Upgrade video card...worth it?

[dparm]

My dad works out of our house and recently got a new computer. His old desktop is staying at our house, however. I've taken it over in hopes of putting it to use somehow. Specs are as follows:

Compaq EVO D500 desktop
1.6GHz P4
640MB RAM (PC133)
20GB WD 7200rpm 8MB cache HDD
DVD-ROM
CD-RW
Intel PRO 100
Creative SoundBlaster Live! (5.1)
64MB ATI Radeon 7200 (retail)

I was thinking I'd use it for computer games. I don't really play anything super demanding. I play UT2004, Quake 3, SimCity 4, and NFS Underground 2.

The computer runs at a good speed -- not unbearably slow, but not blindingly fast. I installed XP SP2 on it and disabled things I don't need to free up more RAM. The fast hard drive helps too. I was thinking of buying a cheap AGP video card to boost gaming performance. Monarch Computer has a Radeon 9250 128MB for like $40 shipped, or a 256MB version with DVI for $50 shipped.

Is this going to be a decent upgrade? I'm not going to dump a lot of money into this computer since it's kinda old, but I want to do something to boost it a bit. I know the RAM is slow, but the games I play aren't too RAM-intensive.

Thoughts?

(BTW, being a business workstation, this thing has a cooling system that is total overkill...perhaps some overclocking on the video card?)

[abudhu]

I see systems like that all the time. You didn't give a budget which would help.

In any case, if you want to spend about 100-150 buy a 9800Pro or a Nvidia 6600. I would go with the Nvidia based on the SM3 capability of it. Newegg has an Chaintech 6600 For 116. Which is a steal.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814145113

[jmcgon]

*cringes* change the mobo out and give it some faster ram :p

[abudhu]

*cringes* change the mobo out and give it some faster ram :p

Haha, that too. But he wanted a GPU, so I stuck with the question :-D

Faster Ram will help and it is something you should look into.

[dparm]

Can't really do that...it still technically belongs to my dad's company. A PCI card is easy to swap if they want it back, but I'm not going to start swapping MOBOs and the like.

BTW Amit, I have no budget really, but spending less = mo betta. $50-$75 is really the highest I wanted to go.

I guess what I'm asking is if the 128MB 9250 is an okay card for basic gaming.

[jmcgon]

Personally, I wouldn't bother (I'm cheap though -- college student! :D). HardwareZone did a nice review of some of the 9250 cards at this link (http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=1238&cid=3&pg=1). It doesn't have bad performance in some of your games, but anything above 800x600 and it starts slowing down. The tests on that page were done with a 3.06ghz P4 and 512mb of DDR333 though. If you don't mind graphics turned down allllll the way and slooooow loading times then it would possibly work, but don't hold me to it if you decide to buy. :eek: