GFX card upgrade advice please

[Whiternoise]

Hey all, i've decided to do an upgrade that will last me until the DX10's and all the new stuff comes out..

My FX5700 is getting a bit outdated, and i want something that can run oblivion better . I'm looking for a cheap AGP card to replace it (£150 max), i'd rather go with Nvidia if possible, just i'm stuck for choice of what to get - i was thinking something like this: POV 512mb 6800XT, but i don't really know.

If anyone has any ideas, suggestions (and prefferably somewhere to buy from) it would be much appreciated

Mobo: Asus K8V-MX (should be )

Thanks, Josh.

PS. Not really for here, but i may as well ask it - my ram is at 768mb (512+256 - two slots on the mobo), is it worth upgrading that too, i was thinking 2gb if i can afford it?

[rainbow]

ebay 6800gt all that needs to be said on the matter

[Whiternoise]

thanks for the superfast reply , but I don't really fancy using Ebay (i'm not into the whole auction thing, even if you can buy straight away) - if possible, i'd like to buy new (or if someone here has a second hand one... )

[Sumanji]

I'd really consider making the jump to PCI-E dude... won't work out that expensive in the long run! And definitley 2Gb of RAM, newer games will run a lot smoother especially with the high end settings turned on.

[Whiternoise]

Yah i wondered about that, but i'm hard for cash, and upgrading to PCI-e would involve a new processor, mobo as well as the new graphics card.

[dreamy_betty]

Yah i wondered about that, but i'm hard for cash, and upgrading to PCI-e would involve a new processor, mobo as well as the new graphics card.

Well, there DO exist some 754-boards with a PCIe slot. This may just be a good idea because the price-performance ratio of AGP cards has been pretty low for a while and some models are simply not available (yet).

I'd suggest a motherboard like Gigabyte GA-K8NE (which costs about £ 29 here in Europe/Austria) which allows you to use all your current hardware like processor or RAM. Then you got enough selection for the right nVidia PCIe card.

For roughly £ 110-120 you can get a 7600 GT model from various manufacturers. If that's too expensive, look out for ex works overclocked models of 7600 GS like the XFX 7600 GS Extreme or ASUS Extreme N7600GS TOP which run at/above 500Mhz instead of the original 400 - they're usually around £ 80-90 and can almost reach 7600 GT performance.

Beware: these prices are taken from Austrian/German onlineshops and converted to GBP, so there will be differences to local shops.