Would a 256Mb 850XT to 512Mb 1950Pro solve all my problems? (AGP)

Hey,

This is very like the age-old question of 850XT vs 1950pro, but not. I'm still on AGP and have a 256MB 850XT. I've been the proud owner of a 2407WP dell monitor for a while now, but haven't really played games on it because my graphics card isn't up to the resolution (1920 x 1200). I'm too poor to upgrade my whole computer. I was thinking of selling my 850XT on ebay for £50 ish and buying a 512MB 1950pro for about £120 ish. What do you guys reckon? A worthy move for someone who's too poor to upgrade to PCI-E? I know performance wise there's not much in it, but it's the memory I'm after really. I just want to run my games at the monitors native resolution and for them to look pretty =)

PS. ATM I play Battlefield 2, Farcry, C&C3 ...

The rest of my system: P4 3Ghz @ 3.5Ghz, 1GB Generic Crucial, Lanparty 875B, Antec 550W PSU...

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/graphi...=725&chart=279

shoudl give you some answers :)

Cheers MrP, I don't really play those games, but I guess it gives a reasonable comparison.

Can I assume that those fps wouldn't change too much with the 512Mb verson of 1950Pro, and that the extra memory would just allow me to play at 1920 x 1200.

What I want to know is if you guys were in my position, would this 'upgrade' be something you would do? There's little point in such a beautiful monitor if I can't play at it's native res. (PCI-E is not an option)

Not quite what you asked for but...

You don't say which pinout P4 you own, but it sounds like you might be a candidate for the Asrock Dual VSTA motherboard. Lets you use AGP or PCIe, DDR or DDR2, P4 or C2D and hence slowly upgrade. Cheap too.

Just a thought.

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Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix

Not quite what you asked for but...

You don't say which pinout P4 you own, but it sounds like you might be a candidate for the Asrock Dual VSTA motherboard. Lets you use AGP or PCIe, DDR or DDR2, P4 or C2D and hence slowly upgrade. Cheap too.

Just a thought.

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That would have been swell, but unfortunately it's a socket 478. Thanks anyway though!

Personally i would rather spend <£40 on a new stick of ram than £120 on an outdated graphics card on an outdated slot. Wont allow you to play things native res but will give u quite a boost. Maybe try and keep an eye on ebay or hexus selling forum see if you can pick a better graphics card up second hand

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Originally Posted by Biscuit

Personally i would rather spend <£40 on a new stick of ram than £120 on an outdated graphics card on an outdated slot. Wont allow you to play things native res but will give u quite a boost. Maybe try and keep an eye on ebay or hexus selling forum see if you can pick a better graphics card up second hand

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Unfortunatey I can't afford the cutting edge, and whilst it may be an outdated slot I understand that the AGP bus is not saturated so an x1950 PCI-E is comparable in performance to its AGP brother.

As far as the X1950 being outdated, surely that's the same with any card that isn't an 8800GTXTXTXTX? I was under the impression that the X1950pro was still the bang-per-buck champion. I was going along fine with my X850XT @ 1280x1024 until I upgraded my monitor, so my upgrade is purely for resolution purposes (but a bit of extra performance wouldn't hurt). I thought I may aswell go for the 512MB x1950pro? I'm happy to ride the wave of mediocrity until my finances improve.

I think I could do with a little more RAM, but graphics is first - A performance boost in the none native resolution area would only allow me to play my games a little faster at an ugly resolution, and that's no fun.

Or maybe I've got this all wrong.... Opinions are very welcome!

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Originally Posted by Bhazza

As far as the X1950 being outdated, surely that's the same with any card that isn't an 8800GTXTXTXTX? I was under the impression that the X1950pro was still the bang-per-buck champion. I was going along fine with my X850XT @ 1280x1024 until I upgraded my monitor, so my upgrade is purely for resolution purposes (but a bit of extra performance wouldn't hurt). I thought I may aswell go for the 512MB x1950pro? I'm happy to ride the wave of mediocrity until my finances improve.
!

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Yeah ur right the 1950/7900 is the bang for buck leader atm but what i meant by picking a better GFX card up was one of these 2nd hand... dont see the point in spending all that money on a new one, espcially if its just to tied u over till u can afford a full upgrade. Plus if you can pick up a second hand card similar/slightly better to what you have but with the extra g-ram then you cud maybe afford the memory aswell :)

You're a wise man biscuit, thanks for your advice ;-)

no problems, glad to help

512MB wont make any difference IMO.. if you can settle for a 256MB X1950pro is should easily tide you over to the next big upgrade..

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Originally Posted by sawyen

512MB wont make any difference IMO.. if you can settle for a 256MB X1950pro is should easily tide you over to the next big upgrade..

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You sure? I thought for resolutions around 1920 x 1200 with some AA and AF more than 256MB was a must. My 256MB X850XT certainly agrees with me...

Just like the X1800XT, the mem wont make that much difference if you think about it.. the slower core will be spending alot of its time trying to crunch through fillrates. Yes, on some titles it will bring some benefits, maybe 5-10&#37;, but if it wont run well on a 256MB X1950Pro, it wouldnt run all that well with 512MB..

The res mode is true if you have a fast enough GPU, like a 8800GTS.. the 320MB and 640MB versions does show their benefits under higher res.

I'd agree, 2nd hand can be a better deal a x1950pro or x1950xt should be a marked improvement.
you can actually get a 7950GT in agp if you want to go nvidia.
Don't bother with 512mb, instead get the 256 and some more ram that should give better performance than the 512

Remember it's not just the faster GPU but also more pipes and higher memory bandwidth.

Ok guys, cheers. But if the consensus is that 512MB isn't going to help me with my resolutions and I already have a 256MB X850XT is an X1950pro really gonna make that much of a difference? (I would overclock it, as I have done with the X850XT).

Can't really find many reasonable second hand AGP cards on hexus or ebay...

Yes it will, on the basis the the X1950Pro will have a faster core.. more memory bandwidth and of course a more efficient IQ..