Need to be sure on 9800 Pro + CPU upgrade

[broncosfan]

Some of my games on my current system are running poorly (Battlefield
Vietnam, UT 2004, etc.). Thus, I have decided to upgrade to an ATI 9800
Pro 128.

However, before doing so I need some advice as to whether this video
card upgrade to my current system will suffer from CPU bottleneck thus
limiting the usefulness of the upgrade?

If so, I will also consider upgrading my entire system, but I want to
make certain first before spending the $$$ on all new components. (It's
a matter of spending $200 for the vidcard versus $1500 for the entire
system I would build!).

Hoping that one of you ATI experts out there can tell me how much my
current CPU will limit this upgrade!

My Current System:

Asus P4S533
Intel P4 1.6GHz OverClocked @ 2.35GHz
512MB PC2700 SDRAM
MSI NVidia Ti4200 64MB

My initial hope was that by upgrading to the ATI 9800 Pro I would
experience better performance in Battlefield Vietnam, Far Cry, and UT
2004. Will the card alone make a difference or should I upgrade my whole
system?

Thanks for any info...

 

[Mark]

IMO... the new vid card will do just fine. Your system is still fast. I'd
get the 9800 Pro. Wait for a syatem upgrade till after boards with the PCI
Express come out in diffrent flavors.

 

[DaveW]

Your CPU and RAM are comparable speeds to your current video card. Getting
a 9800 would leave them as the next bottleneck. I would save and go for the
new system.

 

[JLC]

Asus P4S533
Intel P4 1.6GHz OverClocked @ 2.35GHz
512MB PC2700 SDRAM
MSI NVidia Ti4200 64MB

My initial hope was that by upgrading to the ATI 9800 Pro I would
experience better performance in Battlefield Vietnam, Far Cry, and UT
2004. Will the card alone make a difference or should I upgrade my whole
system?

Thanks for any info...

Go with the 9800Pro. You still might need to run some of your games at say
800x600 but you'll really enjoy the amount of visual quality you'll get with
the new card. I went from a 4200 to a 9800Pro myself and I have a 2Ghz P4.
I'm having no problems running my games at 1024x768 with 4xAA, 8xAF. I don't
have the games you mention yet, so I can't comment on them, but being able
run games with AA and not take a hit is well worth the $212 I paid for it. I
really love this card! Go for it, you'll be glad you did! JLC

 

[Thomas]

However, before doing so I need some advice as to whether this video
card upgrade to my current system will suffer from CPU bottleneck thus
limiting the usefulness of the upgrade?

Asus P4S533
Intel P4 1.6GHz OverClocked @ 2.35GHz
512MB PC2700 SDRAM

Upgrdaing CPU will make your PC maybe 50% faster... Upgrading videocard will
make it 200% faster with visual enhancements. I see very little performance
difference with my P4C at 2.6 or 3.25. If you activate the screen
enhancements, the bottleneck is almost always at the vidcard, even with a
fast card.

I have a Radeon 9700 Pro. (well, not really, it's a rad 9500 128 mB, with 8
pipes and running at 380/320)

Thomas

 

[Chocolate]

Hoping that one of you ATI experts out there can tell me how much my
current CPU will limit this upgrade!

My Current System:

Asus P4S533
Intel P4 1.6GHz OverClocked @ 2.35GHz
512MB PC2700 SDRAM
MSI NVidia Ti4200 64MB

My initial hope was that by upgrading to the ATI 9800 Pro I would
experience better performance in Battlefield Vietnam, Far Cry, and UT
2004. Will the card alone make a difference or should I upgrade my whole
system?

Your 64MB needs to be upgraded to a 128MB card, but although you will get
the quality with a 96/7/800, you won't get good framerates out of it unless
you have a fast processor.

UT 2004 is very CPU and Memory intensive. Most people with 512MB are getting
problems unless they turn off the speech functions and the player skins
precache feature.
At 512MB you must also defrag you HD to ensure that disk thrashing is
minimized when UT pages to disk. Also turn off any utilities that are useing
valuable RAM. I upgraded to 1GB just before memory prices started to rise
(phew!), and UT2004 is now silky smooth, with 1 second ONS map load and
unload times, using most of the video sliders at maximum.

To be honest, I would sell the 64MB card and get a cheap 8x 128MB Ti4/ 9600
or above.
I would also consider more memory if you can get it cheap, and possibly make
sure that any you buy can be carried over to a newer faster system in the
future.

All the above are dependant on video resolution. I run at 1280x1024 (17"
TFT) and get an average of 40FPS in Far Cry when my settings are:

1280x1024x32
Machine Spec :Medium
Water quality: High
Most other stuff: Medium

In firefights, things drop to 28-30FPS, and play gets slightly jerky, so I'm
still refining things. I think it's a CPU bottleneck.

I have:
Athlon 2500, clocked at 10x 200FSB (2GHz)
1GB PC3200/400MHz Ram (interleaved)
nForce2 Mobo
ATi 9800Pro stock speed.

Max CPU temp= 55
Mobo = 35

I used to have a Ti4800SE (an 8x 4400), which was really just as good as the
9800 except it didn't do antialiasing and filtering. My CPU and Mobo were 5
degrees cooler with the old card.

In short, don't get the 9800pro unless you need to go above 1024x768, and if
you do, you will also need a faster CPU.

FarCry FPS done with: \r_displayinfo 1 (entered into the Farcry command
console using the ` key)