

 

[Scarface]

My radeon is 256 MB

 

[floppybootstomp]

Is it?

Your call then

 

[floppybootstomp]

In short, you ain't gonna perform a miracle with thirty quid, unless you can walk on water and are a bit of a dab hand with fishes and loaves of bread

 

[Scarface]

In short, you ain't gonna perform a miracle with thirty quid, unless you can walk on water and are a bit of a dab hand with fishes and loaves of bread

lol ok so I may as well wait until a 7900 goes down in price? but the mobo is a good choice for upgrade considering mines knackered?

 

[floppybootstomp]

lol ok so I may as well wait until a 7900 goes down in price? but the mobo is a good choice for upgrade considering mines knackered?

I reckon you'll be waiting a long time.

If I were you I'd go for the DFI board and the 7300LE, you will notice a difference, albeit a slight one, but the DFI board is a fine, stable piece of kit.

I'd imagine your games will run a lot better on that setup and if you can get hold of a 7300LE for 30 quid, then the whole thing only comes to around £100.00.

 

[Scarface]

I reckon you'll be waiting a long time.

If I were you I'd go for the DFI board and the 7300LE, you will notice a difference, albeit a slight one, but the DFI board is a fine, stable piece of kit.

I'd imagine your games will run a lot better on that setup and if you can get hold of a 7300LE for 30 quid, then the whole thing only comes to around £100.00.

Sounds good, thanks for the advice mate