best AGP upgrade for BF2?

[timtooAMD]

hey everybody, im a major BF2 fan, its practicaly all that i play if i am honest, and my fps vary from around 35 flying to around 15 or so when in combat with about 3 or more ppl on screen at once - which is pretty terrible and makes it pretty hard to get any decent scores.

so im looking for the best upgrade i can get (AGP) that will last me 1.5years, (as then will fini uni, so a job will hopefuly mean = much better gaming rig) im a student so upgrading to top specs is a nono, my plan at the moment is to upgrade my rig (see sig) with a cheap 775 board (Asrock 4corevsta) with a e4300 perform a small o/c and 667, 2gig of ram, and use my current 6800gt agp with that, whilst in a few months when i have some more money (when student loan comes in) + and also when i have sold my old mobo+cpu+and ram on ebay hopefuly get a reasonable agp card, i want to run bf2 at high frame rates with best possible graphics but ive read around and believe, and been told im cpu limited at the moment, and also 6800gt is not the best card to have.

yes i have latest drivers and defrag regulary, my settings are mostley on medium at i think 800*600 res (pos 1024*768) but dont think so, with no other effects on (aa).

or do people think me upgrading just my agp card will get me much better performance? because ive been looking around alot and my cpu is kinder out of date compared to the reviews u get on the net of the lastest cards.

ideas/feedback much appriciated, thanks!

edit: looked at the 7600gt, but would that give me the best results, or do i need something with more juice?

 

[nd4spdbh2]

is there an AGP flavor of a 7600gt? cus that would be a VERY cost effective option.... a 7600gt stock is about 2x the performance of my older 6600gt that was massivly ocd, which played bf2 very nicely. other than that a 7800gs is the best AGP card that i kno of.

 

[ColtIce]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814241049
best AGP card out right now

 

[Douken]

grab this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157107

you can use DDR, DDR2, AGP and PCI-e. Future upgrade wise

 

[timtooAMD]

thanks Douken, thats the mobo i plan on getting, but i live in England (sorry should have said) does anybody know if factory o/c cards are that much better than standard clocked ones? for the 7600gt series? thanks,

 

[Douken]

If you are grabbing that mobo then grab this card & upgrade mobo later

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=481911&source=froogle

 

[timtooAMD]

looked at the agp verson of that £140, just wondering if i will get any improvement over a 6800gt with the same processor, i mean is my cpu bottlenecking my graphics, or sshould i got upgrading my cpu first, then get the card later on?

 

[Mpegger]

I too play BF2, @ 1680x1050, with alot of the settings maxed, and according to FRAPS, I'm for the most part maxed @ 60fps (I have vertical sync always on), and rarely if ever go down to (or below) 30fps.

My current system has the same exact video that you have (XFX 6800GT), but I run with a Intel P4 3.4GHz, and 3GB of ram (all Crucial). I also have the swap file on a seperate drive (Raid0 setup), the video card is overclocked using Nvidias own "Detect Optimal Frequencies" (minus a little for stability), and the cpu currently isnt o/c at all. Heck, alot of times when I'm playing the PVR is recording a TV program to another hard drive in the background as well.

Not sure why your fps is so low, since the card sould be more then capable of handling BF2 just fine, but maybe some tweaking is in order, or that AMD just cant handle BF2.

 

[Douken]

looked at the agp verson of that £140, just wondering if i will get any improvement over a 6800gt with the same processor, i mean is my cpu bottlenecking my graphics, or sshould i got upgrading my cpu first, then get the card later on?

I changed the link to an UK site, its only about 105 Pounds Including VAT, 140 is going back to the beginning.

If I were you I would grab that board with a core 2 duo(since you will have to buy one anyways with that mobo)(wait for April 23 for price drops) and see how it works with the 6800GT, then if you don't like it u buy a new GPU. Hope it helps

 

[timtooAMD]

yeah i think that is my plan, will tell you how it goes end of April, cheers for the input ppl. Happy Easter!