System Hardware Problems

[davetboy_19]

Ok, I have quite a bad computer system that will be replaced shortly. Currently I have a very slow and annoying AMD Athlon XP 3000+ (Really 2.1 GHz) and 758ish Mb of RAM with a NVidia GeForce FX 5200....Yes I know its lame. I'm going to toss out the RAM an drop in two 1 Gig RAM Cards (can only be DDR 1 so its a 400 Htz bus speed) and a new 512MB Graphics card (any recommendations? AGP type cards only, will go as low as 256 cards if need be) , My question is, will this stop my low/some times shaky frame rate? My internet connection is fast and works perfect so its no problem at all.

And for my new system thats on the way what sort of things should I be looking at buying? I'm building it from scratch and not looking to spend more than $1000 AUS if I can. ( Nothing to do with AMD...at all thanks)

[thepalerider]

I saw this on Pricewatch
supports direct 10 AGP cardPrice: $78.18
Free Ground Shipping

Heres the list of 512 AGP cards

[Deadfast]

Originally Posted by thepalerider

I saw this on Pricewatch
supports direct 10 AGP cardPrice: $78.18

I don't recommend the 2xxx series for AGP. ATI is incompetent to make decent drivers for them. I'm commenting this as an owner of HD 2600XT (I'm forced to run with Catalyst 8.3 and it took them "only" 2 years to develop a working Linux driver...).

[davetboy_19]

Originally Posted by thepalerider

I saw this on Pricewatch
supports direct 10 AGP cardPrice: $78.18
Free Ground Shipping

Heres the list of 512 AGP cards

Cant use them at all, must be compatible with DDR SDRAM RAM. All those are DDR 2 only.

I have a slightly bad feeling that 512MB Video cards are DDR 2 only and the best I can get is 256MB on DDR SDRAM.

Just wondering if one of these cards are worth my money and how much better they are than my current card - (current card is a Nvidia GeForce FX5200 128MB)

Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256 Mb AGP Graphics Card - Product Details, Information and Specifications - MyShopping.com.au

or

Hightech ATI RADEON X1050 256 Mb AGP Graphics Card - Product Details, Information and Specifications - MyShopping.com.au

Or if you know of something better than both of those that wont really break the bank (nothing about $200) than please list it.

[thepalerider]

AGP video card must be compatible with DDR SDRAM RAM?
What motherboard are you using?
The GDDR3 and GDDR4 ram is being used in the newest PCIE cards not AGP. I have a Radeon X1950 CrossFire Edition
(PCIE)I believe uses the GDDR4 ram but It runs fine on my rig thats running ddr400 ram.
Micro-Star Model : W7125NF1 V1.1 011606 10
Chipset : nVidia nForce4 & Ultra MCP


Anyone feel free to educate me but, I thought
video cards don't share their ram with the motherboard.
My understanding was if you had a lot of system ram
but had a small video card you could "give" some to the card but that was just reserving some system ram
for the card to write to when it needs more space, cause its always faster to keep data in ram and not read from the hard disk(slow).
The video card uses its own on board ram with the south bridge acting as the controller (like a traffic cop slowing down traffic as needed)
for PCI,PCIE, USB, ect.
The north bridge controls the cpu and motherboard ram.
I like to think of it as the north bridge being the (FAST)freeway that goes downtown ending at the South bridge(slower),
with the South bridge being a large number of off/on ramps used for slower down town traffic.
PCI,PCIE,Firewire ect. are on ramps to the highway that are getting larger all the time.
Larger(wider) bandwidth just means it can hander more traffic faster.

AGP,USB, pcie ect. are industry standards manufactures have agreed to
so they can keep their costs down and their markets as wide as possible.
We as consumers benefit when we can go out and buy a video card thats gonna work on our computer
as long as we get the right "standard" the motherboard was manufactured for.
So if your motherboard is AGP a AGP card should work in it.
You may not get the fastest speed(8x) but it should work at slower speed.
Now I may be wrong but I think you should be able to use the much cheaper AGP card on your system.

[davetboy_19]

Well the computer I'm using is pretty dam old.

ASUS A7V8X-LA (Motherboard)

Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128 MB Video Card

2 Sticks of DDR SDRAM (1 is 256MB and one is 512MB) - These are getting replaced with 2 x 1GB DDR SDRAM sticks in about 2 days)

[[R-DEV]Undies]

On the video card it can have whatever RAM it needs, doesnt have to be any specific type at all. With that processor you would never get the most from a modern gfx card so your options are a little limited.I would go for something like a 1650pro for 95 sheets http://www.mwave.com.au/newAU/mwaveA...p?SKU=42021059

TBH not exactly cutting edge but will run PR and games like it very well, and wont be bottlenecked by your processor. And they're cheap!!

[davetboy_19]

Originally Posted by [R-DEV]Undies

On the video card it can have whatever RAM it needs, doesnt have to be any specific type at all. With that processor you would never get the most from a modern gfx card so your options are a little limited.I would go for something like a 1650pro for 95 sheets Mwave Australia: PowerColor Radeon X1650 Pro, 512MB DDR2, DVI, VGA, Avivo, AGP (47125050-20716)

TBH not exactly cutting edge but will run PR and games like it very well, and wont be bottlenecked by your processor. And they're cheap!!

Thanks very much for that info, I'm not a uber computer wizz and was under the impression that it had to be using the same RAM as my comp.

This system is just a home/crappy one and I will be buying/making a completely new system mainly built for gaming in the near future (with all the normal work type software)

I'm thinking a system somewhere along the lines of-

4 GHz + CPU
150GB Hard Drive
2 or 3 GB RAM
512 or more MB uber video card

along with all the supporting bits and things. give me 2 or 3 months and ill have it . If I could some how play PR on my PS3 I'd be bloody set and have no problems