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im running a amd athlon 1900+ on a abit KG7 raid mother board, with 512 pc2100, 120 gig WD hard drive w8mb cach, and a radeon 8500 64mb video. i would like to know what i might be able to do to run the newer games better. overclocking or will i have to replace the whole thing wich i cant afford nowlet alone a new 400 dollar graphics card
You have a relatively solid, but older system. Overclocking probably isn't gonna help all that much. A new video card would though. Who said you'd have to spend $400?? The 8500 was a great card in it's day, but 64mb is a bit weak for today's games. You should be able to find a card for under $100 that'll give you decent performance. The catch is your motherboard only supports 2X AGP at 3.3v, or 4X AGP at 1.5v, so be very careful when choosing a new card. Get a card that has 128mb RAM & make sure it's 128-bit...if you want DirectX 9 support, get a Radeon 9500 or higher, or an nVidia FX5200 or higher. Always read the specs. Try Newegg.com - even if you don't buy from there, they have detailed specs on everything they sell & there's usually product reviews too. Here's a site with benchtest comparisons:
http://www.digital-daily.com/video/vga-roundup/
And here's several sites that review your board & explain how to overclock it:
http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=140
http://www.ocworkbench.com/hardware/abit/kg7raid/kg7raidp1.htm
http://www.exhardware.com/reviews.php?Id=47
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/abitkg7-raid2.php
http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0yMjQmdXJsX2hpc3Rvcnk9LTI=
Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @8x210mhz
512mb PC3200
Ti4200/8X 128mb
WDC 60GB
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ya a newer card would be a big help for ya
im running a gainward fx5700 256mb i picked up at newegg.com
i play alot of the newer games and i have everything set on high and it works great
ive used it for HL2 and battlefield vietnam and COD
if it were me id also get a 512 stick of pc2700 and OC alittle
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You can't run an ATI Radeon x300 unless you have pci express, which you don't because pci express motherboards wern't avaliable to AMD's until recently. The new 939 AMD 64's motherboards are the only AMD motherboards that supports pci exrpess x16.
ATI Radeon x300 are the bottom of the line ATI Radeon graphic cards for pci express x16, but with that said it is better then the 8500 you are looking at.
You can get ATI's Radeon 9250 8/4x 1.5v card 128mb with TV/DVI out for only 50 bucks on newegg.
Link
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-131-255&depa=1
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It would be but i don't know if you can get an 9800 1.5v though. I am pretty sure you can't get a 9800 Pro with 1.5v. I maybe wrong. but seening as the pro series is the high end series I would think it would run on 3.3v
What you should do is find out what voltage your agp is, then go to ATi's website and find out what card is compatible with what voltage setting on your 8x or 4x agp slot.
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"I maybe wrong. but seening as the pro series is the high end series I would think it would run on 3.3v"
Most high end 8X cards run at 0.8v
Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @8x210mhz
512mb PC3200
Ti4200/8X 128mb
WDC 60GB
0
From ATI:
"System Requirements
RADEON® 9800 Series of products requires connection to your PC's internal power supply for operation. Consult your system builder or OEM to ensure your system has an adequate power supply. Otherwise, ATI recommends a 300-Watt power supply or greater to ensure normal system operation where a number of other internal devices are installed.
Intel® Pentium® 4, AMD® Athlon® or higher with AGP 8X (0.8v), 4X (1.5V) or Universal AGP 3.0 bus configuration (8X/4X)
128MB of system memory
Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
DVD playback requires DVD drive9800 cards should run just fine in a 1.5v slot.
Here's one guy with a 9800XT in a KG7 board.
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=2315295
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Don't go for that low budget cards. Those FX52xx and Ati 92xx cards can theoretically do DirectX 9 but in reality they are too slow to really benefit from it.
I made very good experiences by using a MSI FX5900XT-VTD128 with my old Asus A7V133 board with Athlon TBird 1,2@1,33GHz and 512MB SD Ram. It really speed that old thing up and allowed me to play games I barely reached the cpu minimal requirements at high grapic settings (for example: Knights of the Old Republic at 1280x1024 with 4x Antialiasing and 8x Anisotrope filtering) and out of curiosity I also tested Doom3 and was surprised it ran okay at a lower graphic setting. But I never really played Doom3 on that system because I only borrowed it for a few hours from a friend (never thought it would even start!) !!!
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