At the minute I have an ATI Radeon 9800 SE in my PC, according to Vista and according to me when I run games and benchmarking programs this is now letting me down quite badly. I'm stuck with AGP which means quite a limited choice of newer cards, I have seen the X1950 Pro for quite a good price but would it make a noticeable difference to my PC's performance?

The limiting factor in your pc is now the AGP slot, the 9800se is a good card. I dont think you would notice much difference with the 1950pro.

As your motherboard is AGP, I dare say that its quiet an old machine and may also be lacking in other areas, so rather than updating the graphics card and gaining little, it maybe time to think about upgrading the whole thing. CPU and memory also have a big impact on graphics. For example my laptop has onboard intel 945 graphics, and with a dual core cpu to help it along runs vista really well. There comes a point where the limit of the AGP, and main system bus is reached and your graphics card will be waiting for things to catch up.

I'd say that the X1950 is 4x better than the 9800se. You need to take into account they are totally different generations of card. Here's a link with some info on PCIe vs AGP TechConnect Magazine - When Worlds Collide: AGP vs PCI-E - Page 1

What is the spec of the rest of your system out of interest?

wholeheartedly agree with mannyo; the limiting factor is the AGP port (and hence your motherboard).

Instead of forking out +/-

i'm not really up on all this but if your on a budget why not upgrade the motherboard to something with built in 3d like below

ECS AMD690GM-M2 AMD 690G/SB600 AM2 - Aria Technology

thats got the x1250 gc but still has a 16x pci express slot for a later upgrade

a bottom of the line dual core am2 wont cost much more than 40 quid and you can get a gig of ddr2 for the same.

Hello DaveI

Yes i think you will notice a reasonable increase in performance with a 1950,but as the previous posters have rightly said the Agp platform is holding you back and from my humble point of view spending

i spent 30 quid on nv7600 agp 256mb at a show the other week.. not much my old system wont run now....

i spent 30 quid on nv7600 agp 256mb at a show the other week.. not much my old system wont run now....

3d Mark 2006 !

Sorry Paul i am being childish:thumbup:

3d Mark 2006 !

Sorry Paul i am being childish:thumbup:

That's one of the programs that prompted me into an upgrade.

My PC is a Pentium 4 3.6ghz with 2gb of RAM.

If I go down the new mainboard route i'd like to move the CPU and RAM over and upgrade the Mainboard and GFX card. Leaving me option to upgrade to Core 2 Duo in the future

Only problem (apart from spending the money) is Vista, once I change the mainboard am I going to be able to boot up Vista again? Or is it new license time?

You will be able to re-activate vista without any issues. IIRC, it's easier to do with a retail version than an OEM version as an OEM version is not meant to be installed on different PCs

DaveI

There are a few motherboards that will take your P4(presuming it is socket 775) pop a good cooler on there,clock it to 4ghz and add a 7900 or if you are feeling rich an 8800gts

and you are good to go,and as tfboy says if you have Vista Retail a re-install is not a problem

Time to get thinking:)

My PC is a Pentium 4 3.6ghz with 2gb of RAM.

If I go down the new mainboard route i'd like to move the CPU and RAM over and upgrade the Mainboard and GFX card. Leaving me option to upgrade to Core 2 Duo in the future

Only problem (apart from spending the money) is Vista, once I change the mainboard am I going to be able to boot up Vista again? Or is it new license time?

hmm, think it should be possible to find a new PCIe-mobo and reuse your CPU, dunno about the RAM specs but shouldn't be a problem either.

DaveI

There are a few motherboards that will take your P4(presuming it is socket 775) pop a good cooler on there,clock it to 4ghz and add a 7900 or if you are feeling rich an 8800gts

and you are good to go,and as tfboy says if you have Vista Retail a re-install is not a problem

Time to get thinking:)

if its anything like mine that 3.6ghz cpu runs pretty dam hot anyway

sell the cpu mobo and ram combo on ebay for 50 quid and upgrade, the money you get should cover the new cpu, the price on the intels seems pretty high compared to the amd's though, a dual 2.4 ghz amd is 70 quid, in intel that gets a dual 1.8ghz core 2 duo, i dont want to get in a processor debate though as i know f*ck all but i would have thought your better off evenly spreading your money rather than banging it all into one component.

Thanks for eveeryones input, just ordered one of these:

ASRock Motherboard - Product - 4CoreDual-VSTA - Overview

Which means I can re-use everything I have now and upgrade as the money becomes available. Graphics card first, then new ram and finally a new CPU.

Unfortunately my Vista license is OEM so I may be on the phone to MS for a bit entering digits into the phone! If I do actually get through to a real person surely I will be able to persuade them that the original board went faulty and I couldn't get a like for like replacement?

Looks like a good move plenty of opitons for the future

Installed my new mainboard tonight, pressed the power button with trepidation and the fans whirred into life.

Vista comes up and installs the USB bus drivers and so on, two restarts later and back up and running!

Can't believe it all went so smoothly, last time I changed a mainboard on XP it needed a clean install as it just would not boot.

Bought an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro with the motherboard as the stock Intel fan was quiet enough on idle but when you asked anything of the CPU it sounded like a Jet Plane, on idle it's louder than the Intel cooler :(

Plus I missed the Top Gear Polar Special whilst I was fannying about with the PC :(

For good quiet cooling, you need a big fan that works at low RPM, the arctic cooler by its name sounds like something designed to run fast and keep overclocked cpus cool.

Davei

Good to see you are up and running re Artic Pro,there are two types,one has a four pin header to the motherboard and this one has a pwm module in it which controls the fan speed according to temperature,the other is a normal three pin connection which does not have the pvm,to control this you will have to use settings in the bios otherwise it will run at full speed all the(around 2500-2700 rpm)

The fan has a four pin plug but the only option in the BIOS is a QUIET FAN setting, against that you can enter a temperature so it looks like it's two speeds only. The fan has dropped the temps from 70 ish to 42 so that's quite a big improvement!

Spoke to soon as when I looked in the system tab I noticed that Vista had un-activated itself, phoned MS and read the code out to them, told the bloke I had changed the mainboard and assured him I only had this software installed on one machine. He read the new code out to me and it's re-activated!

Quite painless really.

For good quiet cooling, you need a big fan that works at low RPM, the arctic cooler by its name sounds like something designed to run fast and keep overclocked cpus cool.

It's bloody huge:

http://www.overclock3d.net/gfx/articles/2006/10/29063158929l.jpg

So it looks like its a case of good temps(i take it 42 is idle,if load that is excellent)

versus noise(your tolerance levels) that bios setting at a guess enables you to set the thresshold at which the the fan runs at full speed,so it might be worth a play.

I forgot to mention the four pin connection is only available on certain motherboards

Did some upgrading.

Bought a Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU and a X1950Pro Graphics card.

Choose the graphics card after reading a few reviews that pitted this card against the newer 2600 series and the older series won! (For games, HD playback and so on was better on the newer card)

Ran some befores and afters:

PCMark05, Before: 3001 After: 5636

3DMark06, Before: 509 After: 4482

Colin McRae Dirt flys along now!

Did some upgrading.

Bought a Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU and a X1950Pro Graphics card.

Choose the graphics card after reading a few reviews that pitted this card against the newer 2600 series and the older series won! (For games, HD playback and so on was better on the newer card)

Ran some befores and afters:

PCMark05, Before: 3001 After: 5636

3DMark06, Before: 509 After: 4482

Colin McRae Dirt flys along now!

Now thats more like it, quite an improvement and you will have a little headroom to overclock the 6600 later on should you feel the need.

Best you get Bioshock ordered:thumbup: