Upgrade AGP or ditch it?

[tfcmasta97]

I currently am pretty short on money, but have thought about upgrading my computer.

I currently have a s754 amd64 2800+
agp 6800nu
1.5gb DDR PC3200


If i upgrade my 6800 to say one of the better $250 AGP video cards, would I need to look for a 3800+ s754 CPU, or would the 2800 suffice.

that or is it time to move on to a dual core PCI-e 2 years from now.

 

[Captante]

While your cpu will no doubt bottleneck any newer high-end graphics card, the biggest gains in gaming performance are still to be had by getting that new graphics card, however my suggestion would be to grab a socket 754 motherboard with PCIe & then go for the fastest PCIe graphics card you can afford. You should be able to do this for the same or only slightly more money then the AGP video card would set you back because PCIe cards sell for quite a bit less then their AGP counterparts & offer slightly better performance too.

You could also overclock your cpu a bit as well which will help, but its not required.


Heres a couple good suggestions:


Epox 8NPA7I NForce 4 - Skt 754 @ $49


Sapphire X1950 Pro - PCIe @ $189


Add about $8 shipping & your in under the $250 mark with a huge performance boost in games.

 

[postmortemIA]

Well he needs faster CPU and socket 754 is dead, so at least he would need Socket 939 (becasue of DDR1) mobo plus CPU plus GPU. I wouldn't go for 754.

 

[Captante]

He's already got the 754-cpu & mentioned $250 as a target-price ... it actually would be possible to grab a cheap 939 cpu & motherboard instead, then substitute somthing along the lines of a 7600GT or X1900GT for the X1950 Pro & come in around the same price, I don't think it would yield as much of a gain in 3d though.


Asus A8R-MX & A64 3400+ OEM Combo @ $95

Sapphire X1900GT @ $149

 

[TheRyuu]

How about wait a little bit and grab a cheap C2D setup in a few months/year time?

That 6800nu still got a little life left in it

 

[Eomer of Aldburg]

I'm going to have to agree with Captante because I myself have a socket 754 AMD 3000+ oc'ed to 2.4ghz. with a 6800Gt and 1.5gb of ram. Within a few weeks I plan to upgade to a DFI pci-e 754 mb and a X1950XT. An upgrade of cpu to a dual core is nice but for pure fps gains a new videocard is where its at. Stick with your socket and get a PCI-express mb and video card.

 

[Sting32]

if you had one or the other, good AGP card already, I would say get what I got...

find my posts here... http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.aspx?catid=31&threadid=1981436

nice not expensive mother board.

you get more out of higher end AGP this way.