Here's a quick summary about your situation right now.
Problem 1- You want a spanking new video card, 1st problem is that AGP is just about phased completley now. The new games that are getting launched are requiring the power that PCI-e is using to some degree now, so AGP is a dead ended purchase as it's future proof isn't secure.
Problem 2- Your processor and motherboard are probably too dated to cope with a brand spankin new Video Card. No use purchasing a $300 VGA card, if it is your CPU which will stop the games from running over 25 frames. Now if you have a Sempron core AMD- (this is a cheaper, lightweight version of a AMD 64+ Single core) the performance of your games will be hindered by the CPU not the VGA, so look at investing in a new CPU double check your motherboard would be able to accomodate such an upgrade (if your mobo is 939 socket AMD, you'll be all good! If you have 754 socket or Socket A this is going to make looking for a CPU slightly harder as these sockets have run their course and no longer are in production.)
AMD Sempron cores are cheaper due to the following-
1. The clock speed is 2.0Ghz but the architecture doesn't include some encoding and processing capabilities that are found on the 64+ and FX cores. Some of these encoding will affect some of the performance of your PC.
2. The amount of memory is reduced in the caches instead of roughly 1/2 meg to a meg for each cache say L2 whatever, you would be lucky if you got 256Kb in L2. This will dramatically affect the amount of information your CPU can handle in a single clock cycle (Layman terms here)
3.The construction is done on the cheap, so parts although manufactured by AMD will look to more economic solutions in construction of the chips to maximize the profit gap for the company. Cheaper the part, most likely the cheaper the production costs (unless it is on sale.)
Your processor will be good for a basic web-box PC. You can type, web surf maybe even do some older games well like (DX 8 coding) but your CPU can handle heavy coding that comes DX 9 or higher games in development.
If you are upgrading just purchase a simple 6600GT or 6800 card to play games with for now. After that look at investing into a new CPU (non-sempron) for gaming such AMD 64+ (X2 cores are fantastic) or the Opteron cores (underrated performers) these will cost more but it will a noticeable improvment in performance (most games are bottlenecked by CPU's now rather than VGA.) If you have less than a gig of ram, purchase more to make it a gig. And then secure your upgrade finally by looking at PCI-e motherboards, finally starting to plateau in prices and now the revisions are actually looking pretty good.
So good luck, and enjoy whatever happens....
Problem 1- You want a spanking new video card, 1st problem is that AGP is just about phased completley now. The new games that are getting launched are requiring the power that PCI-e is using to some degree now, so AGP is a dead ended purchase as it's future proof isn't secure.
Problem 2- Your processor and motherboard are probably too dated to cope with a brand spankin new Video Card. No use purchasing a $300 VGA card, if it is your CPU which will stop the games from running over 25 frames. Now if you have a Sempron core AMD- (this is a cheaper, lightweight version of a AMD 64+ Single core) the performance of your games will be hindered by the CPU not the VGA, so look at investing in a new CPU double check your motherboard would be able to accomodate such an upgrade (if your mobo is 939 socket AMD, you'll be all good! If you have 754 socket or Socket A this is going to make looking for a CPU slightly harder as these sockets have run their course and no longer are in production.)
AMD Sempron cores are cheaper due to the following-
1. The clock speed is 2.0Ghz but the architecture doesn't include some encoding and processing capabilities that are found on the 64+ and FX cores. Some of these encoding will affect some of the performance of your PC.
2. The amount of memory is reduced in the caches instead of roughly 1/2 meg to a meg for each cache say L2 whatever, you would be lucky if you got 256Kb in L2. This will dramatically affect the amount of information your CPU can handle in a single clock cycle (Layman terms here)
3.The construction is done on the cheap, so parts although manufactured by AMD will look to more economic solutions in construction of the chips to maximize the profit gap for the company. Cheaper the part, most likely the cheaper the production costs (unless it is on sale.)
Your processor will be good for a basic web-box PC. You can type, web surf maybe even do some older games well like (DX 8 coding) but your CPU can handle heavy coding that comes DX 9 or higher games in development.
If you are upgrading just purchase a simple 6600GT or 6800 card to play games with for now. After that look at investing into a new CPU (non-sempron) for gaming such AMD 64+ (X2 cores are fantastic) or the Opteron cores (underrated performers) these will cost more but it will a noticeable improvment in performance (most games are bottlenecked by CPU's now rather than VGA.) If you have less than a gig of ram, purchase more to make it a gig. And then secure your upgrade finally by looking at PCI-e motherboards, finally starting to plateau in prices and now the revisions are actually looking pretty good.
So good luck, and enjoy whatever happens....
