Radeon 9600SE Should I bother?

[PFactorDave]

My brother just dropped off a box of assorted computer parts.  He has just built a new system for himself and he gave me a bunch of stuff that he isn't using in his new rig.

One of the things in the box is a Radeon 9600SE video card.  It's nearly new and I have the software/drivers disk that it came with. 

I'm not terribly knowledgable on such things, so I thought I might describe what I am currently running and ask someone with more smarts then me if I will stand to benefit much by sticking the Radeon card into my machine.

Anyway...  Currently I'm running an AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+ 2.20GHZ  with 2gigs of RAM.  The video I am running is a low end NVidia 6150 that is built into the mother board.

I am running the game at 1024x768 with the Textures set to 512.

The game runs pretty well, but I'd love to be able to run the higher textures and the Hi-Res pack.  Would love for the game to be prettier, but only if it is still going to run smoothly.

Think it's worth the effort to try the Radeon Card?

And if so, is there anything I need to know about setting the card up or any particular Driver updates that I should make certain to aquire or avoid?

Your input is greatly appreciated.

EDIT TO ADD:  This of course assumes that I have an AGP slot on my MB, which I don't know yet.  Will know when I open the case.  Also assumes that my power supply is sufficient.  But for the sake of this discussion I'm mostly interested in whether or not it is even worth the bother to find out about the AGP slot and power supply

[Fulmar]

The key to that card is that it's an 'SE' model which is really saying it's the cheapo 9600 as compared to the XT and Pro models.  The card is approximately 5 years old, at least (2003-2004).  The only benchmarks I can find for the card are quite old, mainly Call of Duty 1 and Flight Sim 2004, the card did 30-50 avg at 1024x768 resolutions.

I've got a gut feeling your motherboard has a PCI-E slot, but it could go either way.  The Nvidia 6xxx series chipsets appeared in 2005, but you can still find them today on off the shelf computers.  My father's HP he bought in Aug '08 has the 6150 onboard chipset.

I can't say for sure, but by chance if your motherboard has an AGP slot, I think the 9600SE may be a very small improvement, if any at all.  It only has 128mb if RAM and its only DDR, nothing faster, you onboard (though it does share system memory) should have more than 128 (probably 256)  I believe it was a $50-60 card when it came out.

[PFactorDave]

That's kind of what I was thinking, appreciate your input.  I may check for the AGP slot and give it a whirl if I do have an AGP.  But maybe I'll just stick with what I have until such a time that I can upgrade the entire system.  Thanks.

[druski85]

I currently run essentially what would be your new system -- Athlon 3500, Radeon 9600 SE, but only 1.5 Gb RAM and on a relatively weak Mobo.  Let me put it this way...the thing was a beast 4 years ago, but I'm hurting badly for an upgrade.  Can't run many new games, and even quasi older ones I have minimal settings.  Fulmar I think it was closer to $70, (built my system many moons ago, though) but still a pretty cheap card.  It is indeed a 256 mb card, but a very slow one with a small cache.  

If it is compatible with your mobo, you may as well shove it in there.  Just don't expect much of a performance increase -- as noted.