[Jump]

Well, looks like I am going to have to spend my windfall of medical treatments that are not eligible for insurance coverage.

So, I'm wondering what a new video card would do for my old rig.

I have an Abit VP6 dual P3 with 512 MB of memory.

It has an old G-Force 256 card. So I am wondering if I put in something like a 7600 GT if maybe that might boost it up enough to rock my world and keep me in the game. And before you say it. I can't stand ATI as a company so don't bother.

Any thoughts

[Jump]

I also have a brand new one of these sitting in a box with a 512 MB stick sitting in it. SOYO Group Inc - SY-P4I865PE Plus DRAGON 2 v1.0 (Prescott-Ready)

The problem there is yeah, I could probably set it up for under $1000, but what if the board doesn't work.

[Jump]

Not a bad deal for a CPU. STARMICRO INC. - Detail

[Jump]

Looks like I can get 3 more sticks of the same brand of memory for cheap and bring it up to 2 gigs. Newegg.com - GeIL Value 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Desktop Memory - Retail

[Jump]

Or I could chuck that value Ram and go with something like this.

Newegg.com - Kingston HyperX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

[Injustice]

My last gaming rig is about 4 years old so I'll be in the market soon myself. Like GG, I would wish upon Intel an eternity in the deepest corner of hell if I thought it would do any good. As far as building a new rig goes, I tend to look at it like I'm building a car, so to me the most important part is going to be the mobo, having said that, I've always gone with ASUS products, but that's just personal preferrence. Start off with the best mobo you can find that supports your mainstream CPU sockets, functionality, and chipsets, then go from there. The computer market being the model of runaway inflation that it is, I try to always keep the price at or below $2 grand, unless I'm doing a complete rebuild. More often than not I can cannabalize some components which lets me go that much bigger on the pricey stuff like video cards.

[Jump]

Well, if you read my latest posts then buying a new mobo is out.

[Milkman]

Whats the speed of those P3's?

My guess would be you would want at least 1 gig of ram and as high of AGP card you can get. Due to possible processor speed issues, im not sure that more ram will do you any noticable good in games.

[Jump]

I may just load up this Soyo board. Then when I do build a kick ass rig I can give it to my kids. The abit is just too old with it's 4x agp.

[TheRag]

I've been doing some comparisons looking for a new system too. Bang for the buck right now, seems to be the Intel E4300 CPU. The reviews I've been reading seem to agree that this chip is very easily overclocked to 3ghz with the stock cooler. Benchmark tests rate it just under the Extreme X6800 in game performance. At $117.00, looks to be one hell of a deal. The Asus P5N32-E SLI board has recieved great reviews also, and should allow for some excellent overclocking.

I hate to break poor Jump's heart, but for an AGP board, ATI is king with the X1950 Pro cards. Nothing that has been put to AGP on the Nvidia side even comes close. *DISCLAIMER* At least as far as the hardware sites I've been reading say.

[Milkman]

Well.. thats sort of true... depend on what you want to spend. Sadly a quick look i didn't find any good recent reviews of multiple AGP video cards. So... toms hardware comparison will have to do.

The Best Gaming Video Cards for the Money: June 2007 | Tom's Hardware