Consider upgrading your videocard only...

[eagle1]

I'm still one of the few "gamers" ... well .... light gamers with an awfully old system. It consists of:

AMD T-Bird 1.2
Gigabyte 7ZX Motherboard (based on the Via KT133)
512 PC133 Ram
GeForce 2 mx400 64MB by Elsa!

Now, a couple of weeks ago I bought a Radeon 9600 Pro by Sapphire and .. WHAT A DIFFERENCE IT HAS MADE!!!!!!
With the same system I'm getting great performance in every game and benchmark I throw at my system:

With the old v/c 3dmark2001 --> 2300 3dmarks
With the new v/c 3dmark2001 --> 7900 3dmarks

With the old v/c 3dmark2003 --> n/a
With the new v/c 3dmark2003 --> 3000 3dmarks

With the old v/c Aquamark 3 --> n/a
With the new card Aquamark 3 --> 20,000!

Great performance also in UT2k3, RTCW, etc...

So Why did I post this?
If you are like me and have an old system but you definitely don't want to spend $250 for a new motherboard + cpu combo plus $150 - $350 for a new videocard, just get the videocard.!

Although your cpu/motherboard will be the bottleneck, you will be assured great performance and if in the future you decide to upgrade your cpu/mobo your system will be even faster.!

[ArcticFox]

It's good advice, but still not the smartest thing for some people. Take your 3DMark2001 score for example - I get almost 13,000 with a 3200+ on an nForce2 with a Ti 4200 at 300/545. You get 7,900. Hmm.....

It's the smart thing to do if your on a budget - but for others, you need the extra CPU power and bandwidth that upgrading your graphics card can't help. And what about doing other things with your comp? You proc is good enough for most tasks, but most likely not enough for some. It just depends on what your doing.

[eagle1]

Yeah, I know where you are coming from but as you say, some of us don't have enough $$$$ to buy a new "computer" so this upgrade is really welcomed.!

[Scott Tiger]

That proc is good enough for just about anything. If you consider what Eagle1 has he'd need to buy RAM, a proc and a motherboard to be "modern". I think he made the right call considering he was on a budget. I also aplaud him for pointing this out.

His cpu will certainly be a bottleneck but when you consider how much more he'd have to spend to remove it you'll see the very wise point he was trying to make. Given that quite a few of us are running Athlon T-birds or lower clocked XP's I think this is very relevant information too.

Happy Gaming with the new card.

[eagle1]

It seems the new Catalyst Drivers bumped my score a little.
I will test a little more and see what happens.

[XxCowOfChaosxX]

seems like mobo+ram would be ur next upgrade, no ddr...

[littlebird]

yeah definitely.

I guess he is just waiting for the Athlon 64 prices to come down!!
Right eagle??

[sweeper2]

i know where your comming from...
in the past month...upgraded from msi motherboard .018 micron A socket"can't use any processor with .013 micron on this particuler mb", 1.3 duron processor, nvidea Geforce 2 32 mg, 512 mg pc 133 sdram, 250 watt power supply to......

gigabyte Kt 600 k7 triton 400 FSB mother board
256 ddrram 333
128 mg radeaon 9600 pro x8
athlon xp 2500 1.8 ghz
450 watt power supply

notice huge difference...upgraded from the nvidea Geforce 2 to the nvidia fx 5200 128 mg...but still had low benchmarks on 3d 2001 se (5000)

with the new Radeon 9600 pro 128 mg went to 10,500 on benchmark 3d 2001 se and 3000 on 3d 2003...

so my point is, if you get the graphics you want good upgrade on your part..but if you want more consider what i have done...not top of the line componets....but runs pretty darn good for home made pc , price wise spent around....400$, maybe less...did the work myself with the help of "Sweeper"

[pinipig523]

upgrading only the videocard is true only to a certain extent. there is a point at which the extra "oodles" of performance a videocard has is lost depending on the system's configuration.

for example, my friend just bought a a 9800pro and stuck it onto his p4 1.5ghz dell pc with 768 RDRAM pc800.... the scores he gets are:

2001se: 7500

my roommate, with a 2500+ and a 4200ti 64mb, outscores him by almost 50% @ 2001se: 11500.

so you see, in the first case, there is no advantageous result from buying the 9800pro, he should have just gotten something that would be fully utilized by his system instead of the 9800 which is only partially utilized (due to system bottlenecks). in this case, he could have saved a TON of money.

[eagle1]

I think there's something wrong with his system then because I'm getting better performance than him with a lower spec system.

But as you can see, I didn't spend $400 on a video card (with 400 bucks I can buy an Asus Nforce2 mobo + 2500 AMD + 512 DDr ram) so...