Claim "i dont think his pc wouldnt bottleneck the 7600gt. or perhaps the x1650pro? he could even give the x850pro a whack." http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware... http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cp... TMP-Man Asus P5P800-SE PAT P4 506 @ 4009Mhz 1.3625v Thermaltake CLP0024 w/ 1700RPM 92MM + AS5 2GB OCZ 2-3-2-5 DDR400 120GB/300GB 7200RPM HD Leadtek 7600 AGP 590/1600 VF700 ALCU AS5

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ok let me clean up the claim: his pc shouldnt *severely* bottleneck a card under $150. lol Zo

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The power supply is the key ingredient...it needs to be able to handle the added load a higher end card will put on it. Plus he needs another 512MB RAM.

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"ok let me clean up the claim: his pc shouldnt *severely* bottleneck a card under $150." How much the card costs is irrelevant. A P4 2GHz machine cannot drive even a 9800 Pro to its full potential, even if it had a gig or two of RAM. How in the world then would it not severely bottleneck a 7600GT?! "Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion! Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution! The ripple effect is too good not to mention. If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"

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Since when does an IT guy know anything about hardware? ;-)

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Remember, I was a hardware enthusiast before I was an IT guy. :-) "Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion! Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution! The ripple effect is too good not to mention. If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"

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I'm not trying to start a fight here (hell, I even tried bribing myself to keep my trap shut and not post what I wrote below), but I really have to disagree with this: "A P4 2GHz machine cannot drive even a 9800 Pro to its full potential" I've seen both a 9800 Pro and an X800XT run on a Pentium III-S (yes, pentium THREE) overclocked to 1.6GHz (up from 1.4), and got a massive boost, not only with synthetic benchmarks but also with real games. I just finished off NFS: Most Wanted on this machine, and it ran a LOT better with the X800XT @ 580/600. My eye told me I was getting around 30 fps at 1280x1024, 2x AA, and high details. That's much better than what the 9800Pro--running the same game on the same P3 machine--could muster: around 15fps according to my eye. Yes, the P3 was bottlenecking the x800XT card (running the same game with the same display settings on an Athlon 64 3800, the card was cranking out around 40fps). But still, even with the P3 @ 1.6 proving to be a bottleneck, it was definitely worth it to use the newer card, as it was able to show a huge boost in performance over the 9800 Pro. This is what a person choosing to buy a new video card wants! A performance boost that will justify the cash he spent! He's not looking to completely maximize the GPU's peformance, as that would involve spending hours looking at "CPU Scaling Charts" and strategically choosing the parts to build a new PC that's the 'perfect fit' for whichever GPU he wants. He's just looking to maximize the gaming performance of his current PC by simply buying a new midrange card to replace a hopelessly old one and then enjoying the experience! I am confident that the OP will, with a little more RAM, enjoy a nice boost going from his current card (most Dell 8200s came with Geforce 2 or 4MXs) to something like a 9800 Pro or even a 7600GT. I'm not trying to start a war here, I'm just stating my PNSHO (Perhaps Not So Humble Opinion). You're all probably glad to know that I will not voice this PNSHO again (takes too much typing. :) My Super P3: Pentium III-S 1.4GHz @ 1.58GHz, 512K L2 X800XT All-in-wonder, overclocked to 580/600. 250GB HD 2 gigs of PC2100 RAM QDI Advance 12 mobo, this baby rocks! SB Audigy 2

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Well, your logic is flawed. If you go from anything crappy to a card that will be bottlenecked by your rig, you're going to see "a huge boost". That's not the issue here. The question is should he spend more money on a 7600GT over say a 9800 Pro on that rig. The answer is no. He also mentioned several games which the minimum system requirements are above what his processor is, such as Battlefield 2. That means no matter what he puts in for a video card, he will according to the game developer not be able to run the game. So, for a game like Half Life 2 that has a min spec his system meets, yes, he'll see a significant boost in performance. But for BF2, he's see a significant boost from "no way you can run this game" to "close to being able to run the game". Who cares at that point? "Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion! Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution! The ripple effect is too good not to mention. If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"

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I don't see any logic myself in buying a 7600GT when it's not going to be used even close to its fullest, because you have the cpu bottlenecking it unless you plan on upgrading the cpu to something much faster and adding another 512mb of ram in as well. Not to mention an upgrade on the psu to handle all of this. The 9800 would be the best option overall, because it's not going to bottleneck the gpu nearly as much as a 7600GT and the 9800 consumes less power then the 7600GT which will be better for the psu he has in there. AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz 2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200 Nvidia 7900GT SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0+1 Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

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Actually the 7600gt consumes less power than the radeon 9800 pro... But radeon 9600pro consumes the least so getting one of those isn't bad for his system after all... P4 2.0Ghz + 9600pro + 250 watt dell el-cheapo power supply = good match http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vi... http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vi... ============================================ Finally if you have money to burn, perhaps you should slap in a radeon x1950pro agp to replace your current x800xt agp and see if that does some "serious" bottleneck with your P3 o/c 1.6Ghz... TMP-Man Asus P5P800-SE PAT P4 506 @ 4009Mhz 1.3625v Thermaltake CLP0024 w/ 1700RPM 92MM + AS5 2GB OCZ 2-3-2-5 DDR400 120GB/300GB 7200RPM HD Leadtek 7600 AGP 590/1600 VF700 ALCU AS5

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Thanks for the advice.I think with a 300 watt power supply and old hardware my choices are limited, dont matter though. I am planning on getting a new PC for gaming soon.

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"perhaps you should slap in a radeon x1950pro agp to replace your current x800xt agp and see if that does some "serious" bottleneck with your P3 o/c 1.6Ghz..." Actually, I'd love to see how a 1950Pro would run on this rig. If only stores offered a GPU Rental Service... :-) My Super P3: Pentium III-S 1.4GHz @ 1.58GHz, 512K L2 X800XT All-in-wonder, overclocked to 580/600. 250GB HD 2 gigs of PC2100 RAM QDI Advance 12 mobo, this baby rocks! SB Audigy 2

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They do it's called newegg OOPS. :) AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ OC 2.7ghz 2GB Dual Channel DDR 3200 Nvidia 7900GT SATA II 2x 300gig 7200rpm 16mb cache RAID-0+1 Gigabyte Nforce 4 SLI

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