Graphics card advice for 4x AGP motherboard

[pussycat]

Hi

My motherboard has a 4x AGP slot.
I have been advised by XFX that all of their 8x AGP cards are compatible with a 4x slot.
Will I see the benefit of a better card or will my 4X AGP slot slow down its performance?

I was thinking of buying the

256Mb XFX AGP GeForce 6200A AGP TV/DVI

or

256MB ScanFX AGP GEFORCE 6200A TV/DVI - * Silent Cooled *

I am currently playing World of Warcraft using the onboard graphics
and finding the game looks pretty poor.

All advice appreciated.

[herulach]

To be fair, both of those are pretty damn poor too You wont loose performance with agp 4x, on any card, If you can stretch to it id reccomend either a x1300 or 6600 part, 6200s are pretty damn low end cards.

[MSIC]

There is hardly any improvement between 4x and 8x (maybe 5% at best?), so don't worry about that.
What is your budget? For £61, this 6600 would be a much better bet for World Of Warcraft, although it can depend on the rest of your system as a whole.
If you want to give details on your whole PC system, as well as your monitor, i would be happy to recommend some choices at a range of prices...

[pussycat]

Hi

Thanks for your advice

I have an Intel Pentium 4, 2400 MHz
an IBM 830541G motherboard
512 MB (PC2100 DDR SDRAM) memory
and a Sony CPD-G520 [21" CRT] monitor

It was given to me , it was used in an office before
so the motherboard only has two memory slots.

I am longing to play Warcraft at prettier settings.

[YorkieBen]

well for £140 you could get:


LN10667 128Mb Gigabyte Geforce N6600 (NV43) 300/550Mhz (128bit),8Pipeline,DVI,DX9.1c £63.94 £75.13

you could also buy some more ram (are both ram slots used or not?)

you can get 1 gig of RAM for about £55 or so.

[MSIC]

Can't find much info on that system using google, and i dont think that 830541G is the motherboard as such, but the general name of the system.
If you could download and run CPU-Z (you dont even need to install it as such, just run it) it will give you more info on your motherboard that you could post back here.
I ask that because it'll give more info on exactly what sort of RAM you can use (DDR 266, 333 or 400), as well as telling you whether you have 1 stick of 512MB or 2 of 256.

A system will generally improve using 1 gigabyte of RAM compared to 1/2 a gig, but this could cost you anywhere from £27 to £60 ish.
As for the monitor, you'd probably be able to display up to 1600 x 1200 resolution (at a best guess) although the graphics cards in the £50 ish range won't be able to output that at playable framerates, and you may have to consider something like a GeForce 6800GS AGP, although i'd debate whether the rest of your system would do it justice. A 128MB 6600GT may be a good compromise for a fairly balanced system if you can stretch to £100 for a graphics card.

[MSIC]

Additional:
Just found out that the graphics card (6600 GT, 128MB, AGP) is on special offer under Scan's 'Today Only' section £90.48 instead of the £98.69 that it appears when you click on the link.
Usually lasts until approx 11am tomorrow...

[teachmech]

I'll second MISC a 6600GT agp would be a good upgrade to your graphics.

[YorkieBen]

Can't find much info on that system using google, .

http://www.hd.nl/spec/PCJ41NU.htm


may want to look harder

[Vega]

Do power supplies come into buying a 6600GT ?

[MSIC]

may want to look harder

Will do mate. But it still didnt point out the motherboard, and i'd be not keen on trusting the info there saying PC2100 supported without knowing more.
As for power supplies, well, its a fair question and i cant easily answer that but can you read any labels that are stuck on the power supply?
A graphics card will certainly use extra power when there wasnt one before, but most systems actually use far less than many people think, and yours may run currently in the 100 - 120 W range, so you'd probably be fine.

[MSIC]

I'll amend the above, just used PSU calculator and reckon you probably use 180 to 200W currently, but the 6600GT will only add approx 20W to that, so an extra 10% should be ok for any system.

[Vega]

Not sure but do you also need a spare molex for the 6600GT ?

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=219245

[pussycat]

Hi

I used Everest software to get my system info.

Motherboard:
CPU Type Intel Pentium 4, 2400 MHz (18 x 133)
Motherboard Name IBM 830541G
Motherboard Chipset Intel Brookdale-G i845G
System Memory 512 MB (PC2100 DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type Phoenix (06/03/03)

I have two 256 strips of memory.

I was looking at these three cards

256Mb Asus AGP N6600LE-TD Tv/DVI Retail
256MB ScanFX AGP GEFORCE 6200A TV/DVI - * Silent Cooled *
256Mb XFX AGP GeForce 6200A AGP TV/DVI

Is the 6600 noticably better than the 6200 ?

[Vega]

Yes the 6600 is a step up , have a search around

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=288483
try to get ddr3 memory

Overclockers.co.uk do their deals of the week on thursdays so have a look there

but for the 6600 i think you need a spare molex ( 4 pin) connector from power supply

[DavidM]

And of course if you want to request a particular offer for the card.. the link in my sig should prove very handy