Hey all,
I'm looking for a bit of advice. My current system is a couple of years old, and I'd like to upgrade the video card to something a little more modern. Here's the important specs...
-ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe 939
-AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939
-2 GB DDR400 Memory
-NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB
It's a decent machine, but is falling out of the loop for games. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and looking for an upgrade that isn't going to require replacing the entire system. I don't need Crysis running at 60 FPS or anything, but something a little more modern would be good (I'd like to be able to run Flight Simulator X at more then 5 FPS at 1280x1024)
I'm currently running Windows Server as my primary OS, but will dual-boot into Windows Vista to take advantage of DX10 games.
I'm considering upgrading the video card first. The two options are an NVIDIA 8800 GT or the recently relased 9600 GT. Both are around the same price point, with similar performance.
The only problem is, at this point with such a powerful graphics card at my disposal, my CPU becomes the limiting factor. As it's a Socket 939 board with DDR-1 memory, anything higher then an AMD X2 4200+ Socket 939 dual-core would require a new motherboard AND memory, and that's an expense I just can't justify at this point (I might as well replace the entire system at that point).
So, I guess my questions are (1) is it worth upgrading only the video card - will I see an significant performance increase as this is a fairly speedy processor and meets all of my other requirements outside the gaming world, and (2) would I see a significant performance increase going from a Athlon 64 3500+ 939 to an Athlon X2 4200+ dual-core 939 (assuming I can even get my hands on one at this point).
Thanks,
Shawn
I'm looking for a bit of advice. My current system is a couple of years old, and I'd like to upgrade the video card to something a little more modern. Here's the important specs...
-ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe 939
-AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Socket 939
-2 GB DDR400 Memory
-NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT 128 MB
It's a decent machine, but is falling out of the loop for games. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and looking for an upgrade that isn't going to require replacing the entire system. I don't need Crysis running at 60 FPS or anything, but something a little more modern would be good (I'd like to be able to run Flight Simulator X at more then 5 FPS at 1280x1024)
I'm currently running Windows Server as my primary OS, but will dual-boot into Windows Vista to take advantage of DX10 games.
I'm considering upgrading the video card first. The two options are an NVIDIA 8800 GT or the recently relased 9600 GT. Both are around the same price point, with similar performance.
The only problem is, at this point with such a powerful graphics card at my disposal, my CPU becomes the limiting factor. As it's a Socket 939 board with DDR-1 memory, anything higher then an AMD X2 4200+ Socket 939 dual-core would require a new motherboard AND memory, and that's an expense I just can't justify at this point (I might as well replace the entire system at that point).
So, I guess my questions are (1) is it worth upgrading only the video card - will I see an significant performance increase as this is a fairly speedy processor and meets all of my other requirements outside the gaming world, and (2) would I see a significant performance increase going from a Athlon 64 3500+ 939 to an Athlon X2 4200+ dual-core 939 (assuming I can even get my hands on one at this point).
Thanks,
Shawn
.
