So the government sent me to Squadron Officers’ School in Montgomery, AL, and I stand to make quite a bit of money for the inconvenience of attending (per diem and family separation pay). I’m getting my wife some flowers and taking her out to get something nice at Vickie’s, and we’re going out to a very nice dinner when I get back – all my way of thanking her for putting up with my absence – but I’m still going to have some profit left over, and I think it might be fun to put a little more oomph in my PC.
I’m running a relatively old machine, but I built it pretty smartly, and it has been relatively easy to upgrade piece by piece. It’s a Shuttle AK35GTR motherboard with an AMD Mobile Athlon 2400+ (so it runs fast and cool) and 1GB of RAM. I can add another 1GB of RAM, but the CPU is maxed out for this motherboard. I am approaching the point where this system will be upgraded to its maximum potential, except for the video card. The video card is based on the nVidia Ti4200 chipset and has 64MB of RAM… which is where you Dopers come in.
(1) Is a Ti4200 with 64MB of RAM “obsolete” yet?
(2) What are some good upgrade options in the $200 ballpark?
(2B) Is there any such thing as “maximum” performance for an AGPx4 slot, and if so, is it available and what does it cost?
(3) Given the age of the AGP standard, should I just bankroll that $200 towards a PCI-express motherboard to be purchased a year or two down the road?
I’d say an Ti4200 is obsolete, but I suppose it depends on what you’re looking to play. Anything in the last year would have a good bit of trouble.
128 MB 6600GT is probably your best bet. ATI just came out with something to match this card, called the X800 GT. It’s ‘supposed’ to dominate the 6600 GT for nearly the same price, but I don’t think you’d be able to find one anytime soon.
The best you’d be able to fit into an AGP slot is an ATI 256MB x850XT PE for about $400.
Nah. Have fun now. You deserve it (as far as I know).
If I were in your situation, I’d grab an Nvidia 6600GT and spend the left over money on a copy of Battlefield 2. Play it at work and call it “training” or something. Great game.
Try downloading some game demos to see if you need to upgrade. I say this because I spent the past few months convincing myself that I needed a new video card for my computer, but I downloaded a few demos and was shocked at how good the programs ran on my aging card.
I have an Nvidia Geforce2 with 32mb of ram, which is really quite weak, but I was shocked to find that Half Life 2, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, and Far Cry all not only ran, but looked great on my system.
It does seem a bit foolish to spend money on an AGP card right now; I’d wait until I got a PCI-E capable mobo and then shell out for the best bang-for-the-buck card available then.
I recently built a friend a system featuring the Nvidia 6600GT (128mb of DDR3 Ram) card, and it smokes - plus it’s SLI-capable, so a few years down the line when it’s cheaper you can add a second one for more performance.
Well, I know Battlefield 2 won’t run on a Ti 4200 - and that game is awesomely fun , (except when you get a couple smacktards on your team, who throw themselves in front of your vehicle to make you get a teamkill, and then punish you for it :mad: )
And a lot of newer games won’t run all that well on it.