Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Cool! I have a 3-Gig P4 and 2 GB RAM. You're making me happy.  |
Then I'll make you even happier.
Though repeatedly thinking in the past two years that my system was about to collapse, I am still with the same old system right now, the only things that changed when they had technical failures, are the monitor, the RAM, the PSU once, and the graphics cards. It's a P4, 3 GHz, 2MB RAM, WinXP, Asus P4P800SE, which is AGP. I have repeatedly upgraded the graphic card every 1.5-2 years, and by doing so for around 90-100 bucks per item I have increased the longevity of the overall system by several years so far. In the end it was far more cost-efficient than if I would have bought a new system at some time in the past. But I do not want to buy new games anyway, so I do not need the latest technical tricks and kicks.
I have used nVidia 7800GS (256) and now have reached a 7950 GT with 512 MB. System runs smooth with all my stuff, which is older titles anyway. American Amazon lists such a board for 120 dollars currently.
I have had bad experiences with ATi drivers in the past, and thus I tend to recommend nVidia, always. I do not like Ati, it gave me nothing but troubles both with native and 3rd-party drivers. But that is also a longer time ago, I admit.
AGP has been declared dead since several years now, but good cards for it still appear on the market, though the 7950 range of nVidia boards seem to be the limit for it.
It's like with tape cassettes. They are still there, and tape decks still are on offer.
P.S. keep in mind that if you suffer from mod-overload, you likely will gain something from a new graphics card only when the mods you use are graphics-heavy. If that is not the case, or the sim is CPU-heavy instead of gfx-heavy (telling from FS9-experience), then you probably waste your money when investing into a gfx-card for your old system. However, for me it payed off to upgrade the old system with gfx-cards, with the noted exception of FS9.