Will my AMD Athlon 64 3200+ bottleneck a 7600GT?

[Empire]

Hello everyone. To start things off, thanks for the awesome website. It helped so much building my first PC ... and second ... heck, it even helped for my neighbors' cat's PC. I've been reading threads here for some time now and I thought maybe you guys can help me out. Also, I didn't know where to post this, but since the main question is about a video card upgrade, this should be fine. Firstly, this is my rig:

K8N-E Deluxe
1GB of Ram
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 754)
6800GT OC (AGP)
Cooler Master 500W PSU

Yeah, it's pretty old. I can't remember if it was 2 years ago that I made it, or 4. It was when the 6800GT was expensive, that's all I remember.

I've been thinking about upgrading my system so that I can give it at least another year or 4. But after reading through forums and such, the general consensus says to not put anymore money into AGP but rather buy a more modern card and mobo with PCIE. That idea sounds good and all, but I'm not one to play all the modern games at its highest settings. Just the normal Steam games and WoW. Do you think it's a waste of $300 to upgrade my computer? (Thats the price for 1 more gig, a 3400+ or 3700+ CPU if I win the auction, and a 7600GT)

Now to the main question, will my AMD Athlon 64 3200+ processor bottleneck a 7600GT? I couldn't find anything through google.

If it doesn't, what is the best video card for a 3200+ without bottlenecking.

If it does bottleneck, will an AMD Athlon 3400+ or AMD Athlon 3700+ Clawhammer bottleneck it?

If the 3400 and 3700 doesn't bottleneck, what is the best video card for these two without bottlenecking?

I know, I know. You are probably tired of the words 'bottle' or 'neck' by now. I'll try to cut down on it. I just don't know how to figure it out. Is there a chart or something for CPU to video card performances or something. But yeah, my idea is that since I am very limited on CPU upgrades (Socket 754), I might as well get the best AGP video card that my best CPU upgrade can take without bottlenecking. Then it should last for another couple years. I hope.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully, it wasn't too much. Have a nice day.

[The Wise Monkey]

You shouldn't worry so much about this - most modern games are more graphics dependent than CPU dependent. For example, the 7600GT is a very solid card, and you will be able to run the games you want at reasonably high settings.

[Empire]

Oh ok. I just thought the difference of release dates would make one too powerful for another. So would an hd3850 be ok with my 3200+?

[The Wise Monkey]

It would work, but you are right in that the CPU will be an issue with a graphics card that powerful - you won't encounter a bottleneck with the 7600GT, but you might with the 3850, as the latter card will be able to support much higher settings than your processor can.

[Empire]

Ahh ok. So 3850 is basically the cap for 3200+. However, today I won an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ for cheap and I was wondering what would the cap be for this one?

Also, I thought about it and the 7600gt (AGP) is $120. I can get a mobo (Socket 754, PCIEx16) and 8500gt/8600gt (PCIEx16) for about the same price. Would an 8500gt/8600gt (PCIE) be too much for a 3700+?

[The Wise Monkey]

If your CPU meets the recommended requirements for the game, then you won't see any bottlenecks at all. Use the best graphics card you can get, as that will determine the in-game performance rather than the CPU.

There isn't really such a thing as a "cap" on these sort of things. You could use a P3 733MHz processor with SLI 8800 Ultras, as long as the game's minimum requirement for the CPU was at most 733MHz.