Video Card Upgrade Question

I have an AMD 1 gig with 512 sdram and 100 mz bus speed. I am running a Radeon 8500LE which is giving me stutter on a few racing games. I have been told that uprading wouldn't really make any difference because no matter how fast the card is it is being hindered by the 100 mz bus speed. If I could get better performance and eliminate these stutters I would upgrade to a Radeon 9600 Pro. Any information would be appreciated. (FYI the game that is problematic is Microsoft Rallisport Challenge which seems to problematic for others also as I have read on other forums.)

If you have an agp slot on your mobo (i would guess you do) then the video card is not limited by the fsb speed. If you have agp 4x on your mobo, then that is using all the bandwidth you have available. However, the 9600 pro would still be faster, because its internal processing and memory are faster. Whether it would solve your particular problem or not is unsure, esp if others are having problems with the same game on beefier systems (could just be the game). However, if you are lagging on lots of newer games, then upgrading the video card is probably a good idea.

Makes sense but the AGP fsb would help it out a bit more correct ?. ??????????

AGP != FSB. A higher agp (8x) would help if he had a card that could take advantage of it (like the 9600 pro), but wouldn't make the existing card faster. Since it would take a new mobo to get a faster agp slot, if he's just looking for some improvement, the new video card is the way to go. (Plus, if it turns out that is still not enough, you could put the 9600 into building a new computer)