would it be worth it to upgrade my vid card?

[eelman]

My current system is:
amd athlon 1000 mhz
384 megs of pc 133 ram
40 gig hard drive
geforce 2 mx200
sound blaster live 5.1
250 watt power supply

well i was reading threads and i read if your cpu is not very fast and you get a high end vid card then your cpu will not be able to keep up with your vid car i.e. bottle neck the vid card i wanna upgrade to is a pny geforce 4 ti 4200 64 meg will i get a performance increase in my games? any help greatly apreciated

 

[cdogg]

Upgrading from a GeForce2 MX, which supports 32MB SGRAM, to a GeForce4 Ti4200, which supports 128MB DDR SDRAM, would be a huge increase. Depending on the games you play, there would be a significant improvement in fill rate as well as frame rates. Plus, you'll be able to play at higher resolutions with detail turned all the way up hardly sacrificing in performance.

Definitely worth the investment since the Ti4200's are only around $100 now...

If you're CPU was less than 800MHz, then that would be the bigger bottleneck. But since that's not the case, I would focus more on the video card. You may want to consider upgrading to an XP1700+ or higher running on DDR SDRAM in the near future. You'll already have a decent card (Ti4200) to go with your new CPU/motherboard/RAM when the time comes...

Good luck!


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[eelman]

wow thanx alot i was worried about my cpu not being fast enough!

 

[paparazi]

You're fine! a 1 gig Athlon isn't going to restrict a GF4 4200Ti very much, and as important the chipset on a relatively new socket A motherboard is also going to allow the 4200 to stretch it's legs.
Expect drastic improvements in performance, well worth the upgrade. Martin
Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[gargouille]

The bang for the buck video card right now is the high end ATI cards: 7500 up to 9000...can be had for around $80 or less...64 MB onboard RAM.
Paid $67 last nite for a new one to replace my GeForce3 Ti200.

 

[urbankhaos]

Guys,

I know this sounds like I'm being a bit of a stick in the mud, but hadn't this guy better check that his motherboard support the GeForce 4 standard???

I'm lead to believe the mainboard has to be compliant and support an alternative voltage for the AGP.

Just a thought,

UrbanK.

Merry Christmas to one and all...

 

[Wassup393]

Actually I think that it's most likely that the Geforce 4 will work, as long as he has enough wattage output from his power supply then there should be no problem with extra drag on the power. Also 99% of motherboards this new will be compliant.

In my own knowledge of course,

Wassup393