I'm looking into some things for Christmas, and as I'm getting a new Power Supply, thought I should get a better graphics card. Most likely I'll be going with a good 450W power supply, so power shouldn't be an issue, but all I have in my computer for slots are PCI and one AGP slot. It does say "AGP" under it so I'm sure it is an AGP slot.

Anyone know of a good one for under $200? Around $100 would be even better, but I'm sure there aren't many AGP cards out there... still, anything AGP should beat a PCI card right? D: My current one is a Geforce 5200...

What CPU do you have and how much RAM? There are many AGP cards out. I have the AGP HD3850. It's the most powerful AGP card available. It was $160 before rebate.

P4 3.06GHz and I have 1.24GB of RAM currently, with 3 more bought off Ebay. (So 4GB total when I install them)

And I found the AGP HD3850 on Newegg and it looks good. Only $140, I think I could get that.

By the way, is it possible to replace my processor with a better dual core or something? I can in the near future having issues running games because my processor is a bit outdated.

depends on your motherboard. Also the 4gb of RAM will only be fully utilized on a 64bit OS (ie 64bit Vista, dont go 64bit XP driver support sucks) What socket is your processor? cpu-z cpuid.com will have the answers you need. if you are unsure, just screenshot each page and we will help you.

I found out the 64 bit thing, so I'm getting a 64 bit version of Vista. I might dual boot with XP, incase some of my games won't work with Vista... but I'll see when I get it.

And I'll look into the socket, hopefully I can update it, that would be great.

Edit:

Here's the the first page says:



So far I googled the socket type and it already seems it won't work with a lot of CPUs... All well, I plan on getting a new computer in a few years, for now as long as I upgrade the video card it should be fine.

This message was edited by Dogsbaby on Oct 05 2008.

You will really only be able to put a faster pentium 4 in there :/

Hey Dogsbaby.

Honestly you are betting off putting your upgrade money towards sometime in the future when you can get a new motherboard, a cheap cpu, and a video card.

I was exactly in your shoes once. The truth is that AGP cards are a dying breed -- you have to pay a bit of a premium for them, and you will not be able to use them in future computers.

You can buy a dirt-cheap dual core AMD or Intel + motherboard and it'll be far faster than the best socket 478 cpu you can find -- and fast socket 478's are very hard to find because people in your position (and my old position) want to buy them.

With a HD 3850 you'll be able to game pretty well -- but I would not spend much more money upgrading your cpu and ram, in the long run it is better value to get a new system.

I sort of realized that when I couldn't upgrade my CPU.

I don't think I'll find a AGP card in my price range, so I might as well just wait I think. I still have the RAM, so I'll keep it. If I get a 400W power supply, I'll be able to use my current graphics card (Not the greatest but it killed the internet for some reason, turned out my power supply was crap) and that should be able to play my games, possible a few others on low detail.

Then when I have some money I can just get a new computer, probably in a few years. Or maybe next year, you never know.

Or I could just upgrade the motherboard... speaking of which, is it even possible to rip out the one I have in and replace it with a better one? Then I get a new CPU and possible a PCI-E graphics card, and anything else I'd need. Might actually be better then getting a new computer, though if its that much easier I could just get a new one.

In short, I will say, the max card I'd run in a P4 is a 7600GT, or a 2600 IF the price isn't much more. I have an Athlon 64 3400+/AGP HD3850, and before this HD3850, I had a 7600GT, I didn't get much gain in most of my games from the upgrade. CS:S, FEAR, they didn't really gain much from it. I got MORE fps, but Age of Conan, GRID, Crysis, (other 'very' recent games like those) did get nearly double the performance boost (although the card is 4x better than a 7600GT). The 3400+ is a bottleneck, even in single-core threaded games.

So, it's a rant. Take it how you want it.

This message was edited by Iceguy2003 on Nov 17 2008.

