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Thread: Will my system bottleneck a Sapphire X1950Pro 512meg?

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    Fun not Frags Geist's Avatar
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    Will my system bottleneck a Sapphire X1950Pro 512meg?

    I'm looking to upgrade the graphics card of my system as I do not want to buy a new rig at this time. Everything is fairly old though and I want to make sure that it would be worthwhile spending the money.

    Is my system to old to use the power of the new card?

    Looking at:
    512MB Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro AGP - Link to Scan.co.uk

    Current system:
    Asus AV8 Deluxe motherboard
    Athlon 64 running at 2GHz (3200?)
    Corsair TwinX1024-3200C2 Pro (1gb ddr)
    ATI x800Pro (Current gfx card to be replaced)
    Enermax 300 PSU (Not sure about the rating)
    - Cantankerous -
    - GSV - MarlinsUK - TNGC -

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    Folding Flunkie Webby's Avatar
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    Re: Will my system bottleneck a Sapphire X1950Pro 512meg?

    The question is not will your system bottleneck the card it should be, is your current graphics card bottlenecking your game playing?

    If the answer to that question is yes then any increase in card performance will increase gaming pleasure unless you are encountering CPU bottlenecking, which if you are not currently then a better graphics card will still give you better performance.

    Then you have different options, the x1950 pro is proabably the best card you will find with an AGP interface the are x1950xt out there as well but they are scarce and expensive. The question is do you want to spend £100 on a graphics card which will only last to your next motherboard, a x1650xt would be an upgrade as would a 2600xt (HIS do an overclocked 2600xt for £80 () or Sapphire do the non-overclocked from £72 (again eBuyer))

    The best Bang for Buck probably still comes from the x1950 pro though, its also worth noting that the are rumours of an AGP 38x0 card coming to the market soon which would out perform the x1950 and if priced similarly to the PCIe versions will be similar in price for a 3850 model.

    PSU wise if its a good stable 300w (continuous load rather than peak) it should be able to cope with almost anything you can fit in your AGP slot

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    Fun not Frags Geist's Avatar
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    Re: Will my system bottleneck a Sapphire X1950Pro 512meg?

    That is a question I have been asking myself for a while now.

    My main screen is a dell2407 so at those resolutions everything is limited on my system.

    What I don't know, is if I upgraded to the above card would I have little improvement as the other components limit it. If they did it would then make more sense to not upgrade at all.

    I was trying not to spend money on the system however if I could help it as any real upgrade would be a full system. With the new 9600s and new cpu's on there way I see no point in doing so.
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    Folding Flunkie Webby's Avatar
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      • 2GB OCZ Flex DDR2 PC2-9200 5-5-5-15 @ 1000MHz 4-4-4-12
      • Storage:
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    Re: Will my system bottleneck a Sapphire X1950Pro 512meg?

    More graphics memory will take some of the strain away from your system so that would be a benefit. But unless the is something that you really want to play that you currently can't it is probably worth waiting for the whole system upgrade.

    The alternative would be to find the extra £50 for a new S939 motherboard with a PCIe slot so you can get whatever graphics you want knowing that when you upgrade later your graphics will be fine. You will of course have wasted £50 on a motherboard you don't really need. You would also need to get some DDR2 but that is currently very cheap.

    The next step up from the MB upgrade is basically a whole system, which you want to avoid at the moment (from your first post).

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    Re: Will my system bottleneck a Sapphire X1950Pro 512meg?

    Thanks for the advice Webby.

    Always good to have another voice talk me out of spending money I dont have to.
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    Senior Member Pob255's Avatar
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    Re: Will my system bottleneck a Sapphire X1950Pro 512meg?

    Hard to say really, there were so many versions of the x800 that I cannot remember which were the good ones (I think nvidia is trying to best ATi's record with the all the 8800 versions)

    The first thing to ask is what you do with your PC, I'm guessing games (if not games then there is no point in upgradeing your graphics card)
    Load up some form of hardware monitoring program/utility before your favorite game and check on resource useage.
    Windows Task manager will give you a rough idea of memory and cpu usage
    Pritty sure there's a gpu monitor as part of the catalyst drivers.

    If you are haveing memory/cpu bottle necks then agressively keeping windows as "clean" as possible can often be a great help, trying to keep windows as clean as possible is generally good anyway.
    Some people use two pc's one solely for gameing the other for everything else, they don't even put active anti virus on the gameing pc. The best way to reduce virus risk is not to connect to the internet connecting for online gameing only is a fairly small risk, just NEVER browse the web, email or use any type of messenger on it that's what the 2nd pc is for.
    Ok that's rather an extreme view however make sure you're not running a load of pointless background tasks and when playing a game don't run any other active program.

    There are a few combined agp/pci-e motherboards out there that would alow for a step by step upgrade.
    The ASRock ones are a great example as they also have ddr or ddr2 compatibility as well, however they are harder to find now as most people have moved across to pci-e and ddr2, probably will not support the new cpu's ether.
    It still could be a relatively low cost option to do your upgrade one step at a time, well 6 months back, yes, now I'm not so sure but something to consider.

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    Re: Will my system bottleneck a Sapphire X1950Pro 512meg?

    x800xl is good
    x800xt as well

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