I have a bit of a dinosaur of a system....Pentium 4 2.8 Ghz chip, ASROCK PV488 motherboard, 1 GB RAM, and an Nvidia 7600 GS card. I don't have the scratch to build a new system yet, although I've gotten some great ideas from people on this board on my next b uild (thanks, Techspot community).

Anyway, I'm wondering if it's worthwhile to upgrade my AGP card to eek out another year or so of use. What are the thoughts of other techies out there? The big questions I have is...will it make a difference, and does the motherboard limit the 'strength' of the AGP card that you can use? My card right now is only 256 MB and 128 bit. I read about this AGP card supposed to be the top of the line for AGP, 512 MB, 256-bit, DDR2, etc etc.

Thoughts, comments, jeers?

From here: http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=p4v88
No it is not worth updating your AGP Video Card
Your Motherboard designates what you can use

By the way 2.8GHz is not all that bad, the system is still good for medium gaming and all Windows and programs.

That's my thoughts

I don't know what that quote has to do with not being worth upgrading?

If its 8x compatible then you can run the fastest AGP cards in it without issue.

I would say its not worth upgrading just because I don't think the money is worth it, a good AGP card is pretty expensive compared to a low-mid PCIe card that will outperform it.

Would my 1 GB RAM boosted to 2 GB be worth it, then? I'm just looking for whatever I can to eek out that last bit of performance before I donate the system to my boys.

You know the 8X issue was bit of a kafuffle on my side, as initially I thought it was only 4X

Anyway, I still say stick with the same Video card
Yes 2Gig of Ram will help the computer (say around ~30% increase) that's not bad
Depends on what's running etc etc

30% increase in what?

File access

The computer CPU speed does not actually change (as this is hardware)
But the speed at which programs start and run will increase

Basically when it comes to updating your system, Ram is usually always first

I'm maxing my old P4 system and I'm trying to swap my mobo for an AGP version. HD 3850 is a great buy for AGP but it needs a GPU with a power adapter and one over 400W I believe.

going to 2gb would most likely give an increase in performance on XP, anything over that would be negligible.

2 GB is more than enough RAM for my XP Home. Don't recommend any less than this though.

think of it like this, do you surf the web and check email with it? then yes.

do you do anything more intensive with it like play games or manage media? no, just upgrade the whole system.

I think it is only worth it when you have atleast a 3.00ghz CPU,2GB ram and a good PSU.
My old system had the HD3850 AGP in it and it played most of the new games exept crysis on high settings but i tried so many things to try to get more visual experience like overclocking the CPU and the GPU but still there wasn't much difference.
I got my 3850 just because it was a cheaper solution until i finally built my new PC but at the time it was hard finding one in adelaide. So really if you got the right setup just spend $200 buck and get the upgrade i thought it was worth it.

^+1 to what R3DP3NGUIN said, my situation is almost identical to his exactly, including the OC experience.

Actually DDR3, but some of the newer ones won't work with some older MOBO (motherboard).

You could OC the CPU to 3GHz increase the RAM to 2GB or 4GB if you have slots. AGP 8x 512MB, DDR3 and 256-bit are available for $39 bucks. These don't seem to work on some systems. Also make sure your PSU (power supply unit is at min 500watts that pure 500watts some newer PSU can give you peak 500watts now and save power only when you need that extra power more like smart PSU. Once you start added high Video card then you would need more powerful PSU.

Upgrade the current system with a faster HDD and use that on the current OS. You can clone the drive from the old to the new.