To upgrade or Not to Upgrade..

[Britty]

that is the question.

 

Hi to everyone.

I have a rather average HP SR2029.

 

Intel core duo 2.13ghz

2gb RAM

Nvidia 7500 LE graphics card

Windows XP Pro media centre

 

With recent game releases i notice very poor or average perfromance such as 'age of conan' at low settings i manage a very poor 20 to 35FPS.

 

I was thinking along the lines of a XPERTVISION 1GB GeF 9600GT SONIC PCI-E 2.0 to majorly boost the graphics. I keep a very clean system (Auslogics Boostspeed ;)) so CPU speed isn't a major issue.

 

The question is will my PCI express port be compatable and run a PCI 2.0 graphics card?

 

Or should i sell a kidney and buy a new rig?

[Guest Wolfeymole]

I'm not all that up on the gaming side Britty to be honest but according to this article from Toms hardware the actual board it's self needs to be PCI-E 2 compliant.

 

It will work but not as good as if it where fully compliant.

 

PCI Express 2.0 Graphics Cards Tested : How Does PCI Express 2.0 Scale? - Tom's Hardware

 

I'd suggest you wait for further advice on this from the team.

[Dalo Harkin]

As wolfey has said - its the MOBO that makes the PCI card run at 2.0 the GPU may itself be 2.0 but will only run at 1.0 or 1.1 if the motherboard does not support 2.0.

the 9600 card is not as good as the 8600 in terms of power to cost ratio

[Britty]

Cool thanks

 

Will Bung a new mobo in as well then ;)

[Dalo Harkin]

Stay away from a MOBO that uses DDR3 memory it is so expensive and only really benefits a quad core setup - and even then only marginally.

I would hold off on the new MOBOtoo, buy the GPU and see how it runs - upgrading to a PCI 2.0 board may only increase speed marginally.