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I currently have a 128Mb AGP GeForce FX5900XT.

As I like to upgrade things in small steps wherever possible I don't want to change Mobo, CPU, RAM and vid card at the same time, but I would like an improvement.

There are 2 options for the next upgrade I can see. I can either buy a new AGP card, or I can upgrade the Mobo to PCI-E and vid card.

I think the second option is preferable, sooner I get on to PCI-E the easier future upgrades will be again. Also you seem to get more for your money (In my price range anyway) from PCI-E cards, so the money on the mobo isn't entirely wasted.

So, the question is what Vid card? Budget is low (for vid cards) £100 is the absolute maximum, would prefer to spend a fair chunk less if possible!

So far, using Scan as a guide for prices I can see the following options...

1) XFX top-range Nvidia 6xxx series here

2) XFX mid-range Nvidia 7xxx series here (Not yet available as it isn't in stock?)

I don't really have a clue about ATI cards and what is hot and what is not, but this seemed a reasonable deal, 256Mb ATI x1600.

The 3 options are all similar prices, so which would be the best? Are they a worthwhile improvements over the FX5900 I currently have?

I am not expecting top notch performance, just something I can play WoW & maybe Eldar Scrolls 4 (sux on the FX5900!) on

Proper shader model 3 support is the most prominent advantage to upgrading from an FX5900, you'll suddenly be opened to the world of dynamic range lighting and such

I had the same dilemma as you a couple of months back and couldn't justify yet spending on a new PCI-E motherboard which would be spending on a new dual core 64 bit chip, because frankly going for anything less would leave me with a system that's going to be just as worthless in less than 6 - 12months to cut a long story short for a machine that's going to last me another 3 - 4 years I'd need to spend around £1500 at the time, I'd imagine I can get a machine with the same duration in it for half that when dual core 64 bit kit drops over the next 12months or so. Taking all that into account for the meantime I went for this:

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/110390/rb/20631959755

Whilst fairly expensive it seems powerful enough to keep my current system going for a good year or so, it's handling everything from Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter to Oblivion to Prey in max detail @ 1280x1024+ resolution without even a slight hint of struggle.

However I'm totally straying off-topic as you seem to have opted for the other option. I'm not sure on the specifics of the 7600 you listed but for a 7xxx range card at that price it comes across as one of the budget cards, whilst they don't perform too bad they can often miss out on important features so previous experience for me has always been that the high end last gen. cards are better than the low end current gen. cards. Things may have changed as they always do, but make sure the card you choose supports the latest shader model, compare the rendering throughput on them and so on.

Xest wrote:
I had the same dilemma as you a couple of months back and couldn't justify yet spending on a new PCI-E motherboard which would be spending on a new dual core 64 bit chip, because frankly going for anything less would leave me with a system that's going to be just as worthless in less than 6 - 12months

Thanks for the reply Xest. I must confess I am a little dubious about budget cards, I would probably prefer to go for a non-budget slightly lower range card

With respect to the PCI-E motherboard, I can currently buy one that accepts my CPU and RAM, I would then have to upgrade the Motherboard again when it came time to upgrade those, but the £40 on the motherboard Does mean that I can do it all in 2 hits instead of 1, and as you hinted at will probably be saved by the CPU and RAM being cheaper in 6 months when I can maybe afford to do them.

Having said that about budget cards, this one appears to be really good value. The review is quite impressive for a budget card.

Yeah seems pretty decent, looks like the cutbacks on budget cards now are in the amount of shader pipelines they have. Any idea if the 6800 had more and if the clock speed/memory bandwidth of the 6800 was faster/comparitive?

A fair bit of stuff is calculated using shaders now, most prominently a lot of lighting is as well as post processing effects so in a more modern shader heavy game have 33% less shader pipes probably equates to a good 20% less speed on those games but again this could be potentially negated if the card is faster in the first place. Potentially this will become more of an issue though as graphics cards are heading towards processing physics calculations too as physics/graphics are generally the most computationally expensive parts of an engine (this can vary with some games of course that don't use advanced physics etc.!). Still that's the future, right now the only boosts to physics will be from your main CPU so that's really not a worry atm!

As a more general note, admittedly straying slightly further off-topic, I've noticed more and more games are loading data on the fly as we begin to see massively complex and massively large worlds used so hard drive/RAM throughput is becoming another major factor in good performance.

Oh one last thing, from that review:

a capacitor had been knocked clean off the card. Luckily, this didn't affect the cards performance

Uh, I'm sure it was there for a reason no ?

[Quote=review]
As mentioned, compared to the previous 7300 cards, this uses the same core as the 7600 GT/GS. This means it also has the same 128-Bit memory interface. The main key difference here is that one of the quads and one of the vertex shaders is locked on this core. So unlike the 7600 GS/GT which has 12 pixel shaders, five vertex shaders and eight pixel output engines, the 7300 GT has only eight pixel shaders and four vertex shaders.
[/Quote]

That's compared to the 7600.

The top spec 6800s (£150+) have 12 pipes, the other series 6xxx cards seem to have 8. As the 7300GT is cheaper than most of the 6xxx series cards again it looks like good value.

The lower 7300 models (GS / LE) probably don't compare to the 6600 / 6800 models but it seems the 7300GT will be better.

It certainly looks like a good card to get on to the PCI-E bandwagon, ready for a jump to a mid-range Series 8xxx card though

Xest wrote: Uh, I'm sure it was there for a reason no ?

Apparently not

Maybe they add capacitors to make it look good?

One thing that is nice I noticed is that it supports SLI but I think SLI motherboards cost a fair bit more, not sure.