7600GS for Athlon 2400 ?
 

Hiyas,

I'm currently running a Athlon 2400+ (@2.0ghz) with 1gb RAM and an AGP 9600Pro 128mb video card.
If I swapped out the 9600 for an AGP 7600GS, would I notice any difference in games or would my CPU be a major bottleneck and therefore kill any chance at improvement ?

I mainly play WoW, CoD 2, HL2/CSS........

Please don't advise me to upgrade my whole machine, I know I need to but money is tight with mortgage, kid arriving in 2 months and working for myself... but an upgrade will be done before Xmas ;)

Cheers guys

yeah, get the 7600GS and then if you can.. try and find a 3200xp cpu.. they're about $100.. they'll squeeze some extra juice out of your rig

imo

You'd be wasting your money pretty much. Your current Video card is probably wasted on that CPU.

You'd need at least a 3400+ minimum to get desent pull out of a GS, and even then it would still be bottle necking a lil bit.

That'll get bottlenecked all the way to dual core.

A 7600GS isnt much faster than a 6600GT, I would think a Barton 3200+ would max it out pretty much. Google "doom 3 cpu battlegrounds" for an Anandtech CPU scaling article

You can pickup a used AGP 9800pro or 6600gt for under $100 which is a lot faster than a 9600pro

Oh if you did have a bit more $ for upgrade:

AM2 x2 3600+ $110
mobo $150
1gb ddr $80
7600GS $130 (easy to find used one tho for less)

OC it and that thing is cheap and fast

Thanks guys, guess Ill have to flog off some gear and get new mobo/cpu :)

Err .. I own both cards, the GS is much faster, perhaps you are a lil confused about the cards.

A 3200+ doesn't even max out a 6600GT. Check tomshardware for a comparison between a 2700+ and 3400+ and 600GT's.

Doom3 = 1 game hardly a good benchmark.

Yer I had both cards too in PCI-E, 7600GS was only about 10-15% faster though that was a while ago so maybe drivers are better etc

Anyway if you want to play WOW and HL2 a 9800pro or 6600GT would be ok, 9800pro was nearly as fast as a 6600gt in HL2 from old benchies IIRC

I guess the CPU might slow it a bit but a 9800pro will still do a lot better than a 9600pro

Yeh I have the AGP versions pretty much no difference to PCIe though.

I did find in wow there wasn't alot of differnce between my two machines mind you I only played wow for about 3 months :P.

This should answer your question fully :)

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/...sis/page5.html

I'm loathe to go ATI but the writing is on the wall with this type of system I'm afraid, no question about it.