New Graphics card for new processor

I just upgraded my 4700 to a faster P4. I had the P4 model 521and put a P4 670 in its' place. I have 4GB's of RAM and need to upgrade the Radeon x300 series card. What card(s) will work, even if a power supply upgrade is necessary? Still using XP Pro, MCE. Both the 521 and the 670 are 64-bit processors.  The 670 has an L2 cache of 2MB's whereas the 521 only had 1. Speed went from 2.4 to 3.8GHz.

Not worth putting the money to upgrade an old P4 system. Better off putting the money into a new system, might even work out cheaper.

You are still dealing with old Pentium 4 technology which does not compare to the modern CPUs.  I think if you did not spend much for the CPU upgrade, then it was probably worth it.  However, upgrading the power supply and putting in a high-end video card will cause a bottleneck.  

Obviously, you can do better than your x300 though.  What is the purpose for the video card upgrade?  You have a 305 watt power supply.  Therefore, the best card you can get is a HD 6670.  It is really not a bad card and can be pretty good with gaming if that's what your looking to do.  However, even this card may still be bottlenecked by your old P4 so I would see no point in going beyond it with a PSU upgrade.  

If you look HERE, your CPU scores a 640 which is pretty low compared to the best ones today.  I think your other P4 scored a 313.  

You can swap in a new 1155 mainboard (with SATA 6gbps and USB 3), Core i3 2105 (with Intel 3000 graphics), and 4gb RAM for about $225. That will be significantly better performance than the typical $300 entry-level PC.

The new mainboards don't have PATA ports, though, so you'd either have to add a PATA card or replace any PATA devices.

This will work and wont harm your stock power supply or your wallet.

The Asus  Mfr Part #: 5450SLDI1GD3LP

http://shop.amd.com/us/Manufacturer/Asus/Detail/GraphicCard/5450SLDI1GD3LP

If you buy a 6670 ($100), you can move it into a new machine that you might buy later.

The 5450 is a low end card aimed at corporate PCs and home theater PCs.

you are wasting your money trying to upgrade a p4 system

It depends on what it's used for.

Thanks for all the input. I just want to make changes to newer technology, working within the boundaries that I am limited to. The cost of the 670 was only $40, so not pricey. The Radeon x300 though could stand some work and maybe add a Blu-Ray player. I'm also looking at getting a combo TV/Monitor so as to not duplicate screens. Right now, I seem to have lost the ability to switch from the monitor to the analog TV that I use to watch Netflix and DVDs on. Another reason to get a combo unit, as most of the newer video cards do not support S-video, which the x300 does. I'm not into gaming, so maybe don't really need a card that requires a larger PSU. I was kinda looking at only going up to 512MB, not necessarily all the way to 1GB. Still, for the $100, it wouldn't be that out of price range. Even a larger PSU at around the same cost would look reasonable. Besides, haven't really liked what I've seen from Win 7, to want to go that route with the cash.

Radeon X300 is well below minimum spec for BLUERAY playback.  X1600 is as low as you can go.

Blueray REQUIRES HDMI and HDCP which means you cannot use analog VGA or Svideo TV to watch blueray.

The 5450 will not require a new power supply.

The x1600 does not have hardware support for HD; that began with the 2XXX series.

I'd suggest a 6570 card, which can be had for around $60, less with a rebate or sale. It has an onboard HDMI 1.4-compatible HD audio device, and full hardware support for all three Blu-ray codecs, and it has reasonable 3D performance.

Blu-ray does not require HDMI and HDCP for full-resolution display of titles lacking the Image Constraint Token (ICT), and according to the Blu-ray FAQ, as of February 2011 no Region 1 titles have the ICT.

http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/

The 6670 is a great card, if you want to spend $100. (If you buy a newer machine later, you can move it over.) The power supply would not hurt anything but it would be "overkill."

BTW there's little point to playing Blu-rays on an old-fashioned analog standard definition TV, as they simply can't display the resolution.  

rdunnill, thanks. I really wasn't planning on staying with the analog, just mentioning it as equipment. In my previous post  I went on about a Monitor/Digital TV unit. Trying to work with the MCE idea that "came" with the XP Pro system, whereby one appliance would work for both formats instead of having duplicate screens. I think that having a "closed-end" system like XP allows me to feel as if I'm getting the most out of what I have, unlike a newer system that may not have that restriction. Some of what I'm trying to achieve may be related to streaming of online videos. I want to get to a position where I don't need to wait for the buffer to fill before the video plays non-stop. And, maybe with my current equipment, that isn't an objective easily reached.