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Ive currently got a Pentium 4 2.0ghz with 600mb ram, and a nvidia ti4400 graphics card. Im probably going to be upgrading to an athlon 64 3200 with 1gig of ram. If I didnt upgrade the gfx card would it be a major bottleneck for the system? If so, what card would be recommended, i can probably afford £150 budget for one.
Go for a Radeon 9800 Pro.
can be had for that amount, and a damn good card
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nuff sed really ;)
might be worth waiting till next gen cards are released and get a 9800pro at a cheaper price as ur ti4400 should handle all games comfortably for a wee while yet :)
If u need a new gfx card and u have £150 then it has to be a 9800pro.
Yeah either a 9800pro or 9800xt if you wanna spend a little bit more.
No, don't spend any more to get an XT. Your 9800pro will slice through anything, and unless you are very unlucky, will overclock to XT core and mem speeds anyway.
9800pro is a bargain, if you can get it for £150 or below. Don't pay any more than this, for the XT, with the new cores just around the corner.
Is there anyway to shut the 9800's up? They a tad noisy and most of the devices i cant fit into my shuttle!
You can 'shut up' a 9800pro by putting a heat-pipe cooler on it, and removing the fan. The Zalman ZM80-C is a good one, even with optional fan, as its nearly silent.
Not good for your Shuttle though, as its far from small.
If you have the money go and buy an radeon 9800 pro. As that system will keep you happy for quite some time, so there is really no need to got 64 bit just yet. But obviosuly its nice ot have the best :)
Just a tip about the Athlon 64 3200, if you were planning on upgrading the 64 in the near future (a year or so) it's a good idea to wait as the socket 754 is going to be phased out in roughly 6 months or so for a new socket 939. So, if you wait roughly 6 months or so the new socket will be realeased and then you will be easily be able to upgrade processor. The Athlon 64 FX is going to get socket 939 aswell, so you could easily upgrade to an FX in the future. Just informing you of that, it's pretty annoying that you won't be able to upgrade a brand new processor without shelling out for a new motherboard. Very nice processor tho, good choice anyway, shame about the upgradablity tho.