What does this upgrade sound like? (Old system)

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Threepwood

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I'm getting sick of not being able to play Oblivion, I pre-ordered the collectors edition thinking I would upgrade soon, and well that was like two years ago or whatever.

My current set-up is:

Athlon XP Socket A 2600+ (1900MHz)
512mb DDR400
GeForce FX 5200 AGP

I had tried very briefly a borrowed ATI 9600pro in my machine at one stage, and it ran Oblivion, WAY better than what I have, seemed perfectly playable although I didn't get too far, just through the prison sequence and ran around ouside for a bit, I can't remember what the settings were at but obviously nothing special.

The 5200 can't run it at all, WAY WAY too jerky even on the lowest of the lowest settings.

So I'm thinking of getting a 6200 AGP or X1550 AGP, both of which I can pick up for about R500 from one of my suppliers.
Which is better? I think it's the X1550. If it's at least as good as 9600pro I should be able to play Oblivion. I may also get another 512MB of memory.

I vaguely considered HD3850 AGP, but I think my CPU and mem would bottleneck that too much, am I right? Also it's like at least R1000, whereas I'm sure I can get the X1550 and 512MB mem for ~ R700.

Before anyone says "just save up for a new system", read the beggining again about how I thought I would upgrade two years ago. A new system is going to set me back at least R5500, considering I would need: mobo, cpu, ram, psu, gpu

So please advise as to upgrading my current GPU to 6200 or X1550, possibly HD3850.
 
What motherboard are you running at the moment? Socket A is a bit outdated, and am wondering if it is worthwhile spending R1000 on a GPU...

Personally I would go with the X1550 if I was going to keep the setup - but it all boils down to affordability - if you can afford the R1000 price of the HD3850, then go for it, but as you said, there will be a bottleneck.

Aslo bare in mind that it's not worth spending too much on the GPU if you are considering upgrading in the next 12-18 months - maybe the mid-line AM2 setups will be more affordable by then.
 
Don't go for the 3850. Its an overkill for that system...you're better of saving that cash for your next major upgrade.
 
I would say it's best to get the X1550 card and extra memory, will make a huge difference especially if you can run dual channel and overclock the memory FSB.
Edit:
That's what I did with my last athlon XP, got smoother frames just by upping the FSB.
 
Last edited:
Dobee said:
I would say it's best to get the X1550 card and extra memory, will make a huge difference especially if you can run dual channel and overclock the memory FSB.
Edit:
That's what I did with my last athlon XP, got smoother frames just by upping the FSB.
Click to expand...

I would agree. Spending any more cash on hardware that is not going to run when you do do a system upgrade is not cool. Like R1000 on a GPU that you will have no use for when you get a new board.
 
Ja I pretty much thought that would be the best choice, my current mobo is Soltek sl-kt600-rl, but I'm trying to get a new one as I'm having issues getting the onboard sound to work also I'm getting very poor HD performance for some reason.

Will dual channel really affect things that much? My research shows it's not a huge difference, my soltek hasn't got dual channel anyway.
 
Threepwood said:
Ja I pretty much thought that would be the best choice, my current mobo is Soltek sl-kt600-rl, but I'm trying to get a new one as I'm having issues getting the onboard sound to work also I'm getting very poor HD performance for some reason.

Will dual channel really affect things that much? My research shows it's not a huge difference, my soltek hasn't got dual channel anyway.
Click to expand...

Dual-channel RAM? Apparently it does not affect performance much at all.
 
Where can u get a 3850 AGP for 1k for?

The 6200 is like 5% better than the 5200 so dont even think about it.

Get the X1550, really good mid range card for it's time.
 
Last edited:
Nameite said:
Where can u get a 3850 AGP for 1k for?

The 6200 is like 5% better than the 6200 so dont even think about it.

Get the X1550, really good mid range card for it's time.
Click to expand...

I was also wondering where he was getting a 3850 AGP for so cheap?

But the rest of your post doesn't make sense: the 6200 is 5% better than the 6200?

To be honest, unless you find a great deal on a second hand card, it's not worth it, cus when you do upgrade you won't be able to use whatever AGP card you have.

A possible solution would be to get a new mobo, thu still supports your CPU, but with a PCI-E slot. Then get a new PCI-E graphics card and you'll also have to buy DDR2 ram. This will make your upgrade now more 'future-proof' and when you next upgrade all you need to do is get a new CPU... (Make sure you get a new mobo that supports the latest AMD CPUs.)
 
dude, buy a x1600 pro AGP, I mean, I'm running it and It plays oblivion pretty dam well. I( got an AMD 3200+, 1 gig ddr 400 ram, and a pci-e X1600 pro (ddr3) and it plays oblivion with medium settings, @ 1280 by 1024.

Smooth with one or two slow downs when outside in the forest or what ever (just make the grass effects low, I heard that each blade of grass in something like 20 polygons!)

Just get a better gpu and more ram, Just by upgrading to 1 gig and your pc will gain a nice bit of performance
 
carderne said:
I was also wondering where he was getting a 3850 AGP for so cheap?

But the rest of your post doesn't make sense: the 6200 is 5% better than the 6200?

To be honest, unless you find a great deal on a second hand card, it's not worth it, cus when you do upgrade you won't be able to use whatever AGP card you have.

A possible solution would be to get a new mobo, thu still supports your CPU, but with a PCI-E slot. Then get a new PCI-E graphics card and you'll also have to buy DDR2 ram. This will make your upgrade now more 'future-proof' and when you next upgrade all you need to do is get a new CPU... (Make sure you get a new mobo that supports the latest AMD CPUs.)
Click to expand...

Oops I meant 5200 :p
 
carderne said:
A possible solution would be to get a new mobo, thu still supports your CPU, but with a PCI-E slot.
Click to expand...

There's no motherboard that I know of that supports Socket A and PCI-E, I'm sure there's no such thing.

Anyways, I'm thinking now I may get a basic new system with a crappy graphics card that I'll upgrade hopefully soon, something like:

Biostar TP35D2-A7
Intel E2160
2X1GB DDR2 800, probably generic (is this a bad idea?)

One of these cards maybe:
7200gs 128mb with turbo cache
7300gs 256mb
8400gs with turbo cache
8400gs 512mb*
HD3450 512mb*
HD2400pro
HD2400XT

*Will these 512's see much improvement over the 256 models?
Is the 2400xt most powerfull performance wise? From what I can see it would be. I know it's kind of old though.

Tr2 Litepower 400w, I think my existing PSU would run this system but I might get one of these.
 
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