Advice on possible upgrade sought...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Martin D. Pay
  • Start date Start date
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Martin D. Pay

Greetings gentles all...

Following the death of my old 17-inch CRT monitor, I've just
replaced it with a new 19-inch flat-screen model. This has a DVI
connector but my current graphics card is d-sub only.

So - as I'm out of touch with AGP specs and compatibilities, I
need advice regarding a possible upgrade of the graphics card.

My system:

Mobo - MSI K7T Turbo (MS6030 v. 3, last BIOS update issued by MSI
installed)
AMD Athlon 1.3ghz Thunderbird CPU
GeForce2 MX graphics card
512MB system RAM
450 watt Enermax PSU

I can't find much about the AGP slot on the mobo either in the
manual, on MSI's website or in any of the tech websites I've
checked out. All I *do* know is that it's stated to be AGP 2.0
compliant, 1x/2x/4x rated. I know there's been a change in the
voltage spec for AGP cards and that mobo slots can be either
3.3v, 1.5v or 'universal'... :(

Can anyone give me advice on the following:-

Is it worth upgrading the graphics card only? I'd like the
increased clarity afforded by a DVI connection, not to mention
the hope of even a slightly better experience playing Quake 3...

If it *is* worth an upgrade, to what? Will the mobo accept any of
the cards currently on the market? I can pick up something like
this card:

MSI Fx5200-TD128 8xAGP 128MB TV-Out DVI

from Ebuyer for around GBP 25 (which I'd be happy to spend) or do
I need to look for a second-hand GeForce 4 Ti card, which I know
would be compatible (if I could find such a thing these days!)

And please don't suggest that I upgrade the whole system - that
simply isn't going to happen for at least a year (maybe 18
months), so I'm looking at something for that year-to-18 month
period...

Thanks in advance

Martin D. Pay
In search of clarification...
 
Greetings gentles all...

Following the death of my old 17-inch CRT monitor, I've just
replaced it with a new 19-inch flat-screen model. This has a DVI
connector but my current graphics card is d-sub only.

So - as I'm out of touch with AGP specs and compatibilities, I
need advice regarding a possible upgrade of the graphics card.

My system:

Mobo - MSI K7T Turbo (MS6030 v. 3, last BIOS update issued by MSI
installed)
AMD Athlon 1.3ghz Thunderbird CPU
GeForce2 MX graphics card
512MB system RAM
450 watt Enermax PSU

I can't find much about the AGP slot on the mobo either in the
manual, on MSI's website or in any of the tech websites I've
checked out. All I *do* know is that it's stated to be AGP 2.0
compliant, 1x/2x/4x rated. I know there's been a change in the
voltage spec for AGP cards and that mobo slots can be either
3.3v, 1.5v or 'universal'... :(

Can anyone give me advice on the following:-

Is it worth upgrading the graphics card only? I'd like the
increased clarity afforded by a DVI connection, not to mention
the hope of even a slightly better experience playing Quake 3...

If it *is* worth an upgrade, to what? Will the mobo accept any of
the cards currently on the market? I can pick up something like
this card:

MSI Fx5200-TD128 8xAGP 128MB TV-Out DVI

from Ebuyer for around GBP 25 (which I'd be happy to spend) or do
I need to look for a second-hand GeForce 4 Ti card, which I know
would be compatible (if I could find such a thing these days!)

And please don't suggest that I upgrade the whole system - that
simply isn't going to happen for at least a year (maybe 18
months), so I'm looking at something for that year-to-18 month
period...

Thanks in advance

Martin D. Pay
In search of clarification...
Click to expand...

According to this, it is a KT133A chipset with AGP 4X slot.

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/K7T_Turbo.htm

133A is listed here as "Universal AGP Motherboard"
http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html

FX5200 is listed as "Universal AGP 3.0 Card"

The "Practical Motherboard And Card Compatibility" table
says it will work.

Installing a powerful video card will not really help you a
lot, due to your 1.3GHz processor. So a FX5200 is a good
compromise choice. I have a couple FX5200's here, and they
are OK for the more light-weight games. It will be slightly
faster than your MX, but there is a big difference in the
potential render path used by games. FX5200 has close to
complete DirectX 9 hardware support. The MX has DirectX 7
hardware support. If a game chooses to use some DirectX 9
features, that can put more of a load on the processor,
and give an apparent slowdown in game play. As long as
your games have preference panels to control the level of
detail in the video display, you should be able to adjust
for acceptable performance.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050305...ykuly/zestawienie_GPU_2/skala_wydajnosci.html

HTH,
Paul
 
Greetings gentles all...

Following the death of my old 17-inch CRT monitor, I've just
replaced it with a new 19-inch flat-screen model. This has a DVI
connector but my current graphics card is d-sub only.

So - as I'm out of touch with AGP specs and compatibilities, I
need advice regarding a possible upgrade of the graphics card.

My system:

Mobo - MSI K7T Turbo (MS6030 v. 3, last BIOS update issued by MSI
installed)
AMD Athlon 1.3ghz Thunderbird CPU
GeForce2 MX graphics card
512MB system RAM
450 watt Enermax PSU

I can't find much about the AGP slot on the mobo either in the
manual, on MSI's website or in any of the tech websites I've
checked out. All I *do* know is that it's stated to be AGP 2.0
compliant, 1x/2x/4x rated. I know there's been a change in the
voltage spec for AGP cards and that mobo slots can be either
3.3v, 1.5v or 'universal'... :(

Can anyone give me advice on the following:-

Is it worth upgrading the graphics card only? I'd like the
increased clarity afforded by a DVI connection, not to mention
the hope of even a slightly better experience playing Quake 3...

