Best card for old rig?

[weever_uk]

Hey everyone!

Right, I have a pretty old rig that's kinda reached maximum capacity and I'll be upgrading probably at the end of the year when I've saved up a bit of money . However, my current rig is still good and I want to keep it running after I've built my new one. The problem I've got is that my current graphics card is on the way out! It's a PowerColor Radeon 9600PRO with 256MB DDR that I originally had to go with an ABIT NF7 motherboard before that died on me, and now my Radeon's none to healthy either . My current set-up is:

Abit AN7 motherboard with NVIDIA nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset
Athlon XP 3200+ processor
2 sticks of DDR 333 512MB (Originally had 1 stick of DDR 400 512MB, but that died too over time)
Thermaltake Purepower 480W PSU
PowerColor Radeon 9600PRO with 256MB DDR
Harddrives, DVD drives, other stuff ...

What I want to know is what's the best graphics card I can get for this set-up given that it's pretty old? I don't know if the new cards can run on it but it seems pretty pointless spending lots of money (that I don't have anyway) when the rig wouldn't cope with it. I also thought it might be worth going back over to NVIDIA considering I think they're supposed to work better with the AN7, but I could be wrong .

Thanks for any help anyone can give!

weever~

 

[Jon]

I'm no expert, but I'd say something like a 7600GS may be well within your budget and get you by for the rest of the year, or pretty close.

 

[weever_uk]

I had been looking into one of those, but I was wondering if it would be overkill. For example, the ones I've been looking at are all DDR2 memory and my RAM sticks are only DDR cause that's all my mobo supports. Any other thoughts before I commit?

weever~

 

[ScottinIndy]

You could try picking up a 66gt on EbayUk. Shouldn't be real expensive and yet should give you pretty decent performance.

 

[SeasonalEclipse]

Yeah a 6600GT will play anything out today (graphics quality will vary depending on how old the game is).

 

[weever_uk]

So am I likely to see any difference between the 6600GT and the 7600GS with my rig?

weever~

 

[ScottinIndy]

So am I likely to see any difference between the 6600GT and the 7600GS with my rig?

weever~

I don't think you would have much of a Cpu bottleneck issue with either card, The 76gs has the extra 4 pixel pipelines so it is the more attractive card, However it will also probably cost more, I think for short term usage like you seem to have planned the 66gt if found for the right price would do well for you. I honestly have never dealt with the Athlon Xp series, So hopefully someone a little more informed than me can answer your question in regard to performance expectations between the 2 cards with your processor.

 

[weever_uk]

I've seen 4 makes of 7600GS cards at pretty good prices, they are:

Asus
Inno3D
Gigabyte
PNY

I've also seen an Xpert 6600GT card on ebay UK.

What are people's experiences of these brands? It would be interesting to know as I'd like the card to last another couple of years and not conk out even though I'll be upgrading in the not to distant future.

weever~