Upgrade from 6800 Ultra AGP?

[chrome0011]

Ok, been out of the upgrade game for a while now, so wondering if an upgrade to a 7 series Nvidia or the X1950 would be a big improvement over what I have now...

4600+
MSI Neo2 Platinum
2gb 3200 Rosewill
150gb raptor
thermaltake toughpower 750

Thanks!

ALSO, I run 3 lcds using a 2nd card in the PCI slot... will this still be possible with ATI drivers on Vista? I understand I'd probably need to get an ATI card.

 

[Snakexor]

well, based on your cpu running at 2mhz, i would say you would be cpu bottlenecked. all jokes aside, an x1950pro agp would be a great upgrade.

 

[chrome0011]

Sorry, seen I hadn't updated rig profile in a while... see edit.

 

[evolucion8]

Depending on the budget, a X1950PRO would give you a nice jump in performance, if you can crave a bit higher and get a 7950GT or a X1950XT, both in AGP, will give you an additional performance jump. Still X1950PRO is a great card. X1950XT>7950GT>X1950PRO>7900GS> etc.

 

[Ulfhednar]

Either an X1950Pro or X1950XT would be a brick-sh*tting upgrade.

 

[Stumps]

I went from a 7800GS@550/1350 (similar to 7900GS) to a X1950Pro...it was well worth the upgrade...between a 15% to a 25% increase in performance.

 

[daveybrat]

Also the x1950 and the 7900 series cards both have improved image quality over your 6800 as well. I was more shocked by how much clearer everything was going from my 6800nu to my new 7900GS.

 

[chrome0011]

Thanks for the replies! I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the X1950 Pro. Can't wait to see the improvement... I think this will probably be the last upgrade for this machine, so thanks to everyone who gave advice!

 

[swtethan]

Why do you have such a large PS?

 

[chrome0011]

Originally posted by: swtethan
Why do you have such a large PS?

Well, for one thing, the one I had before (Ultra X-Connect) wouldn't fit in my new case (Antec p180). Also, I thought it would be a good investment... since I run multiple HDDs with it and can continue to use it after I upgrade again. Satisfied?

 

[swtethan]

Originally posted by: chrome0011

Originally posted by: swtethan
Why do you have such a large PS?

Well, for one thing, the one I had before (Ultra X-Connect) wouldn't fit in my new case (Antec p180). Also, I thought it would be a good investment... since I run multiple HDDs with it and can continue to use it after I upgrade again. Satisfied?

is that 2.2 or 2.01?

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: chrome0011
Ok, been out of the upgrade game for a while now, so wondering if an upgrade to a 7 series Nvidia or the X1950 would be a big improvement over what I have now...

4600+
MSI Neo2 Platinum
2gb 3200 Rosewill
150gb raptor
thermaltake toughpower 750

Thanks!

ALSO, I run 3 lcds using a 2nd card in the PCI slot... will this still be possible with ATI drivers on Vista? I understand I'd probably need to get an ATI card.

If you go Vista, you will need to make sure that both cards can run off the same WDDM driver or you their are some pretty significant penalties. Also, Pre-directX 9 ATI cards(Radeon 9200 and below) don't have driver support and I am not sure how far back Nvidia goes. AFAIK, Nvidia has not yet unified their vista drivers so you may not want to mix generations if you go Nvidia.

Edit: See that you pulled the trigger on an X1950 Pro. The second card should be ok as long as it's an ATI card and is supported by the Vista Cats. Worst case, you could pick up a PCI X1300 card.

 

[chrome0011]

Huh?

 

[aka1nas]

Vista does not support heterogenous multi-display adapter setups. You could mix a Nvidia and an ATI card with XP and it would probably work. In Vista, all displays must be running of the same display driver due to all the compositing functionality.

If you throw in two cards that use different drivers, you would end up having to use the old XP graphics stack, which means you lose Aero Glass, virtualized graphics RAM, the GPU task scheduler, etc. Which kinda makes running Vista pointless.

 

[swtethan]

... there are no 2x agp ports available are there?

 

[aka1nas]

If you mean 2 AGP slots on one board, that wasn't allowed until the AGP 3.0 spec was approved. Unfortuneately, there was never a consumer board that implemented dual AGP slots AFAIK.