Originally posted by: Sonikku
My mother's system has a 9600XT, a gig of corsair ram and a Socket A 2400+. She's so limited by the 2400+ that she can max out the settings in world of warcraft with hardly any decrease in performance. (Difference between low and max is about 2-3)
You're too limited by your CPU to even bother upgrading your video card.
I would suggest you pay the $99 for the Athlon 64 3400+ /Gigabyte motherboard combo.
http://promotions.newegg.com/AMD/AMD_mobo/index.html
Your performance with your 9800 should increase quite noticably. If that still doesn't do it for you, consider an X800XL for $119.
http://shop.ati.com/searchresults.asp?dept_id=39
I disagree totally as I can't believe you're advising purchasing a A64 and an AGP board at this point in time, especially given the price drops of the last few days.
If you replace the board and chip, your frames will increase, your eye candy won't.
If you absolutely have to get an AGP card now, I'd get the X800XL, you'll notice a worthwhile difference now that this card has come down to a reasonable price.
I went from an XP2600 with a 9800pro to an XP2600 with an X800GTO and the difference was noticeable. I unlocked the GTO to an XL with 16 pipes and it was well worth the upgrade. Faster frames, no real performance hit with eye candy switched on.
In fact, that GTO was so good I decided to keep it when I upgraded my board and chip a couple of months later. I now run an A64 Venice @ 2.6Ghz with the GTO and it runs great.
I got the Asrock Dual board so that I could replace the AGP card with a PCI-E one when I felt like it. I haven't felt the need just yet, the unlocked GTO will keep me going another couple of months, after which I'll perhaps go for a high end PCI-E card.
The Asrock board is by far the most stable board I've had. I've previously owned Asus, A-Bit and DFI boards.
Never thought I'd say that about an Asrock product, but if you think a faster chip is the way forward, at least pair it up with that motherboard.
You'll then at least have some kind of upgrade path for your graphics.