At the moment I'm running a sheddy old P4 2.66Ghz (OC'd to 3Ghz) with a Sapphire Radeon 1650 graphics card and 2Gb of memory (running XP Pro).

Trouble is, very modern games turn into slideshows even with everything turned down (CoD4 worked reasonably, CRysis played nicely!!, MOH:AA was playable on lowest settings), CoD5 was SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW (read unplayable). Far Cry 2 was just plain nasty. Horrible artefacts and a slideshow to boot. And a seriously smokey computer (using Speedfan to check how hot it gets under the collar!)... Do you reckon I like FPS or something

I'm looking at upgrades... Trouble is I'm also saving my wedge for my Emerald ECU so I'm trying to get a cheap upgrade for about £200

What does anyone reckon on this:

AMD Athlon 9500 2.9Ghz Dual Core
ATI HD 4670
2Gb DDR

In my mind the bottle neck may be the 9500 but the advantage of having an AMD motherboard is that it'll be easier to swap it for a dual core later (the board will take a Quad phenom)....

Any opinions? Is it going to offer much of a FPS hike over my current set-up? I'm going to keep on with XP Pro 32...

thanks in advance!! I used to be up to speed on relative CPU performances but rather lost the plot when 32/64 single/dual/quad came about.....

IMHO...AMD are not as good as they used to be... I would go for an intel core2 Duo or a P7 (not sure on prices though....)

for 200 you are going to be hard pushed... you could easily spend £80 alone on decent DDR2 memory... (obviously 1 1gb stick per core!)

Is it better to have 2*1Gb than 1*2Gb for dual core then? I'm confused!!

200 quid on a second hand ps3 or Xbox 360 would be a better bet if you ask me.......

True, but I do occasionally do stuff like video editing / movie transcoding (for my Ipod) on my desktop and the P4 is getting a bit slow so an upgrade is on the cards anyway....

How much ram does your graphic card have? What Motherboard are you thing of using. It might be better to leave the processor as is (most games don't take advantage of dual core anyway) and upgrade your graphics card and on board ram.

play games on a proper game machine i.e. x-box or PS3, spending shed loads on PC for gaming is imo a waste of money

Using a matched pair of memory sticks will allow Dual Channel memory access (if the board supports it). I presume you have the old socket P4 with AGP graphics. If you want to upgrade to a new style PCI-E graphics card, you will be forced to upgrade your processor and probably your power supply. I would second the Core 2 Duo, but you will be pushed to get a decent one for your budget.

Bizarrely I found a Mobo 2 years back that accepted a P4 and PCI-express so that's what I'm on at the moment.....

Most of the power needed for gaming is done by the graphics cards.

The Ati Radeon 4870 is a great card.. especially with the release of the new ATI Radeon 4890 they have come down in price a bit.

i would recommend getting just the better graphics card, and see how you get on with that.

DDR ram is end of life, and no longer used in current systems, so i wouldnt get any more ram until you decide to upgrade to a new motherboard/cpu

Cool! New GPU it is then (mobo's PCI express after all).... Looks like I'll just have to wait when I'm doing video work

Personally, I'd buy an old nvidia 8800GT or GTS (512mb) if you can, or a 9600GT (same card, new sticker)

shouldn't cost much and will perform much better than your current card.

IMO (being the owner of an ATI 4870X2) the nvidia drivers are better and more reliable than ATI drivers.

I'd resist building a whole new machine for now, Core i7 is expensive and fast. Core2 is very affordable, but getting towards end of life, so not a great investment.

I agree that a new GFX card would be the most beneficial along with a good amount of memory. If you do go for a new CPU and Motherboard then Intel is currently the way to go, the new i7 processors are great.

Do Not get a Nvidia 8800 or anything based on it if you play COD4 or 5 as there is a problem with either the drivers or the actual hardware which causes the game to freeze hard in XP and crashes the driver in Vista. Do a google search for "The nv4_display driver has stopped working normally" for details. Some people don't get the problem which leads me to believe it is a hardware problem but there are literally thousands of people who do get the problem so better off with 4870 IMO.

I never had that issue on my 8800GTX, nor has anyone on the gaming forum I moderate on, and run servers for.

The ATI vs. nvidia thing could go forever, but currently, IME;

nvidia = more compatible, good game support, less great hardware
ATI = Great hardware, let down by poor game support and poor drivers.

