Bottleneck w/6600 GT?

My system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
1Gb PC2700
Gainward GS GF4 Ti 4800SE 128mb
160Gb WDC 7200RPM
120Gb WDC 7200RPM
WinXP Pro

I've been looking to upgrade the entire system to a Athlon 64 3500+, but I
decided to just do the video card now and the rest of the system in about 6
months. I can hold off, I think.

My question is, would there be a bottleneck in my current system if I buy
the 6600GT now? Is my processor, ram, etc. sufficient to let me utilize the
card to its fullest?

Dave Zass wrote:
My system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
1Gb PC2700
Gainward GS GF4 Ti 4800SE 128mb
160Gb WDC 7200RPM
120Gb WDC 7200RPM
WinXP Pro

I've been looking to upgrade the entire system to a Athlon 64 3500+, but I
decided to just do the video card now and the rest of the system in about 6
months. I can hold off, I think.

My question is, would there be a bottleneck in my current system if I buy
the 6600GT now? Is my processor, ram, etc. sufficient to let me utilize the
card to its fullest?


You will receive increased framerates based on what you have now but of
course if you upgrade to an athlon 64 3500 (hopefully a winchester core)
then you will see a further increase

Dave Zass wrote:
My system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
1Gb PC2700
Gainward GS GF4 Ti 4800SE 128mb
160Gb WDC 7200RPM
120Gb WDC 7200RPM
WinXP Pro

I've been looking to upgrade the entire system to a Athlon 64 3500+, but I
decided to just do the video card now and the rest of the system in about 6
months. I can hold off, I think.

My question is, would there be a bottleneck in my current system if I buy
the 6600GT now? Is my processor, ram, etc. sufficient to let me utilize the
card to its fullest?

If it works the card should give you better performance and DirectX 9
support. Your system is similar to mine and I have seen a big
improvement in performance over the Radeon 9700 Pro I was using before -
which in turn is a faster card than your 4800.

However, I would advise putting off any purchase of an AGP 6600GT for a
few weeks. Too many people, myself included, have experienced major
performance and system stability problems with these cards. There are
always going to be a few problems with any new piece of hardware, but
there are just too many at the moment. Chances are in a few weeks time
there will be new driver/BIOS releases and the problems will be solved.

Ian

Dave Zass wrote:

My system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
1Gb PC2700
Gainward GS GF4 Ti 4800SE 128mb
160Gb WDC 7200RPM
120Gb WDC 7200RPM
WinXP Pro

I've been looking to upgrade the entire system to a Athlon 64 3500+, but I
decided to just do the video card now and the rest of the system in about 6
months. I can hold off, I think.

My question is, would there be a bottleneck in my current system if I buy
the 6600GT now? Is my processor, ram, etc. sufficient to let me utilize the
card to its fullest?

As a rule of a thumb, I wouldn't wait for getting a new graphics card or
new hardware if you have enough savings in the piggy bank. You'd be
fine with that CPU and the memory is more than sufficient. The only big
difference with your current CPU and a newer AMD CPU is that your
minimum framerates would indeed go much higher when encountering heavy
duty processing, but the average frame-rates would be close.

Ian Harding wrote:

Dave Zass wrote:

My question is, would there be a bottleneck in my current system if I
buy the 6600GT now? Is my processor, ram, etc. sufficient to let me
utilize the card to its fullest?


If it works the card should give you better performance and DirectX 9
support. Your system is similar to mine and I have seen a big
improvement in performance over the Radeon 9700 Pro I was using before -
which in turn is a faster card than your 4800.

However, I would advise putting off any purchase of an AGP 6600GT for a
few weeks. Too many people, myself included, have experienced major
performance and system stability problems with these cards. There are
always going to be a few problems with any new piece of hardware, but
there are just too many at the moment. Chances are in a few weeks time
there will be new driver/BIOS releases and the problems will be solved.

Ian

Funny that the sweetspot market sector is the one where Nvidia has a
rough start up. That's exactly the card that would put them into a
pedestal of worship, but with stability problems coming in like on a bad
day at an ATI tech office, it's going to spoil the initial gloat.

"Dave Zass" wrote in message
...
My system specs:

AMD Athlon XP 2700+
Gigabyte GA-7VAXP
1Gb PC2700
Gainward GS GF4 Ti 4800SE 128mb
160Gb WDC 7200RPM
120Gb WDC 7200RPM
WinXP Pro

I've been looking to upgrade the entire system to a Athlon 64 3500+, but I
decided to just do the video card now and the rest of the system in about
6 months. I can hold off, I think.

My question is, would there be a bottleneck in my current system if I buy
the 6600GT now? Is my processor, ram, etc. sufficient to let me utilize
the card to its fullest?


Ther have been lots of people complaining on Nvidia's forum about getting
huge increase in benchmark scores , and not noticing any difference in
games.
Well the first thing to say about that is, once engrossed in gameplay does
anyone really notice DX9 quality improvements compared to DX8?
Secondly bencharks measure performace by disabling the "synch to refresh".
If your have it enabled for games you can't run faster than your refresh
rate even with a faster card, hence no appearent improvement. To get the
best out of a faster card you need to use a larger screen definition,
increase refresh rate, or increase scene complexity. These could require a
better monitor, or better CPU.