Advice on my new (hand-me-down) PC

[Mongrel]

Hi forum
My old dad has just bought himself a top of the range PC, and has handed me down his old one. Although it isn't exactly cutting edge it is a HUGE improvement over my current one, which is more or less powered by a hamster in a wheel.

I have just done a 3Dmark test and still struggled quite badly on it. I think it's just got an AGP grafix slot so can't get the latest ubercards, but would generally like to spend a couple hundred quid souping it up getting it running the latest 3D games if I can.

Anyway, I was thinking of getting the....
Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP)

My questions are - will this work on my mobo?
Is it worth getting this card or should I spend money on something else like the RAM?

Well here's my current spec so take a look, and I really appreciate any help and advice (you guys are alwaqys helpful on this forum) so thanks in advance:
Motherboard:
CPU Type AMD Athlon XP, 1666 MHz (12.5 x 133) 2000+
Motherboard Name MSI MS-6382(E) (3 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 CNR, 2 DIMM, Audio)
Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8366A Apollo KT266A
System Memory 1280 MB (DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type Award Modular (05/14/02)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM1)
Communication Port Communications Port (COM2)
Communication Port ECP Printer Port (LPT1)

Display:
Video Adapter NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 (256 MB)
3D Accelerator nVIDIA GeForce FX 5200
Multimedia: Audio Adapter VIA AC'97 Enhanced Audio Controller

Storage:
IDE Controller VIA Bus Master IDE Controller
Floppy Drive Floppy disk drive
Disk Drive WDC WD1200BB-00CAA1 (110 GB, IDE)
Disk Drive WDC WD1200JB-00GVA0 (111 GB, IDE)
Optical Drive HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8320B (32x/10x/40x CD-RW)
Optical Drive LG DVD-ROM DRD8160B (16x/48x DVD-ROM)
SMART Hard Disks Status OK
Partitions:
C: (FAT32) 112986 MB (62243 MB free)
F: (NTFS) 114470 MB (47144 MB free) Total Size 222.1 GB (106.8 GB free)

 

[Abarbarian]

If you have a couple of hundered pounds to spend I'd save up until you have four or five hundered and build yourself a totaly new rig . With careful shopping you should be able to build something decent and upgradeable .
In the meantime you might be able to get a better cpu and graphics card for not too much money on the second hand market which would give you fairly decent games playing while you save up .

 

[PotGuy]

If you have a couple of hundered pounds to spend I'd save up until you have four or five hundered and build yourself a totaly new rig . With careful shopping you should be able to build something decent and upgradeable .
In the meantime you might be able to get a better cpu and graphics card for not too much money on the second hand market which would give you fairly decent games playing while you save up .

Agreed.

Now, the X1950 is a very good card, but it will require a lot of power. Could you please tell us what your PSU is?

As for the CPU, it depends how much you are willing to spend. I reckon £60 would probably get you somewhere above the 2ghz mark, but really you are running into a wall upgrading further.

 

[Alf]

Save up, its not worth it to spend money on
just use it for something other than playing games...
of course you can play games from 5-6 years ago pretty decently