If it *is* worth an upgrade, to what? Will the mobo accept any of
the cards currently on the market? I can pick up something like
this card:

MSI Fx5200-TD128 8xAGP 128MB TV-Out DVI

from Ebuyer for around GBP 25 (which I'd be happy to spend) or do
I need to look for a second-hand GeForce 4 Ti card, which I know
would be compatible (if I could find such a thing these days!)

And please don't suggest that I upgrade the whole system - that
simply isn't going to happen for at least a year (maybe 18
months), so I'm looking at something for that year-to-18 month
period...

Thanks in advance

Martin D. Pay
In search of clarification...
Click to expand...

The newer video card will play 3D games better but because a
19" LCD uses only 1280x1024 or 1440x900 resolution and needs
no more than 60Hz refresh rate, the return from moving to
DVI is very very slight... if your monitor has an onscreen
sharpness adjustment that alone might make the difference
between analog and DVI almost completely disappear.

Personally I wouldn't do that upgrade. "IF" you want better
gaming, then I'd tend towards an FX5700 rather than 5200, as
there are different versions of the 5200 with the lower cost
(slower core and halved memory bus) version being much
slower, but the faster 5200 being too close in price to the
FX5700 but not in performance. Plus, the 5700 moved to a
smaller core process so it runs cooler, except for the
higher-end 5700 version but IMO, you'd be better off moving
to the 6xxx series if the budget allows it rather than
top-of-class 5xxx series. I dislike ATI drivers but a
Radeon 9600 is another card to look at, though I've heard
scattered reports that some cards won't do DVI with some
monitors but I don't recall why.

You could use a GF4TI card of course, but you don't need it,
a newer card will work on your board.
 
According to this, it is a KT133A chipset with AGP 4X slot.

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/detail_spec/K7T_Turbo.htm
Click to expand...

Yes, that's the one...
133A is listed here as "Universal AGP Motherboard"
http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html
Click to expand...

Ah! A site I didn't come across in my webtrawling. A useful
resource which I've bookmarked for the future...
FX5200 is listed as "Universal AGP 3.0 Card"

The "Practical Motherboard And Card Compatibility" table
says it will work.
Click to expand...

Indeed it does...
Installing a powerful video card will not really help you a
lot, due to your 1.3GHz processor.
Click to expand...

Yes, I'm aware that the CPU will become a bottleneck at some
point - I wasn't sure at which point, though...
So a FX5200 is a good
compromise choice. I have a couple FX5200's here, and they
are OK for the more light-weight games. It will be slightly
faster than your MX, but there is a big difference in the
potential render path used by games. FX5200 has close to
complete DirectX 9 hardware support. The MX has DirectX 7
hardware support. If a game chooses to use some DirectX 9
features, that can put more of a load on the processor,
and give an apparent slowdown in game play. As long as
your games have preference panels to control the level of
detail in the video display, you should be able to adjust
for acceptable performance.

http://web.archive.org/web/20050305...ykuly/zestawienie_GPU_2/skala_wydajnosci.html
Click to expand...

I'm not a hardcore gamer. As I mentioned, I would like to run
Quake 3 a little better than I can at the moment. (I'll go to the
really modern stuff when I do my next full system upgrade, which
will involve all the 'bells & whistles' - new mobo, SATA HDD,
PCI-express graphics and so forth - or whatever the new think is
in late 2007... ^_^ )
HTH,
Paul
Click to expand...

Many thanks for the information...

Martin D. Pay
 
The newer video card [suggested FX5200] will play 3D games better but because a
19" LCD uses only 1280x1024 or 1440x900 resolution and needs
no more than 60Hz refresh rate, the return from moving to
DVI is very very slight... if your monitor has an onscreen
sharpness adjustment that alone might make the difference
between analog and DVI almost completely disappear.
Click to expand...

Ah... an interesting possibility. The screen is a Dell; I don't
know who made it for them! I'll have to have a look at the
onscreen controls...
Personally I wouldn't do that upgrade. "IF" you want better
gaming, then I'd tend towards an FX5700 rather than 5200, as
there are different versions of the 5200 with the lower cost
(slower core and halved memory bus) version being much
slower, but the faster 5200 being too close in price to the
FX5700 but not in performance. Plus, the 5700 moved to a
smaller core process so it runs cooler, except for the
higher-end 5700 version but IMO, you'd be better off moving
to the 6xxx series if the budget allows it rather than
top-of-class 5xxx series. I dislike ATI drivers but a
Radeon 9600 is another card to look at, though I've heard
scattered reports that some cards won't do DVI with some
monitors but I don't recall why.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that. I'll have a look at the upper range '5' series
cards as well. I don't mind a reasonable expense to get a
noticeable improvement for the next 18 months or so...
You could use a GF4TI card of course, but you don't need it,
a newer card will work on your board.
Click to expand...

And thanks for that also. GF4 cards are as rare as hen's teeth
these days anyway!

Martin D. Pay
 
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