StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I think I might've asked this before but anyway,

I have a 3 GHz P4 on a motherboard with a 512k FSB, with 1 gig of DDR333 RAM. The motherboard is a D845PEBT2. Power supply is 420 watts. I'm getting a BFGTech 7800GS OC AGP to replace my totally obsolete Gf Ti4800 SE.


I have the money to get that new card but not enough to get a whole new system.

How long can my system marginally keep up with games?

More RAM, but that's cheap as chips.

The key thing nowadays appears to be SM3 enabled cards as more and more games appear to be SM3 only.

What's SM3?


EDIT: Shader model 3? I'm sure the 7800 GS I'm planning to get would cover that.

You should be fine. You could upgrade the system and still keep the card for a while after, but I think it would be pretty pointless to upgrade a system while staying on an AGP platform. I have a very similar system with a 7600 GT AGP, which is about the same performance-wise as the 7800 GS, and I expect to be able to run new games at 1280 x 960 with medium settings and no AA or AF until roughly this time next year. Right now I can run them at medium-high settings with about 2 x AA and 4 x AF. By 'them' I'm mainly talking about Medieval 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2.

I'll join in with a somewhat similar question:

I've got a Radeon 9800Pro, 128mb, 256-bit AGP version. How long will it last? I realize that its fairly obsolete by today's standarts, but I don't want to spend money on a new card before DX10's stabilise on the market. Will my card hold?

I just replaced my 9800 Pro, so my answer is that it will last 0 days, but it all depends on the lowest settings you'll accept. I upgrade when I can't play the latest games at 1280 x 960 at medium to low settings, but you might be happy at 1024 x 768 or even 800 x 600, in which case you can hold out 6-12 months longer than me. Other people can't stand anything less than max settings with 16 x CSAA and 16 x AF at 1920 x 1200 resolution. They're the ones that upgrade every 6 months to a new $600 card.