I have a 6-year-old system that's strugging to keep up with games these days. What I want to know is, is it worth me upgrading the gpu or is it really time to start again!? I'm currently using a 6800 Ultra with a P4 3.4Gh. I was considering upgrading to either a 9600 or 9800, but don't know if these are compatible with the 915P chipset. The 6800 has, as far as I know, PCI-E 1.00, but both the later gpu's are using PCI-E 2.00. Any thoughts or info would be much appreciated!
I believe that it is compatible, but the another problem comes - the bottleneck will be on the single-core processor. If that is a temporary upgrade, it is suggested you get the 9800 first, and then do a upgrade later on the motherboard and the CPU.
Thanks - you're right, I know, but I just can't afford a whole system upgrade just now. If the 9800 will work I'll go for that temporarily....
Don't worry about PCI Express standards. The newer PCI Express graphics cards are backward compatible with older PCIe 1.0 motherboards. I would go with the GeForce 9800 graphics card since it's much faster than the 9600, and upgrade the motherboard and CPU later.
