What's better?

[Bounty_Bam]

Which GPU is the better (AGP)? Or best value for money? Basically I want to be able to play the layest games with some decent graphical power. Especially STALKER on full whack My current card can run on maximum, its just I can't enable 'grass-shadows' or 'sun-shadows' STALKER recommends Geforce 7900 / ATI Radeon X1850. I currently have ATI Radeon 9550

Radeon X1950XT <--- the one I'm thinking of
256MB GDDR3
48 Parallel Pixel Pipelines
Shader Model 3.0


or


Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 2600Pro 512MB AGP 8x HD 2600 Pro <--- heard this is not that good for the cash


or


Gainward BLISS 7900GS AGP TV Dual DVI Golden Sample 512 Mb GDDR3 (AGP) <--- pretty pricey


Its either these AGP boards, or I get a new motherboard that takes PCI-E... but then again can you get one that also takes Pentium 4 (3.0Ghz), SDRAM DDR PC3200 / 64-bit Memory Modules??



Anyway, sorry for rambling on, and advice would be greatly apprechiated!

[SiM]

TBH, its not really worth spending any money upgrading a P4 AGP system... You are better off saving up and buying a &#163;300-400 c2d setup...

[Bounty_Bam]

Right ok, what Dual Core processor would you recommend?

[SiM]

Right ok, what Dual Core processor would you recommend?

Depends on your budget... but for mid range systems the E8400 is very good value...

[Bounty_Bam]

Thanks

How much do they range at?

And how much do the top dual cores go for?

[NightshadowUK]

&#163;130 from Scan. The top model will be the E8500 for &#163;185 but it's not worth it for a measly 160MHz, especially when you consider overclocking.

Post a thread in the main Hardware section with a budget and you'll get more feedback than you ever really wanted.

[Bounty_Bam]

OK! Thanks alot for your help

[Bounty_Bam]

Having a little problem posting a new thread in the hardware forum.. can you recommend a good C2D Motherboard? Slot 775. Preferably with 4 RAM slots

[SiM]

Of course, this depends on your needs... but this is a good deal:
http://forums.hexus.net/current-barg...r-58-69-a.html

[Bounty_Bam]

Cool, seems nice, although its £70+ now as the deal for £58 has finished. But I've jotted the model down

Im friends with the owner of a pc shop down my road, what Im doing is jotting a spec down, then getting a quote for the parts. So yeah thanks again for your advice, its greatly apprechiated.

[TooNice]

If you do end up stuck between those three choices, go for the X1950XT. Chances are though, you'll be able to find something better for cheaper (if I am not mistaken, enthusiast AGP cards are not actually cheaper given that it's becoming a niche).

[fraps]

Radeon X1950XT

[freddie]

i'm in a similar boat regarding having a P4 system. it's blown the motherboard so I'll be getting a E2160, Gigabyte 45nm compatible motherboard, probably 4 gig of ram a 500gb hard disk and not decided on which graphic card. All that should be had for about &#163;200-&#163;250! which isnt half bad. I'll overclock the E2160 a bit, because it only has 1mb cache it's not as fast as the full blown chips, but it's cheap and maybe in a year I'll get a penryn quad in it as an upgrade.

I think AMD do an AGP version of theor 3850 or even 3870, I have seen it somewhere. That'll do pretty well for your old system, but the CPU technology might end up as the bottleneck!