Help pick a card please

[Metallica God]

havent been around here for months. Alright, my computer is about 3 years old. My current video card is radeon 8500 64MB. I'm looking to upgrade the video card, so judging by my rig which card should I get that would be a suffcient upgrade and not bottleneck much at the same time.

[Westline]

Is that Motherboard you have a 2x, 4x or 8x agp board? If its 2x or 4x agp board, you might want to consider upgrading motherboard and processor. I would recommend getting a 6600GT if you want to spend less then $200. If you want to spend about $300 get a 6800GT or a x800XL or x800 pro.

[tyrant222]

i too recommend getting a new mobo/proc.

for christmas I picked up a 1.6A +hsf from the for sale boards and I got a refurbed mobo from newegg for a total of 90 bucks. have it running at 2.5ghz.

this is now the parents computer.
you can either stick with intel and just get a new chip or go for something like s939 + nf4 board (although this is a lot more money)

that poor 6600gt will get bottlenecked for sure on that system

[mysterfix]

If your not planning on upgrading everything you should just get a 9700 Pro or 6200 agp. They can both be had for around $100us and will be a huge jump over what you have now. Otherwise the other two guys are right on.

[TheGreySpectre]

yeah, I would go with a 9700pro, if you go much beyond, that you will have a major bottleneck at your CPU

[Metallica God]

9700 pro sounds good, and yea I'm not planning to upgrade at all, will just get a new rig in a year or two, percentage wise , how big will the boost?

[Metallica God]

ok i'm having a hard time finding a Radeon 9700 pro, i found some AIW ones but they are a bit out of my price range, by the way my motherboard is 4x agp

[Yuriman]

Honestly, a radeon 9100 can run all modern games at decent settings, and its just a re-released R8500le(slow edition). I'd look first into getting a new cpu, the jump from an Athlon XP 3000+ to an Athlon64 3000+ gives a noticable boost on any system(and it would be a much larger jump for you). Then again, with pci-e out you might also consider a whole system upgrade, but I think for now, a new cpu/board is the way to go first.

[mysterfix]

Ebay has a bunch of 9700's here (http://search.ebay.com/9700-pro_W0QQfkrZ1QQfromZR8).

[Darkstorm_13]

yea i second a 9700 pro.

[Metallica God]

are you sure that they'll work with agp 4x, because from what I've seen they all say 8x

[mysterfix]

They are backwards compatible, they will work at 4x no problem.

[Metallica God]

perfect, thanks alot, now when it comes to replacing the card, do I just take out the old one and put in the new one, and then just turn on the computer and install the new drivers?

[hainer36]

i say get a 9600XT (maybe a AIW) this is basically because ive got one for sale, but seriously there a good card for the money

[bobmanfoo]

perfect, thanks alot, now when it comes to replacing the card, do I just take out the old one and put in the new one, and then just turn on the computer and install the new drivers?
thats pretty much it... uninstall the current drivers and turn off the psu