Help with upgrades for taking video of gameplay...

[TSx]

Preface: I'm looking to get a solid system that will allow me to record videos using GameCam at 1280x960, while playing World of Warcraft at 1280x1024. The videos are used for reference as well as general sharing/downloading, so the text needs to be visible and easy to read. I design mods for the game and a number of our mods require timing spells/abilities that bosses in the game use, so being able to see that in clear text helps us a great deal.

I'm honestly not the most knowledgable on video cards or the new processors, so I'm looking for help from people that know. I can currently record at 1024x768 at 70% quality without too much noticable lag or fps decrease. I'd like to record at 1280x960 at 100% quality, or as close to that as possible. I don't want to overclock. My computer sits in a rather enclosed area, currently with an Arctic Cooling VGA silencer on the 9800pro and an Arctic Cooling Silencer 64 Ultra CPU Cooler on the A64.

Currently running:

AMD 64 3000+
MSI K8T Neo FSR
1gb Corsair DDR400 PC3200 ValueRam
BBA Ati 9800pro 256mb
Maxtor & WD 7200rpm hd's

What I've been looking at:

- 7800GT, not GTX due to the large price difference. Is the only difference between the cards 20 pipelines to 24?
- Since I'm on a 754 chipset MB with agp only, I'd need to go AMD 939 with pci-x...newegg has a combo of a 7800GT with an eVGA board for $379, which seemed like a rather nice deal. Then I was thinking an A64 939 3500+ to go with that board.
- 1gb additional DDR400 PC3200 Corsair Valueram

Someone said I should look into an A64 X2, however I haven't the slightest clue if that would be better or not.

I'm looking for any input/feedback here as I haven't looked at comp stuff since January of 2004 when I built this comp. It runs WoW fine, however WoW+videos gets to be a bit laggy and the fps drops considerably the higher quality/resolution go.

 

[LunchboX3904]

i think you should focus on a new processor instead of a video card. If you can float the cash for both then go for it, but for recording, i believe the processor is taking most of the pain.

 

[TSx]

Really? I would have thought it was largely the video card that would be in need of an upgrade. How noticable of a difference would going to a 4000+ 939 or something be from a 3000+ 754? Or would the A64 X2 be better? I still can't really find out if that would be better for what I'm doing.

 

[LunchboX3904]

if the recording program is an external program, you would see very nice performance gains with an X2 cause one core could do the recording while the other runs the game. maybe wait for someone else to chime in first, but I'm pretty sure an x2 would help a lot.