However, whatever you buy will be a decent upgrade.

Well I do have the problem and on searching for a resolution I have found many post on various forums about it. It is a well known problem with no real resolution. I have only ever owned one ATI card which was the Radeon 9800 and it was brilliant as have been all of the nVidia cards I have owned beginning with my first TNT. The 8800GTX I have now is fine in UT99 2004 and UT3 as well as Team Fortress 2 and LOTRO but any of the Call Of Duty games cause the PC to freeze completely. Like I said, if you search for "The nv4_display driver has stopped working normally" you will see the number of people having this issue.

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Originally posted by Keith WeilandLike I said, if you search for "The nv4_display driver has stopped working normally" you will see the number of people having this issue.

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Hi, I think I have a 9600GT in my dead desktop at home. I will have a look when I'm home but will sell if you want to buy it . Its doing nothing for me since I killed Windows and changed to a lappy and PS3

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Originally posted by Staple balls

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However, to humour you, if I search google for "The nv4_display driver has stopped working normally cod4" I get 281 hits, which strikes me as a less general search, and more likely to be indicative of the scope of the issue.

"ATI cod4 stutter" has 6,810 hits, and as ATI are the smaller, less popular company, I feel that puts it into perspective a little


I could list known problems with ATI cards, all of which I've experienced;

WoW - no AA, low framerates in heavy action.
City of heroes - weird reflection issues
CoD4 - weird stuttering on some older drivers, runs better with capped framerate.

What I'm trying to say is there's known issues of various severity with both makes, and it's hard to pick between them as they can be caused by damn near anything.

[Edited on 27/4/09 by Staple balls]

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That's fair enough but if you Google "nvidia cod4 stutter" you get 9,040 hits. As PC systems are all different there are bound to be problems crop up but that is different from a recurring problem that has no effective resolution. I am not saying ATI are better than nVidia or vice versa, I am saying there is a known issue with 8800 GPU based cards and the COD series (which the OP mentions playing) that he should be aware of when buying a new card. Regardless of the problems I have had with this card, my personal opinion is that nVidia are generally a little more stable than ATI.

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BenB - 27/4/09 at 06:48 PM

Tricky tricky tricky!!! I've been a loyal Radeon fan (not sure why, just kept getting the same brand as my first card!!!).... But it looks like Nvidia have the upper hand in some ways recently....

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Staple balls - 27/4/09 at 07:56 PM

Problem is, these days they work out pretty much equal, so just pick what you prefer, and sent it back if you have too much trouble and switch to the other make

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BenB - 27/4/09 at 08:48 PM

Only dilema is it seems a shame to get a DX10 card and not run DX10 But if I want to do that it means going to Vista. Which seems a shame when a better, quicker OS is on the cards!!! Might hold fire until Windows 7 comes out and then jump ship to DX10....

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Staple balls - 27/4/09 at 09:01 PM

It's not like many games actually use DX10 all that well anyway, you're not missing much.

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Keith Weiland - 28/4/09 at 04:29 PM

I agree, DX10 is not all its cracked up to be.

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Davey D - 30/4/09 at 06:12 AM

Through the years I've owned all manner of nvidia and ati cards, and never had any serious problems with any of them. There has been the odd strange texture In some games, but that has always been driver related, and fixed by changing to a different version. In the past I always bought the highest performing card, but these days I tend to go for the best bang-per-buck card as I was getting sick of spending so much on a card that was the best for 6months at most

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MikeRJ - 1/5/09 at 10:56 AM

The HD 4870 is a cracking card for the money.

Nvidia have some useful features if you are really into gaming (PhysX and CUDA support), but the current equivalent to the HD 4870, the GTS250, is a re-badged 9800 GTX which itself is a re-badged and slightly overclocked 8800GTS, so it's now two generations old. Still a good card if you can pick on up cheap mind.

Also bare in mind that modern GPU take a LOT of current from the PSU, quite a bit more than the CPU in many cases, so make sure your PSU is up to the job. The 12v current rating is at least as important as the overall power rating, and note that unbranded PSUs often have comically optimistic power ratings. When cheap and nasty PSU's pop there is a risk damaging other components in your computer since they often don't contain adequate overload/overvoltage protection.

Both the above cards require a separate connection from the PSU, make sure you have the required special connector on your PSU!

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