Looking for Upgrade Advice

[BRH]

I currently have a Radeon 9700 Pro in my Athlon XP2600 system (with 1
Gig Ram). I'm looking to upgrade the video card to allow me to
(hopefully) run some of the latest racing sims at higher detail than at
present. (rFactor, GTR, GTL, etc).

I've alsways been an ATI guy and would like to stick with ATI. I do
_not_ expect to upgrade the CPU anytime soon because that would require
a new motherboard, re-installing WinXP, etc.

So, given my present system, what videocard would you recommned me
upgrading too without going much past the point where the CPU would be a
bottleneck. If my CPU can't feed the fastest card out there, I don't
see the point in upgrading to the absolute fastest card. So, I'm
looking for the model that would give me a nicely balanced system with
this CPU.

Thanks.

 

[eventerke]

What motherboard do you have? I had a ton of trouble with an X800 and
my VIA board combined with ISI sims (F1CC, GTR, rFactor). I'm waiting
for a good deal on a 6800GT as the last upgrade for this system before
I make the jump to 64bit.

Kendt

 

[BRH]

My Motherboard is an Epox 8kha+, so the fastest CPU it takes is what I
already have in there. -- AthlonXP 2600. It's requires an AGP videocard.

 

[eventerke]

VIA chipset in the Epox too (mine is a KT600-based MSI) - not sure
you'd have the same problem:
AGP Writes would not turn on - even after doing a bunch of registry
hacking, the ATI drivers would turn it off. This seemed to only affect
ISI sims. The card I was trying was a built-by-ATI X800XL. Someone
recommended trying the XP native chipset drivers, but at that point I
was ready to give up.
I've been really happy with my 9700Pro up til recently. I've avoided a
few recent games knowing my machine wouldn't run them all that well.

 

[BRH]

What specific effect did AGP writes being turned off have on the ISI
sims - low framerate? Unable to run at higher graphical settings?, etc
, etc?

I think that I already have AGP writes set to off in my BIOS now. --
But I'd have to check to be sure.....

 

[eventerke]

Siginificantly lower framerates - even lower than my 9700 Pro was
getting (which had AGP writes on). Even a fresh XP install did not fix
the problem.
If I snipe a good 6800 price on ebay I'll let you know how it works.

Kendt

 

[tod]

I would say to hold off on any upgrades until you are ready to replace
the motherboard, cpu memory and graphics card.

 

[tod]

If you are using the on board sound, try getting a sound card with a built
in DSP.
Like a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, you can get them off EBay for about $20.
With it's built in DSP chip it will take some of the workload off the CPU.
Or spend about $50 for a Creative Labs Audigy 2 value.
The Audigy 2 value can do EAX 1,2,3,4.
But the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz would have less chance of install problems.
The Turtle Beach can do EAX 1 or 2.

Also try going through your bios and
turn off any thing you do not use, like Parallel or Serial ports.
Maybe turn up the bus speed a few MHz

 

[Lane]

I currently have a Radeon 9700 Pro in my Athlon XP2600 system (with 1 Gig
Ram). I'm looking to upgrade the video card to allow me to (hopefully) run
some of the latest racing sims at higher detail than at present. (rFactor,
GTR, GTL, etc).

I've alsways been an ATI guy and would like to stick with ATI. I do _not_
expect to upgrade the CPU anytime soon because that would require a new
motherboard, re-installing WinXP, etc.

So, given my present system, what videocard would you recommned me
upgrading too without going much past the point where the CPU would be a
bottleneck. If my CPU can't feed the fastest card out there, I don't see
the point in upgrading to the absolute fastest card. So, I'm looking for
the model that would give me a nicely balanced system with this CPU.

I had the same VC and I bought the 800 Pro. But I also changed the MOBO, for
PCI-E will be the next standard. I think AGP reached its limitations and
changing the VC on AGP will be not rational. The result of the replacement
is overwhelming.
So wait with buying a new VC on AGP, invest some more money and replace the
whole system.

Lane