DescentBB

I was thinking about doing a small upgrade to my system in the area of video card and RAM. I run an old Gigabyte 965P-DS3 motherboard with 2 Gigs of Corsair DDR2-800 RAM and an EVGA 7600 GT 256MB

I'd like to play some of the newer titles and possibly speed the progress of my work on a mod I'm developing for Fallout 3 and may port over to New Vegas when it comes out and enough modding resources are available.

Anyway, here is what I'm looking at getting that is in my price range:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820134797

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130390

Should this be enough to handle what is out there currently in PC gaming?

In a word: No.

A 9400 GT is not going to be any improvement over a 9600 GT even if it has 4 times the memory. The reason being the 9600 GT has 64 stream processors to the 9400 GTs 16, which means the 9600 GT is realistically 4 times faster (and that isn't even taking into account that the 9600 GT has higher memory bandwidth too).

As for the memory upgrade, if you are running XP (32 bit) then 2 GB is really good enough, a 32 bit XP system can't use much more than 3 GB anyway and when I had 4 GB in my system I couldn't tell the difference at all between 2 GB and 4 GB(3.3 GB usable) till I loaded Vista / Windows 7 x64 on it.

Holy crap! Typo... I meant a 7600GT lol. I know a 9400 wouldn't be an improvement over a 9600

Thanks for the tip on the RAM. I've had a tech I used to work with tell me otherwise but I always figured 2 Gigs was enough. A new Proc or just a better video card might be a better investment overall.

If you skip the memory upgrade you can probably manage a GTS 250 (AKA 9800 GTX+) 1 GB card, unfortunately EVGA only has a 512MB card:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130539
Although 512 MB should be sufficient for most games except for a few that need more texture memory (like Crysis Warhead on max settings). Odds are newer games will start to put some pressure on 512 MB cards, but before that really becomes an issue you would really need more stream processing power than a GTS 250 has to offer (128 stream processors) anyway.

However just for good measure here is a 1 GB GTS 250 with a decent warranty period: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814133322

Hmmmm... not sure if that might be a bit steep as I have other expenses at the moment. I just need something that will serve me fine. I'm not too worried about games that aren't out yet as we plan to get an XBox when the newer $200 version of the XBox comes out (She likes to watch Netflix on my XBox). However, for modding needs, I'd like to get something that will benefit my modding habbits and help speed up the process a bit (some of the areas in my mod run very slow as there is an extremely high poly count and a ton of scripts running not to mention a lot of fancy lighting. I've seen a rather significant crunch on my system when running my latest build. Just need something that will run New Vegas like a charm.

1gb EVGA card..

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=3669

thats a GTS250, there are plenty of 1GB versions of those... its finding a 9800GTX+ in 1GB thats hard

The GTS 250 and 9800 GTX+ are exactly the same card. If you absolutely need it to call itself a 9800 GTX+, simply grab a GTS250 and flash it with a 9800 GTX+ BIOS.

hmmmmm didnt know that....well, i did know that a 250 is a 9800 with lower power and heat. but i didnt know you can cross flash them

Messenjah, do you have any particular attachment to Nvidia? The GTS250 and it's G92b core are pretty closely related to the original G90 that came out in 2007. Its probably the fastest thing Nvida's got in your price range, but if you don't mind shopping other makes you could bump it up to a 1GB 5750 for the same price as the 250. It has all kinds of modern features like DirectX 11 instead of 10, HDMI and Display Port for compatibility with future monitors and TVs, flash acceleration, etc...