Video card died- upgrade system or replace?

velvet45 · Post by **velvet45** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 7:05 am

My second pc used mainly by family for gaming is in need or new video card or system update.
System:
DFI nF3-250 Gb Lanparty, A-64 3400+,
Antec Fileserver 1030, XP-90 HS w AS5 & Panaflow 92 mm H1 HSF at 1500RPM, Chassis fans- 80mm Yate Loons x4 @5V, BFG 6800 GT OC, Enermax EG 701 600W PSU, Seagate 7200.8 400GB quieted by suspension
I am thinking the cheapest route is to replace the video card but maybe this is time to update the motherboard, CPU, memory and video card??
I was planning on ordering a BFG 7800 GS on sale at newegg right now for $200 after rebate.
Would I be better off just replacing the entire platform -sans case and powersupply?
the only thing is that means spending atleast $400 and I think there may be some life left in this AGP system for its current usage. The advantage would be I could choose a more powerful, quieter and possibly cheaper video card alternative in PCI- express.
The 7800 GS would be a good replacement for the 6800GT and I need a powerful card so a 7600GS is not a good option (this machine is primarily used for 3D gaming)
Any advice appreciated!

Post by **CA_Steve** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 7:28 am

I'm at that same point - spend a lot of $'s for a new mobo/ram/pci-e vid card or just do another incremental upgrade to my Barton 2800+.

Futuremark's search and compare tool is a way for you to type in what you've got and then play what-if games with the processor and graphics card. At first glance, you'd get ~30% improvement in 3d2006 score going from 6800GT to 7800GS.

jackylman · Post by **jackylman** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 1:07 pm

The advantage would be I could choose a more powerful, quieter and possibly cheaper video card alternative in PCI-express.

Which one would that be? XFX 7950GT?

Really, I don't see a whole lot of reason to upgrade the whole system when your CPU and RAM (assuming you have a GB or more) are sufficient. IMO, your best option would be to grab a cheap S754 mobo with PCI-e. You can get a DFI Infinity for $45 shipped from newegg. I guess rebuilding would be a pain, but you would save a lot of money and you could forget about AGP.

Edit: BTW, what core is your CPU? Newcastle or Venice?

velvet45 · Post by **velvet45** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 3:32 pm

CA_Steve,
Thanks for the tip and that sounds like a reasonable improvement in performance as long as the current 754 platform isnt bottlenecking the card- I dont think it would be though as a 3400+ and 1GB of OCZ EB3700 (ram) ought to be able to keep the bus full -I hope??

Jackylman,
Thanks for the advice- that is not a bad idea at all to just swap for PCI express 754 mobo. Is the Infinity an A-64 board? guess I should check it out at DFI. The core is a Clawhammer- with 1mb L2 cache.
Thanks

Cerberus · Post by **Cerberus** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 9:10 am

This is interesting... X-bit Labs: ATi readying X1950 Pro AGP graphic boards

Post by **CA_Steve** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 10:03 am

I was just reading that as well. At some point, AGP 8x is going to be the bottleneck...but, it's good to see new platforms.

Cerberus · Post by **Cerberus** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:23 pm

And here is a wonderfully Franglais translation of the website that announced the news, courtesy Google and DailyTech. Looks like it'll come stock with an Accelero strapped to it.

velvet45 · Post by **velvet45** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:08 am

Cerberus,
Thats an amazing announcement- quite surprising for AGP users... might be a little life left in the old platform afterall!

merlin · Post by **merlin** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 11:35 am

velvet45 wrote:My second pc used mainly by family for gaming is in need or new video card or system update.
System:
DFI nF3-250 Gb Lanparty, A-64 3400+,
Antec Fileserver 1030, XP-90 HS w AS5 & Panaflow 92 mm H1 HSF at 1500RPM, Chassis fans- 80mm Yate Loons x4 @5V, BFG 6800 GT OC, Enermax EG 701 600W PSU, Seagate 7200.8 400GB quieted by suspension
I am thinking the cheapest route is to replace the video card but maybe this is time to update the motherboard, CPU, memory and video card??
I was planning on ordering a BFG 7800 GS on sale at newegg right now for $200 after rebate.
Would I be better off just replacing the entire platform -sans case and powersupply?
the only thing is that means spending atleast $400 and I think there may be some life left in this AGP system for its current usage. The advantage would be I could choose a more powerful, quieter and possibly cheaper video card alternative in PCI- express.
The 7800 GS would be a good replacement for the 6800GT and I need a powerful card so a 7600GS is not a good option (this machine is primarily used for 3D gaming)
Any advice appreciated!

I think this choice is between a) X1950PRO AGP...which will give your system a lot of life or b) Get a new core 2 duo system and put in a nice pci-express card such as the aforementioned x1950PRO or the 7900GTO, which is awesome and quiet. Obviously a matter of whether cost matters more, or performance. Core 2 duo will give you a pretty big performance boost...but it'll cost a lot to switch.

Cerberus · Post by **Cerberus** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 10:46 pm

velvet45 wrote:Cerberus,
Thats an amazing announcement- quite surprising for AGP users... might be a little life left in the old platform afterall!

Yeah, I was gobsmacked to see the headline! I also noticed that Newegg has AGP-flavor cards based on ATi's X850 GPU. Probably have noisy stock coolers, but I guess ATi AGP cards don't have the bridge chip compatibility problems with silence-oriented GPU coolers that the Nvidia cards do.

velvet45 · Post by **velvet45** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 11:35 pm

I ordered a bfg GS 7800 AGP card from Newegg and put it in but it died after only 4 hours of use! I am starting to lose faith in Nvidia or BFG, as this is the second card from them I have lost in a week and a half. I tested the 12 volt lead (Molex connection required by the cards) to ensure there was no problem and it registered 12.20 volts. I also put in an older Geforce 4 card to test the motherboard slot to ensure there was no problem and it ran fine.
Maybe I should either stick with ATI AGP cards now or rebuild the system to Conroe based PCI-express.
At any rate, I do not see any hope of obtaining one of those Radeon X1950 Pro AGP cards until end of Nov at the earliest ( a long time to wait!)
Thanks all for the advice!

Cerberus · Post by **Cerberus** » Tue Oct 31, 2006 7:11 pm

Sorry to hear about that... someone from thecarlounge.net's computers forum also posted about suffering dud BFG cards this week. I suppose if nothing else can work, you can get yourself an ATi X850 board.

Video card died- upgrade system or replace?

Video card died- upgrade system or replace?

Re: Video card died- upgrade system or replace?