P4 owner. Need advice on Nvidea card to buy. Thanks

Hi all. I have a Dell XPS600 P4 3.2 with 2 gigs of ram. I have no options for a good processor upgrade, only Pentium D which I have read is junk, so..

I currently have a Geforce 7800 GTX 256 mb card and want to upgrade. My question is, which card can I get that will be a reasonable upgrade that won't be let down badly by my CPU? A new PC is not an option for me. I want to play games in 1680 x 1050 which is the max resolution my 22 inch monitor supports. Is that even possible with a good card and a P4?

Also, would upgrading to 4 gigs of ram help in any way?

I have been looking at options ranging from the 9800 GT 512mb to the GTX260 (which is the top end of my budget).

Many thanks for any advice.

 

Your CPU would bottleneck anything over that 9800GT pretty bad. Heck it might even bottleneck the 9800GT. Id just go with the 9800GT if I was you and in that situation.

Not only this but anything over that requires power hookups that your PSU probably does not support. You might even want consider a 9600GT.

 

well to be honest the pentium D migh be junk in todays terms but its still better than ure CPU now and i would say get the gtx 260 or a 9800gtx+(gts 250)

 

Wouldn't do him much good with that CPU. Those cards would be wasted.

 

ye but as i sead a pentium D is good compaird to his CPU now so he could upgrade both of those things and have a decent rig but u are right if hes not going to upgrade his cpu

lol i ran my 2x9800gtx+'s with a 3.2ghz pentium 4 while my E8400 was in the post all i can say is LOL it was soooo bad i got less FPS than i did with one card but ohh well and that was at 1920x1200

 

Get a 9600GT or 9800GT and another 2GB of ram and your good to go.

 

Thanks for the replies. Well okay we have established my processor is rubbish. My upgrade options seem to be... Pentium D dual core 3.2 which I understand isn't really dual core, or Pentium 4 extreme edition which I think is a slightly better version of Pentium D which I can also get to 3.2, or Pentium 4 3.8 single processor. My current processor supports hyperthreading which is fake dual core so I expect the 3.8 would too. Is there even any point in upgrading to any of this?

I have been playing games at 1680 x 1050 on my current setup and it's not great but it's not terrible. Surely a reasonably modern nvidia card with 512mb ram will give me some kind of performance increase over the 7800 gtx that only has 256 or is it all just a lost cause lol.

Thanks again for the help.

 

Thanks Kylzer I just saw your reply which offers a ray of hope. Do you think I can play games reasonably well at 1680 x 1050 with the 9800 GT and would it help to get the 1gig texture ram version instead of the 512 since they are both cheap?

Thanks.

 

hmm hard to say but my dad has a 3ghz pentium D and its quite fast to be honest

all in all i think if i were you i would go with a whole new rig just to keep me going for another 3-4+ years because ure rig as it stands is not going to be able to keep up at all in the next 1-2 years when things become fully dual and quadcore dependant

 

Yes I realise this. But this is just a cheap stopgap upgrade. I can't fund a new PC at the moment. I can get 2 gigs ram and a 9800 GT for about 140 pounds so as long as it give me some improvement I'll be happy for now and can work towards a new rig a bit later.

 

As I stated in an earlier post, the 9600GT is the better bet at this point. The ram doesn't hurt either. Just don't waste your money on any more of a card than that with your current system at this point.

 

Na 1GB will not help as the "card" can't really use it well as its running on a 256bit ring, its just a marketing ploy really.

 

650 watts / 42 amps and dual 6 pin pcie connectors
Members on the Dell forums used to run 8800GTS (G80) SLI in that machine.

 

I don't know why you would run 8800GTS SLI on a P4, but to each their own.

 

i would suggest looking into
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157115
paired with a e5200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116072
or q6600 if budget allows
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115018
then upgrade the memory and gpu at your liesure.

i know it isnt the gpu upgrade your looking for but honestly putting money into a platform that is already obsolete isnt a wise choice

 

Well it's a straight choice between the 9600 GT and the 9800 GT then.

GhostXL thanks for your reply I appeciate what you're saying I'm just wondering if I can grind that extra bit of performance out of a 9800 GT for only 20 pounds extra.

contrvlr thanks for the info does that mean my motherboard (I think it's Nforce4 or something similar) should have the right connectors for those two six pins?

 

its the powersuply that needs the 6pin conectors to conect to the card to give it more juice

 

When I had a X2 3800+ and a 8800GT, the cpu GREATLY bottlenecked the card. After I upgraded to a E8400, that bottleneck was gone. I suggest you buy the cheaper option for that P4 and save the remaining money for a new system unit.

 

Thanks Maxfly yeah I'm beginning to think it's something of a lost cause. I'll get a new PC for sure but can't do it just yet so no point rebuilding and when I do I'll go for 'proper' stuff. I still think a 9600 GT can't be worse than a 7800 GTX even with a P4 but hey you never know.

Thanks Barwell the PSU is what I meant I don't know what connectors it has or hasn't got.

Kollunz thanks for the info. If I upgrade this PC at all I'll definitely go for the 9600 having read all the replies here. I might just say stuff it and buy an XBOX 360 lol.

 

ahh only wusses buy 360's in stead of pc's lol but any way you could get a decent rig for around £500ish not sure how much from where you are (actuly where are you from?) so i think just get a 9600gt for now then when you get a new pc drop that in as a physx card as well as ure other new gpu that you get when you do a full upgrade