Worth an upgrade or not ?????

M

mintsauce5

Geek Trainee
Hi , newbie to the forum and would appreciate some advice , i've been given an old dell tower unit p3 1.0mhz 512 ram with an ati radeon 7000 64mb graphic card fitted , my question is this , the only slots i have are pci slots so my choice is a bit limited , would i notice much of a difference in graphic performance if i bought an nvidea geforce fx 5200 128 mb graphic card or am i just wasting money , any advice would be appreciated. p.s. i mainly play call of duty online . :confused:
regards
Tony
 
You would see some difference since the 7000 isnt' really in the same league as a 5200. But I'm not saying you'll get gaming performace either.
 
Hi alot of dell systems are difficualt to upgrade becasue they are unique to dell so often they have to upgradde them for your which costs a bomb + is that nvidea card a pci card?? and are you sure its no pci express as that won't work on your system. for proper gaming perfomance i recommend building a new system thats more universal than dell. hope this helps Dave :good:
 
That systems' too old to be PCI-E. I think overall its only good for the occasional DVD, light games (and I don't mean HL2). Anything more then you're gonna need to start thinking of upgrades.
 
If you want to upgrade your graphics card go with the the 5200 as you suggested or the 9200 (PCI of course), both are on pretty even footing but I seem to remember the 9200 edging out a little on the majority of the tests (I think the 5200 runs most openGL games better though). Could be wrong. I personally suggest you replace your motherboard, keep the ram as 512 isn't too bad, buy a cheap AGP card, and an older processor, like the Athlon XP 2000 or so (Newegg is where I buy most of my stuff). You could do that for less than $250 depending on what you spend on the graphics card and mobo. At any rate if you upgrade your PCI card Call of Duty wont exactly scream or look great, and most new games will run like a slideshow operated by a fumbling, arthritic old duffer. I realize components aren't cheap but It's your choice.
 
Unless the reviews and benchmarks I read were drastically flawed, I remember the FX5200 taking the 9200 to the cleaners in every aspect. The 5200 is a DX9 card while the 9200 is a DX8.1 so your better off with the FX5200 for better graphics quality as well as better performance (even though its not great at all).
 
Yeah, sorry about that. Addis is absolutely right. I was probably thinking of the 5600 vs. the 9600XT or something. With that being said go for the FX5200 then.
 
Addis said:
Unless the reviews and benchmarks I read were drastically flawed, I remember the FX5200 taking the 9200 to the cleaners in every aspect. The 5200 is a DX9 card while the 9200 is a DX8.1 so your better off with the FX5200 for better graphics quality as well as better performance (even though its not great at all).
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True, however you've then got the problem that the FX5200 is a dreadfully buggy card, games just really DO NOT like this card, - it's a dreadful card. So perhaps a 9200 would be better, or go for a 5600 or 9700Pro
 
About the RAM.
There's no way he has DDR so if he upgrades, he pretty much needs to change everything.

This would be a good second computer. You could do a file server or something with it, but as far as gaming goes, forget it.

N.B. You said you had a pIII 1.0 mhz . Now that's pretty slow :p
 
i decided to get an inno3d 5200 card its improved things 150% compared to the 7000 card , i know this computers a bit dated now but its just a stop gap till the insurance pays up for my halfinched laptop and i can get a nice new alienware one , thanks for all the advice and ideas anyways.
regards
Tony :chk:
 
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