fool Posted March 30, 2008 Report Share Posted March 30, 2008 A while back I posted about specs and ideas for a new PC. I ended up getting what seems to be just fine for me. Now I'm looking to improve the performance of the old machine so it will last a little while longer and hopefully play some of the more recent games. Spec is an Athlon XP1800 in an ASUS A7V333 MB with 1GB of RAM. Graphics card is a Radeon 8500 which seems to be the weakest link. Finding an AGP card is getting harder so I'd like to find something decent that will last out the lifetime of the rest of the hardware. Looking around I see Radeon 9550 cards and in a couple of places X1650. I know neither of these are particularly high end but wondering if they might be good enough for most current games. What else might be worth considering without blowing 10k Baht just on a video card? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neo Posted March 30, 2008 Report Share Posted March 30, 2008 Video cards are lagging behind games these days. Even the most expensive and powerful video card today cannot handle Crysis cranked up at full res & detail. You are using an 8500 which is a 14th generation old card and talking about replacing it with a 13th generation old card (X1650) so I can't think you are going to be very impressed. Note the 9550 you are looking at is furthermore a 18 generations old card. Check this guide for insights on finding the right AGP card: Best AGP below $120 Best AGP $170..215 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fool Posted March 30, 2008 Author Report Share Posted March 30, 2008 Thanks for the thoughts. I seem to have a hard time getting to grips with where the video cards all relate to each other. So far as the HD2600 series goes I have an HD2600XT 256MB GDDR3 in my new machine and I'm very satisfied with its performance so far. Runs all I have wanted to date but was bought as a sort of stop gap. If I could find one here in AGP that is probably what I would buy for the older machine, either that or if I could get one for a good price maybe the 3850. Problem seems to be where to buy. At Zeer they have very little now available in AGP so finding a newer card is going to be hard I think. Seen any of these newer cards at Panthip maybe? Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jon46 Posted March 30, 2008 Report Share Posted March 30, 2008 Best is Nividia 8800GT around $200 in the US. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drogon Posted March 30, 2008 Report Share Posted March 30, 2008 Neo, we have been testing crysis with all settings at the maximum on some of our machines -> the framerate was excellent....... (and I am talking about the company producing the game) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shygye Posted March 30, 2008 Report Share Posted March 30, 2008 Are you running a dual card system? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neo Posted March 31, 2008 Report Share Posted March 31, 2008 Neo, we have been testing crysis with all settings at the maximum on some of our machines-> the framerate was excellent....... (and I am talking about the company producing the game) The source seem a little biased...I mean the company that makes the game claims the frame rates are excellent. Well I have a 8800 and Crysis frame rates are crap. The 9800GX2 was released just weeks ago and is the very most powerful card you can buy yet 3rd party benchmarks from THG reveal a meager 18fps running Crysis at 1920x1200 high quality, unplayable by gamer standards. The review slammed the card overall due to poor performance when cranking up quality on games and recommended waiting for something better to come out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drogon Posted March 31, 2008 Report Share Posted March 31, 2008 Shygie: Yes Neo: No bias, especially since I the company is a big mess (but colleagues are great, I am working for this company -> I am not the company, only the HQ management is saying that EA produces only great games -> QA has a slightly different point of view ((example: Our internal survey gave a 2 on a scale of 10 for army of two) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.