video cards and ram advice needed

C

Casius Black

Geek Trainee
Hey i'm new here, upgrading my PC for the first time (looking for graphics cards and RAM) so i'm just looking for advice.
I'm thinking of the ATi Radeon 9800 pro and another 512 of RAM.

Thanks in advance for any help i receive, cya
 
Well, what's the specs on your current system?

What your proposing sounds pretty good, but there might be some extra stuff you need to make the most out of the upgrade.
 
right my specs are as follows...
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ (2GHz)
512 MB of RAM (2 sticks of 256MB with another slot free)
NVidia Ge force4MX 460 64MB
oh and is there anyway i can check what my MOBO is?
 
Well, you can open the system up and look either between the CPU and RAM slots or between the PCI and AGP expansion slots. The other way you can do it open up System Information (Start --->System Tools-->System Info).

You can also download a program called CPU-Z and run that. Going to the mainboard tab should tell you who makes it.

Yeah, the 9800 Pro will make a nice improvement for you. I'd open the system up and check to make sure you have an adequate power supply since you'll want to make sure you've got enough juice to run that thing and the CPU.
 
thats a good system, the 9800 Pro would be a good buy, can be had for around £120 to £130 on the net! more ram would be good for games like Far Cry. you should be able to find out your motherboard by using CPU-Z from http://www.cpuid.com/

Edit: Big B, got there first!
 
my MOBO is VT8367-8233
the aperture size is 128MB
the data transfer rate is 4x
and the revision is 2.0 (dunno what that means though)
The Radeon 9800 pro is 128MB version but the AGP port is 8x, can i still use this?
 
Yes, the Radeon 9800 Pro is backwards compatible with AGP 4x.

Must be a generic mobo then, but the chipset is the Via KT333 chipset.
 
I highly recommend the 9800 Pro. However, make sure you get the 256-bit version, NOT the 128-bit one.

also, for your memory, try getting a stick of the same brand you already have, to avoid compatibility issues as much as possible.
 
A 256-bit memory bus has alot better throughput than the 128-bit bus. This has nothing to do with the amount of memory on the card.
 
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