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I want to buy a new graphics card....


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Okay, the thing is I want to upgrade my PC. But I can't afford to upgrade it from a P3 to a P4 as that would require getting new RAM, a new motherboard AND a new CPU.

So I'm thinking I'd like to get a really fancy graphics card instead. I have my eye on an ATI radeon 9600XT. But I know little about computers, so my question is, is it worth putting a top-of-the-range-ish graphics card into an old P3 (733Mhz w/ 256 megs of RAM)? I am thinking mainly of emulators - would I get vastly improved performance to justify the cost?

Also, I only have SDRAM and in the product description it says "supports 128/256megs DDRAM". Does that mean I need DDRAM for the card to work? Also a friend of mine (who talks out of his arse alot) says that the card might melt if I put it in this PC. Is this true?

Any input would be appreciated.

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If you're still running a P3 and you put in a 9600XT, then the CPU will be shunting the graphics capabilities of the Graphics card. You want to have a kind of linear fashion with both the CPU and GPU as they go hand in hand. So you're performance hit will probably be more along the lines of an 8500 due to the slower processor holding things back. If you had a P4 running at a 533Mhz bus, then that might be better and getting much better performance out of the graphics card.

 

As for it supporting DDR Ram, it shouldn't matter. The DDR Ram is on the Graphics Card, it doesn't have anything to do with your System. The only thing that will be the bottleneck will be the Processor as the Graphics Card will have to wait for the information from the CPU.

 

Oh and with the card melting in your system, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. The worst that could happen is that your system wouldn't boot because you're Power Supply can't supply enough Watts to the whole System. Just make sure your Power Supply is a 350W and you should have enough to power it up.

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I wouldn't recommend it. Your CPU will bottleneck the power of the graphics card. Hell, I have an Athlon 1.4 Ghz with a Radeon 9700 and I can't play Garou in Kawaks/Mame/Nebula. It slows down whenever 2 people do a super move or Jae Hoon does any of his fire moves.

 

My graphics card isn't taking any of that load. So you're CPU has to be pretty fast. I suggest waiting for maybe a month or so and see if prices go down any lower and see if you can then afford to get some new parts.

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random guy a new graphics card would be seriously not be able to use its full power due to your other computer components being bottlenecks...just save up somemore money and do a complete overhaul of your system :P

 

Otherwise buy one component each time you have enough money....

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I've got a 1.2 gig processor and 512 RAM, but I recently got a Radeon 9600 Pro... seems to work fine for me, it helped some stuff, but I'm sure it would help a lot more if my computer was up to date.

 

If I were you, I'd just do what ForceX said and upgrade each component each time you get a haul of money enough to spend on the crazy prices of some of this stuff. If your lucky, you'll find it cheap.

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Nice family guy reference, griffinclaw!

 

Okay, fair enough. but man it is rather frustrating - I dont wantto buy the parts seperarely, cos by tnhe time I can put a PC together, the parts I bought earlier would be obsolete! Oh fell, thanks for the advice everyone.

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Well, here's my suggestion. It is true that the bottleneck of your CPU will affect the video card, so get those budget video cards... Like the GeForce4MX ?

 

But..... Unfortunately... The most needed for 2D emulators is just an Nvidia TNT video card. And 2d emulators won't get any speed inscrease at all, and 3d emulators that support Direct3D will get less than 30% speed increase.

 

The best speed improvement is on real Direct-3D compatible PC games.

 

Oh yeah, have your tried tweaking your CPU / Video Card yet?

 

GryphonKlaw :

 

If that's the case your computer needs a serious tweaking.... I have a Pentium 3 = 650Mhz computer with a Geforce2MX and every 2D emulator (Including MAME) does not slow down. It only slows down with the dedicated 3D emulators such as Nebula Model 2 and Zinc. Perhaps your comp needs some extra RAM ?

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