EggXpert

Hi Everyone,

 A friend of mine is looking to upgrade his old computer, but doesn't have a lot of money to play with. In essence, he wants better performance out of EVE Online. He's currently running on an old Geeforce FX 5200. His question--and mine--is whether plopping a newer GPU such as this one into the box will work. We're a bit limited in options because his MB only has PCI slots, not PCI-E. Will it actually work? If so, how much of an improvement in performance can he expect?

The other question I have is whether the GPU linked above will work with a 32-bit OS. I know it seems like a silly question, but I'm not sure what exactly the "64-bit" part in the item description refers to.

Any guidance on this point would be appreciated. If he had a couple grand to play with I could just help him build a high-end box from scratch, but as it is the budget is quite limited. Thanks in advance for your help!

does it by chance have an AGP slot? if so that would give you a wider choice of cards to use.. PCI slots are not the greatest when it comes to graphics cards due to the limited amount of bandwidth.. the card would work insanely better then the FX-5200.. but if he does have an AGP port.. there are a lot more choices out there that are more bang for the buck..

 

 

btw if im not mistaken.. this card is the exact same one as the 9400GT PCI

 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130451

 

remember.. all 9 series cards are actually 8 series cards but rebanded.. the only exception to this rule are the very few 9400 series cards that used the g94 gpu which was discontinued after 3-4 months of production and switched to the g92 and the 9800GTX+ and obviously the 9800GX2.. besides those cards.. all the 9 series are the same.. 9400GT = 8400GS, 9600GT = 8600GTS, 9800GT = 8800GT, 9800GTX = 8800GTS(g92) 512mb..

If he doesn't even have an APG slot then its not worth putting money into it anymore, just too old. PCI graphics is like three (going on four) generations behind now. Even if you did go with a better PCI card, im sure the systems so old the CPU and memory performance will bottleneck it badly, on top of the poor bandwidth PCI delivers. Droping a good $400-600 can get you a pretty great little gaming rig right now, dont need to dish out upwards of $1000 anymore to have a decent gaming rig.

I'm in the same exact situation as OP so I thought it would be redundant to post another topic. I have a P4, 512 memory and an old FX 5200 as well but I'm not gonna spend $400 to buy a new PC just so I can play a couple of old games. I mainly just play Counter-Strike 1.6 and Heroes of Newerth, however my FX 5200 isn't quite powerful enough. Was just curious to know if the upgrade to 1/2gb memory and a better card like the 9400 or HD2400 pro would be worth the money. It seems OP just wants to play EVE and is on a tight budget like myself, so buying a new computer is out of the question. However if the performance gained by these upgrades is little then I suppose it's best to stay with what I have. If anyone can shed some light, it would greatly help myself and topic starter.

Going PCI graphics as an updrade is just not worth it, i understand that people have budgets, but you have to understand that after a certain point its not worth putting more money into an old system. You will not get much more out of it... unless you at least have AGP or PCIe then it might be worthwhile.

Fair enough, can you answer how much better the 9400 would be compared to the 5200 however? There are people saying they can run crysis with low settings on ~30 fps, which is pretty impressive for a PCI card. I understand it isn't going to much better, but a rough estimate would be appreciated.

If you get a new/build a new computer most likely your brains will explode from the performance increase.

Going from a 5200 to 9400 series would make a night and day difference, provided you at least have a halfway descent CPU to feed it.

 

Would you consider my processor enough? It was posted above. I only play a few games and if I can get a ~20 fps increase it'll definitely be worth it, I understand it isn't worth the money on old computers but it seems to be like a good choice in my situation provided that the performance is good enough from the new card.

On paper its a night and day difference, but PCI interface+Pentium4+slow DDR memory will weigh heavily on it. If i had to throw out numbers from the top of my head, maybe you'll get 10-15% more  real world performance (higher FPS in games), thats being very optimistic. In CPU heavy games it will be more like 5%, if that. A simple $55 intel 45nm dual core (2.5ghz) would give at least double performance, even more if overclocked. Again, these numbers are just speculation based on my experience.

Thanks for the help, I think i'll just save up $350 and get myself a budget pc, even then i'm sure the performance will be at least double of what I have now.

You didn't specify WHAT P4 you have, its kind of a broad range of performance between the earliest and the latest models.