Upgrade Graphics Card

[Uncle Nobby]

I have a P4 2.66Ghz PC with a Nvidia Ti 4200 AGP card

I am thinking of upgrading it but I would want to know if it is worth it?

Could you recommend a good AGP card for about £100.

Thanx

 

[You Know Who ~]

the question is, why upgrade? What is it you need that you do not have now?
b

 

[Paul]

I have a P4 2.66Ghz PC with a Nvidia Ti 4200 AGP card

I am thinking of upgrading it but I would want to know if it is worth it?

Could you recommend a good AGP card for about £100.

Thanx

A newer card would give you DirectX 9 hardware support. There may
be some games that request that as a minimum requirement. So the
advantage of a new card, may be in allowing a more modern game to
load.

Unfortunately, the benchmarking and tech data sites are not keeping
up with all the cards offered for sale. That makes it pretty hard
to give substantial information for comparison purposes. Still,
here are the sites for what they are worth.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/

This is your current card.

Ti 4200 NV25 AGP 64MB DDR 250Mhz 250Mhz 128Bits 4 / 2 / 2 DX8.1, PS1.3, VS1.1

A 7600GS is roughly in the right price range. The cheapest cards don't state
their core clock, and may be using cheaper memory or something. This entry
is for the PCI Express version of card, and the stats for the AGP version
are not listed.

7600GS G73 PCIE 256MB DDR2 400Mhz 800Mhz 128Bits 8 / 12 / 5 DX9.0, PS3.0, VS3.0

Is it worth it ? My *guess* would be no. There may not be enough
improvement here, to waste £100 on it. It is all a question of
whether the resulting system would be CPU limited or GPU limited.
(I'm told, for example, that the latest Microsoft flight simulator,
is CPU limited. Oblivion Elder Scrolls is GPU limited.) You should
save the money, towards a system upgrade. A motherboard with a PCI
Express slot, will allow you to select from more worthy video cards.
Yes, the 7600GS is a better card, but is it "£100 better" ? If the
system is a dead end, in terms of upgrading the CPU, then it may not
be wise to sink any more money in the current system.

Gaming is a money sink, and will eat your money as fast as you can
make it.

Paul

 

[kony]

I have a P4 2.66Ghz PC with a Nvidia Ti 4200 AGP card

I am thinking of upgrading it but I would want to know if it is worth it?

Could you recommend a good AGP card for about £100.

Thanx

If you are playing demanding semi-modern games on a very
tight budget, I suppose an AGP video card upgrade makes some
sense, but ultimately your CPU (and possibly amount of
memory, ideally you'd have at least 1GB installed) is a bit
of a bottleneck for a reasonable £100 card too.

Paul already mentioned the nVidia 7600GS, that's a good
current generation option, next best would be Radeon
X1600-somethingorother (depends on pricing in your area).

The overall best value would probably be a last-generation
card like a Radeon X800GTO or X850(%%) depending on which
fall into your budget... I've no idea how these cards are
priced there, in the US the market price of an X800GTO is
now a little less than 7600GS and will beat it in a few
benchmarks and games as well though it lacks a few features
the 7600GS may arguably be too slow to use either way.

Frankly at this point I'd put the money aside, towards
upgrading the CPU, motherboard, and memory first- a combo
taking DDR2 memory and PCI Express video is the best long
term solution. If you can hold off a bit (few months) then
DX10 video cards will have hit the market and your card
choices will increase as well.

 

[Uncle Nobby]

A newer card would give you DirectX 9 hardware support. There may
be some games that request that as a minimum requirement. So the
advantage of a new card, may be in allowing a more modern game to
load.

Unfortunately, the benchmarking and tech data sites are not keeping
up with all the cards offered for sale. That makes it pretty hard
to give substantial information for comparison purposes. Still,
here are the sites for what they are worth.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/

This is your current card.

Ti 4200 NV25 AGP 64MB DDR 250Mhz 250Mhz 128Bits 4 / 2 / 2 DX8.1, PS1.3, VS1.1

A 7600GS is roughly in the right price range. The cheapest cards don't state
their core clock, and may be using cheaper memory or something. This entry
is for the PCI Express version of card, and the stats for the AGP version
are not listed.

7600GS G73 PCIE 256MB DDR2 400Mhz 800Mhz 128Bits 8 / 12 / 5 DX9.0, PS3.0, VS3.0

Is it worth it ? My *guess* would be no. There may not be enough
improvement here, to waste £100 on it. It is all a question of
whether the resulting system would be CPU limited or GPU limited.
(I'm told, for example, that the latest Microsoft flight simulator,
is CPU limited. Oblivion Elder Scrolls is GPU limited.) You should
save the money, towards a system upgrade. A motherboard with a PCI
Express slot, will allow you to select from more worthy video cards.
Yes, the 7600GS is a better card, but is it "£100 better" ? If the
system is a dead end, in terms of upgrading the CPU, then it may not
be wise to sink any more money in the current system.

Gaming is a money sink, and will eat your money as fast as you can
make it.

The reason I was thinking of updating the card was that some games on medium
to high settings suffer lag, however setting up to low to medium they play
ok.
I thought a new card may improve things but I take on board what you say
about would the improvement be worth the cost.

On another issue, currently have 768mb of RAM, was thinking of upgrading to
1.5Gb, this would cost £80.
Would this be worth it?

 

[Gaz]

I have a P4 2.66Ghz PC with a Nvidia Ti 4200 AGP card

I am thinking of upgrading it but I would want to know if it is worth it?

Could you recommend a good AGP card for about £100.

Thanx

Pick yourself up an ati 9800pro cheap, the upgrade is worth it for less
then half of what you are thinking of spending.

Gaz