Hi! I bought 7950 GT AGP and I would like to know if my PSU can handle it. 430 W Antec NeoPower Pentium 4 3.2 E P4C800 2 GB OCZ ddr 400 1 hard drive 1 dvd drive X-Fi ExtremeMusic sound card 3COM 10/100 pci nic card 3 120 mm coolers
Unless you got it cheaper than dirt it's not worth paying for at this point in time. How much did you pay for it?
Well considering you're sticking to AGP I guess that's not too bad for a $20 upgrade but what's the point when even your 7800GS was probably bottlenecked by your P4? As for your question a 430w PSU should be okay so long as it has enough amps on the 12v rails. If you can send the 7950GT back and get your $100 I would recommend doing that along with selling the rest of your rig (except for your soundcard, not many better than that out there, especially not for a good price). A P4 is going to hold you back a lot.
Sorry I forgot to add that my P4 3.2 was running 4.0 Ghz. I think my processor is not that big bottleneck for 7950 gt.
Wouldn't it had been better to go with a 3850 AGP? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131141 And also, even a Pentium 4 at 4.0Ghz ain't that fast lol, not sure if it's a bottleneck, but yeah.... As to your original question.....yes your PSU would be alright for that card
Probably but I dont need dx10 right now and I think that almost 20 $ extra over 7950 gt isnt worth it. Also I am planning to buy new comp later this year or early 2010.
lol DX10 wouldn't be the reason to get it, and it's WELL worth 20 dollars over, i mean if you think the 7950 GT will sustain you till you get a better card later on, then sure, but there's quite a big difference between a 3850 and a 7950 GT
core2 duo running @ 1 ghz is faster than p4 @4ghz i tried cpu in games it also matters especially in gta iv which needs quad core
all of us had agp systems and i still remeber the switching to lga was painfull but every thing is cheap right now you can get e5300 cpu [2.5 2mb] for 80$ and gigabyte p31 for 60-70$ also 2gb ddr2 ram mabe 15-20$, remains the gpu a 9600gt or 9800gt around 100-150 would give you 3x 7950 perfomance still costy upgrade but every one would do this sometime
I will move next to socket 1366 when ddr3 price is low enough. Moving to lga 775 is not best option right now.
a 3850 wouldnt be very good for dx10, unless you play at 800x600 or something. besides the bottleneck would be enormous. the path meran suggested would be cost effective, but you want LGA1366. when i transitioned my old HP computer (athlon 1800+ i think) to what i have now i bought a LGA775 mobo from asrock that had ddr+ddr2 dimms, AGP+PCIe and was core2 compatible. this way i was able to transition much of my old comp (ram, hd, AGP graphics drives etc) with minimal cost. over time i made the "frankenrig" into what i have now. if you are on a budget upgrading in steps could save you a lot. as for the 7950 it is an upgrade, but i read horror stories from people who had them fail within days or weeks. on new egg they all had 2 or 3 "eggs" as there rating. i had 2 7800gs cards, one g70 the other g 71 and they both oc'd like crazy. i volt modded the g71 and got insane clocks, close to 700 core, and it benched near a 7900gtx. temps were high so i bought a zalman vf 700 and made it work (wasnt compatible with AGP cards, but drilling a few holes in the mounting bracket fixed that). this card is still in use today (un-volt modded), along with my asrock mobo, old ram cpu etc... in my bro's comp. not sure if any of this rambling helps, just my experiences.
Jeppe, that was the last AGP card I owned and I won't tell you what I paid for it. Great card for it's time although some reported problems with it. I had no issues with mine and it overclocked nicely as well. It's faster than a X1950 Pro and a little slower than the Gecube X1950XT AGP. It also had one large advantage over either ATI card though and that was the power supply requirements. I believe it was 22a on the +12v rail and a 400w power supply. So you shouldn't have any problems with your power supply. Also a heads-up on the drivers. When I had the card you needed to get them directly from XFX rather than Nvidia, because Nvidia never bothered adding the DeviceID to the setup.inf file. You could also download any of the newer driver sets directly from Nvidia but you'll need to modify the inf file. That's what I did. Post back here if you need the instructions as I think I still have them somewhere. Edit: Just checked and you can download driver version 181.20 directly from XFX, so no need to worry about modding the setup files. So it looks like XFX is not leaving you out in the cold.
Thanks for information. I also heard that some early 7950 gt agp cards died after few days or weeks, but I think that they fixed those problems...hopefully.:bigsmile:
For a hundred bucks he likely got it used. New they cost an arm and two legs. He'll only get the Lifetime Warranty if the previous owner registered the card within 30 days, then he must register it as well. Double-Lifetime Protection is only in the US. If you live anywhere else the XFX Warranty is just two years. Weird, just checked Ebay and it looks like XFX isn't the only one who makes or made a 7950GT AGP card. There is a Galaxy and some other off brands list from Japan selling for about $170 New.
i thought that XFX and galaxy were the only board partners that made AGP 7950's, to clear stock i suppose once the 8800's emerged. also true that older cards are expensive because sometimes there is still a demand from SLi users who need a replacement. this specific demand in conjuncture with low stock would mean higher prices. i have never owned a XFX card, only have had BFG, EVGA and now VISINOTEK, so am not in total awareness of their warranty. hopefully the first hand owner, if bought used, registered.
By the time that DDR3 becomes affordable LGA1366 won't be the standard anymore, it will be something with less contact points and dual channel support instead of tri channel. I heard somewhere that Intel will call those new CPUs i5s. Intel is pulling a Sony, downgrading their hardware in order to save themselves a few pennies.
intel is going to release its new mainstream chips late this year that are going to be dual channel. the aim is for mainstream cpu's, whereas the i7's are enthusiast level. i think they are supposed to be LGA1166, but i could be wrong. these will eventually replace the core2 duals and quads on LGA775.
