Video card upgrade?

[John B.]

Should I upgrade? The price for a VisionTek X1650 Pro 512MB AGP graphics card is down to $99.99. I do cad work and I have ATI DTV Wonder for watching digital off-air tv. Right now I have a NVIDIA GeForce FX5600, AGP 8X, 256MB, AMD Athlon 64 3400+, 1GB DDR Ram and 350w. power supply. Will a substantially newer v-card be worth while to me? Will it make a big difference? Now when I watch tv and do cad work at same time I crash alot.

Thanks for any advice,

John B.
Long Beach, CA

 

[beef_jerky4104]

I would say it's worth the price... BUT it would be a better investment to get a new PC. But if that's not possible then that would be great upgrade.

GeForce FX 5600 vs. Radeon X1650 PRO:

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=147&card2=458

 

[John B.]

I bought it!

I went ahead and bought the VisionTek X1650 Pro with 512MB. So far I think it's working well. I can render cad with the tv on and it hasn't crashed yet. I searched for a better price but stuck with VisionTek because the speed was the same as Ati"s. There seem to be a lot of variations between different companys (partners). I had to stick with AGP or buy another motherboard (PCI Express) and I'm not ready for that. I do have a 600 watt power supply. Would an extra gig of ram help?

Have a great day,

John B.

 

[beef_jerky4104]

An extra 1GB of RAM would help very much.