Which graphic card to get?

My understanding was that they did work together but the CPU/GPU were for the most part seperate entities. I know that if i get one of these new GeForce 450's my older processor/CPU/mobo will bottleneck the cards abilitiy. But dont you think that it will still make a large difference from my old ATI GL 128mb?? It would also allow me for great future upgrades down the road.

 

I would hope its a workstation. Fire is the name of ATI's line of workstation cards. Consumer cards are branded 'radeon'.

Lots of.manufacturers overclock their cards out of the box. Look at ASUS for the best example of this. They usually sell a standard and overclocked version of the mid and high range cards.

As for the cpu/gpu, they do their processing seperately. HOWEVER, anything that the gfx card processes has to pass from system ram, through the cpu, through the pcie bus, then to the gfx card memory. A P4 boardnis going to be pcie 1.0 or 1.1, which means the processor or pcie bus will become your bottleneck. I'm not quite sure.which, tbh, but i wouldnt even expect the gfx card to perform half as well as it would in a modern system. Consider it; youre taking a modern card and putting it into a system thats over 5 years old. That means nvidia has released at least 5 gfx card lines since that cards nvidia equivalent.

That means you may get a decent performance boost, and you may not. It really depends how much bandwidth on the pcie bus youre currently using (likely at least 50%), and what % your cpu is running at. Id wager the cpu is going to top out at 100% constant (in games) once you install the card.

 

It is a workstation there is no doubt about that. A few questions:

1. I was cleaning some dust out of it today and makeing sure the fans were working in which they are. However, in my device manager it has TWO Pentium 4 processors listed, does this mean i am running dual core?

2. I know it says Pentium 4 in device manager, but my actual processor says Asus on it. I am assuming Asus is the manufacturer and Pentium 4 is my type of processor, just wanting to make sure thats how it works....

3. Its an Asus motherboard, not sure which one.

 

Well, ASUS tends to make good motherboards (good design, and good manufacturing processes), but this would be a technical issue nearly regardless as to manufacturer.

At this point, I would just go for it and see how well it does. It should be a decent upgrade, but the card will be limited by the P4.

 

Just a side note on this...if and when you do decide to upgrade your entire system, it works out much better in the long run to build your system yourself...cheaper, and you can get better quality components that will not be "obsolete" a week later.

For example, Last year I built a PC, X4 Phenom, 8 GB DDR3, ASUS MB, 2 Radeon5770's, Ultra 1050 PS, 2 WD 1TB SATA HDD, 27" Acer 1080P Monitor, and tons of case fans...for just under $1400. A very similar setup (smaller monitor, 1 HDD, 1 Gfx Card, and only 6 GB RAM) from Best Buy was going for $1999.

 

+1 to FoD. It may seem like a deal to buy a HP/Dell, but you're getting the cheapest of everything possible. You'd get better performance out of building your own.

 

i have a 9800 gtx on my tv and it works great.
why are you getting a 450 gts? i think you should really go gtx

it goes
gtx
gts
gt
gs
i would go with the 280gtx or the 250 gtx

and plz get a evga graphs card. they are the best