AGP is a dead end. Pretty much the best AGP system you could setup is going to just barely hit minimum requirements for 2008 games.

re:
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Or I could just upgrade the motherboard... speaking of which, is it even possible to rip out the one I have in and replace it with a better one? Then I get a new CPU and possible a PCI-E graphics card, and anything else I'd need. Might actually be better then getting a new computer, though if its that much easier I could just get a new one.
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This is totally possible. If you haven't done it before, it might be tough, but hey, you might find it sort of fun (at least I do anyways 8) ).

You might have a tough time reusing the RAM though, if you have a P4 ATM. It is probably DDR, whereas the prevalent standard now is DDR2.

If you are doing things on the cheap, you can still build a reasonable system. Like for 225$ you can get a dual core processor, functional motherboard, 2 gigs of ram and video card that is faster than any AGP card out (well ok, besides maybe the HD 3850 AGP which I believe is the fastest AGP card atm.)

If you need any recommendations or help just pm me or post...

It is DDR2 - so I think I should be able to reuse it, unless the motherboard I find uses DDR3 or something.

Only issues I see are the fact my drives use some old tech. IDE or something? When looking at motherboards, they all have SATA 2? I think that means I'd need to replace them. Meh, looking at CD/DVD drives, they're cheap, but having to replace my hard drive... I could use a bigger one anyway so I guess that doesn't matter much.

Can anyone tell me what IDE/SATA mean? All I can make sense of is that SATA seems to be a newer... I'll have to do some research.

In case this impacts anything, you can pick the 3850 AGP up for about $100, I know a lot of places rack the price up to around 130-150 though.

MWave

For the system, a new build seems to be a good idea for the long run, the 478 Pentium 4 is really at the end of the line, long stages, ineffective design, it was something for the time but not really anymore. If you kept to a decent value system with a good upgrade path you should be okay for avoiding as much re-purchasing as possible.

Just don't end up getting led down the wrong path on things, one of my friends tried to go for a longer term system and got into a Q6600 only to be informed that LGA775 =/= Socket 1366 and that he has to purchase a new mobo and cpu for the i7's.

Hmm, thanks for that. I think, however, I'll wait and upgrade the mobo and get a better cpu (Duo core looks nice). I'll look for a mobo with DDR2 RAM, so the 3gbs I bought won't be useless. Then I'll just have to find a decent PCI-E card and I should be set.

In the future I may built a whole computer scratch, but for now I'll look into a new mobo/CPU.

So, make a list of what you need.

Motherboard with s775 and Core2Duo support (If it has those, check that it is DDR2 and not DDR3)
^Motherboard must also support IDE, as you stated. My Asus P5B-e has a ton of S-ATA ports (too stoned to look right now), but I believe it's 6, and also has IDE. It's not even that new of a board, anymore.
C2D CPU
PCI-e Video Card

Now, are you going to need a new PSU? What card are you going to go with, now?

If your current case is a Dell, HP, etc., it may not be ATX form factor for a motherboard you get online, and the previous PSU 'may' not work.

This message was edited by Iceguy2003 on Nov 10 2008.

Sorry to jump on the end of this thread, but I'm looking to buy the HD 3850 and I had some questions about the PSU:

We are working with some rather subpar and older technology on our old Compaq Presario, but there's an 8x AGP slot so I wanted to get the last great AGP card out there:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102730

The motherboard it's going into can be found here:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00257657&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=501777

We don't really use it to play any FPS games, but we do play WoW and my girlfriend would like to play the Sims 2 and eventually I'd like to try out Spore. We've got the RAM maxed out at 2GB, so next (and hopefully last) upgrade to make is the video card. Thing is, the card above requires a 2x4 12V connector (Sapphire says to have at least 18A on the 12V rail). Does that mean I have to have 3 12V connectors (1 for the mobo, 2 for the video card?) Or am I misunderstanding something? Also, for the connection to the card, do the 12V lines have the 2x4 adapter already attached?

Also, if any of you could make a recommendation for what kind of PSU I will need to get to power the video card and our motherboard, I'd really appreciate it.

The noob thanks you all in advance!

schm0