Geforce2 MX 400 to ATI Radeon 9600..?

Hi, I was planning on updating my system over Christmas (1600 Athlon, Geforce2 MX 400) in order to be able to play the newer games (Call of Duty, Deus Ex 2 ect).
I'm thinking on changing my Geforce2 MX 400 to a ATI Radeon 9600 for more gaming speed, but then I wondered whether it would make much of a difference....???? Will it increase speed? Should I just update my CPU?
Thanks,
Geraint.

This past summer I replaced my GeForce 4 MX-440 with a Radeon 9500 Pro. I am not disappointed I did, either. Now I can play games (my favorites are Madden 2003, Freedom Force, and Halo) without having to worry about whether or not my graphics card can keep up. A few days before I received my new Radeon I jacked up the FSAA and anisotropic filtering to see how Madden worked.

It didn't. At least not well.

Now I can set my system up to make the games look better and perform better because my graphics card has the power to do both. I'd go for a Radeon 9600 Pro if you can afford it. Otherwise just get a 9600 non-Pro. Just stay away from a 9600SE, as it is a de-contented 9600, just like the old TNT M64 had a memory interface of 64 bits instead of the normal 128 bits.

Even though it is even more expensive, if you can afford a 9500 Pro it will out-perform the 9600 or 9600 Pro because the 9500 Pro is basically a 9700 with a slower (by only 25 MHz) clock speed.

I think your CPU should be good enough...

Thanks for all of the replies, I just phoned up a hardware dealer and they said not to bother updating my Geforce2 MX400 without updating my processor, because my current processor would be such a bottleneck, it would make the effect of the new 3D card negligible - which could mean a new motherboard seeing as the Epox 8K7A only goes up to 2200+.
Any thoughts?

Here's the link to your mobo:

http://web.epox.com/html/motherboar...=EP-8K7A&lang=1

It doesn't say anything about going only up to 2200+. Your mobo should handle any FSB266 XP chip. You should be able to pick up a 2000+ to a 2400+ for $65 to $80 from newegg.com.

But I think the dealer you talked to was just trying to sell you a new CPU. Google your motherboard and see what kind of benchmarks it's putting up. That should give you a good idea of what to expect with your current CPU, as the reviews I saw were using Thunderbird chips.

Of course your hardware dealer will tell you that, he wants you to buy more stuff from him! Going from a GF2 to a Radeon 9600 will be a huge improvement, even on a Athlon 1600. I would get the 9600 Pro instead of the non-pro if it's not too much more expensive. Forget about the 9500, they don't make that anymore so you probably won't be able to find one unless you buy a used one on ebay.

Oh really?

Here's a link to a real, brand new Radeon 9500 Pro:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...-102-258&depa=1


But you may want to go with the 9600 Pro as it performs almost as well for about $50 less:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...talog=48&depa=1


Or save yourself a little more and get a regular Radeon 9600:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProdu...talog=48&depa=1

Hope this helps.

He never said he had the ability to buy online. Most people buy their computer hardware from stores, and I doubt you will find a 9500 in a store.

But yah, if you find a 9500 and a 9600 and they're teh same price go for the 9500.

Hey guys thanks in advance for the help, I had a Shuttle AN35 mobo with Nforce 2, I had a geforce 2 mx 400 and when i installed madden 2004 I would get alot of stuttering after about the first play. 2500XP, 60Gb HD, 9600 radeon, 256 ram. I have checked the ram so its not that, and everything else is brand new. So I thought it was the video card so I went, bought the 9600 and still I get this problem. I uninstalled the MX drivers before hand, and have also tried drivers on the CD and from the web. Thanks again for the help.

I had problems with Madden 2003 on my 9500 Pro. The single largest contributor for my problem was that Fast Writes were enbled. Disabling them took care of 95% of the problem.

Also, Madden is incompatible with dual monitor systems. I disabled the secondary display driver (I don't have a secondary display so why this is installed is beyond me) and that took care of the rest of the problem.

For you I would suggest making sure you are running DirectX 9.0b in addition to what I mentioned above. Also, run RegHance or other similar registry cleaning programs to make sure all entries referring to your old video card are gone. This might be difficult with you having an nVidia board, so be careful.

Last, you might also try running your video card at AGP 4x if nothing else works well enough.

Hope this helps.