There is no point in worrying about pcsx2 performance as your cpu will always be bottlenecking you. Your gonna have to replace the cpu and the motherboard as well. So you might as well get a 4850.

If you wanna go for nvidia anyways then the 9800GTX is only just slightly slower on average than the 4850 in pc games. When you turn on AA then then 9800GTX falls behind a bit more. One thing to note is you can overclock a 4850 farther than a 9800GTX, you might need an after market video cooler to really push the overclock though.

 

ok, thanks for the information. I would upgrade my processor, but AMD dosent have any good processors that is 2x more performance that what I already have :-/. I hope next year amd releases something good, if not I may switch to intel. I would buy a 9800gtx, but I wish it was $160-$180. The 4850 is $159 after mail in rebate on newegg. I may have to buy a new powersupply too :-/ I have a 500watt (,which works well with the hardware I have now), but I think both 9800gtx and 4850 needs at least 550 watt. Oh well, Thank you again for the help !!!
~Dark09

 

the 8600 series at 128bit,PCI-E and ddr3 attributes
looks now less than a $100 now you might welcome to try it.

if you're going for 8800 but still likely expensive around $200..or wait for a few months.
if that price might lower.

 

the 8600 series at 128bit,PCI-E and ddr3 attributes
looks now less than a $100 now you might welcome to try it.

if you're going for 8800 but still likely expensive around $200..or wait for a few months.
if that price might lower.

He would be downgrading this way, a 8600Gt is no match for a 7900GTX. A 8800 now... change for it if the price is good, and if you sell yours for a good price also. Id say keep you GPU, she is good, top of the line for her generation. And change your CPU for an Intel. AMD with future Processors may cath intel but it will be IMO impossible to surpass.

 

Don't worry about the PSU. Your 500 watt PSU should handle those cards fine as long as it's a decent quality one. I'm using a 500 watt Antec PSU to power my 4870 and it's running strong. I wouldn't expect any noticable performance improvement in emulation though. As others have said, the CPU will be the limiting factor.

 

Your 7900GTX is still a nice VGA card, will bring you excelllent FPS in PCSX2 and with any other 3D rendering software....upgrade it with a 8800GS or a 9600GT on the Nvidia side, talking about ATi an HD3850 or HD4850 should be enough.....but the latest ATi series are very powerful and outperforms the entire 9XXX fleet of Nvidia.

But upgrading your CPU will be most suited to boost the performance of PCSX2, even a E2XXX OCked will outperform your Opteron, better if you choose an E6XXX or an E8XXX, will give you pretty much full FPS on many games.

 

i know GTX series is the most intense video card..
but i'm too scared to purchase that...reason:limited warranty,too expensive,and likely NOT typhoon-proof...here's our country is now currently a typhoon season...i know due to natural causes will not count that warranty.

 

tallbender :

Oh come on, you don't need to say that. As we both know that even $200 is NOT cheap in our country, as the minimum wage is akin to like, 4$ per day.......

Besides, It's kind of a waste having a pretty decent processor with a poor video card......

 

lol, I wasn't expecting all these replies. Thank you all for your help ! I just went ahead and bought a x4850, and today just saw 9800gtx's in the less than $200 range (after mail in rebate). I didn't see serialata post about the power supply (I have a antec 500watt power supply as well). I bought a 650watt antec power supply, because in the spec's of the x4850 they recommended a 550watt (arg...). I just knew this was going to happen... in the future I will upgrade to intel, but not anytime soon (expensive). Thanks again for the help.
~Dark09