HankScorpio

Looking to give a quick dirty boost to a system by replacing the 9500 pro AGP and have narrowed it down to either an x1650 pro or a 7600GT.

I've had poor experiences with ATI before so leaning to the 7600, any body with real world thought/experiences...?

If x1650 is the way to go, 256 of GDDR3 or 512 of DDR2?

Ta.

D16GER

What were your poor experiences? I've had a 9700Pro, 9800Pro, X800Pro and currently have a X1950Pro.

Not had too much grief with any of them to be fair, and all are still in working order. Only issues I have ever had with ATi were some minor driver niggles, all of which were ironed out very quickly.

To answer your question with regard to the memory onboard, the 512mb will only really come into play if you are playing games that use a lot of high quality textures. Otherwise, you won't really notice any difference.

But, given that it's a 1650 you are looking at, I doubt you will be enabling lot's of high quality textures anyway.

HankScorpio

Oh, I had a 9-something and a board with VIA chipset and what an absolute nightmare it was, there was some issue at the time that was all over the forums and i did so many rebuilds, returns an reinstalls, I got totally sick of it.

It'll probably be fine with a modern card but once bitten makes me a bit wary.

I'll see what I can get for 60 quid at the weekend.

Ta for the response

blubs

I also had major issues with 9800 pro, but really only that one in particular. They seem to run really hot and the heatsink/fan was not up to it. Even when I changed my case for a Thermaltake Tsunami I still had problems, (went through 3 replacements in the end!).

I eventually cried enough and migrated to NVIDIA 7600 GS (overclocked with NVIDIA software).

No probs at all now and no noticeable performance difference on 3D mark type bench comparison.

My humble advice, go with the 7600 and the GDDR3.

Hope this helps.

blubs

bob269

I've owned ATI since they begun, never any issues, currently own the x1950

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

the 7600gt is a very good card, however do they do a agp version of it or does your motherboard support pcie?

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

a good agp card to consider is the ati x850 which can be had for around about 70 - 80 quid

P1Fanatic

I had an ATI9500pro and first 2 were dead on arrival (brand new). 3rd was nothing to write home about. Kinda puts you off after that.

Simon

BlkKnight

best bang for buck is the 7900GT @ circa £90

HankScorpio

Thanks for the ideas guys, I'm very wary of stretching a little bit and a little bit more and then spending 200 notes

60 really is all I want to spend so if you spot any bargains, give me a shout!

HankScorpio

I haven't bought anything from ebuyer for two years because they use Citylink but thought I'd give them a go after spotting a good price on 1650x 256 gddr3.

2 weeks later, Citylink have lost the parcel. So no more ebuyer for me.

So instead I ordered one from Lambda Tek, ordered yesterday after lunch, delivered today and only a couple of quid more so thumbs up from me (although the ordering system was a little odd)

So.... the results....

Before (9700):
Vista Experience Graphics - 4.7
Vista Gaming Graphics - 4.1
3dMark Basic - 464

After (1650x)
Vista Experience Graphics - 5.9
Vista Gaming Graphics - 5.3
3dMark Basic - 2025

So well happy with that. CPU is holding me back but until I go multi core later in the year (with a whole new box), this will do me just nicely

Mk2_heaven

i`m using the X1650 and its a very capable card

P1Fanatic

What mobo / cpu u running currently? I ask as I have an asus A8N-SLI which is socket 939 and thought I was limited to AMD 64 4000+ but after a BIOS upgrade I can take the X2 (AMD Dual Core). Just took delivery of an X2 3800+ for £40 inc p&p and it seems you can o/clock these to 2.6 ghz (2.0 stock) no problem on just air.

Simon

HankScorpio

XP 1800 in A7N8X so I can only go to 3200 so pretty pointless.
The board also has usb issues and only 2 port SATA I so well due for an upgrade.

spectrum48k

Maybe's it's worth checking these figures out - its what's needed to run BIOSHOCK, a cracking up and coming game on PC (and XBOX360)...

Minimum system requirements

* CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
* System RAM: 1GB
* Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
* Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
* Hard disc space: 8GB free space


Recommended system requirements

* CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
* System RAM: 2GB
* Video card: DX9: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better); DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better
* Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)

HankScorpio

Changed machines, anyone want to give me 30 quid for the AGP x1650 256MB ddr3 card?

Breath some life into a an older AGP machine...?

Deano_P1

I currently own a Nividia 8800GTS 320Mb.

Awesome card!