It's the onboard video.

Anything is a step up from onboard.

As in other threads, I would strongly suggest you build another system before dropping cash on a PCI video card. The "gains" you'll see won't be worth the $80 you'll spend on that card. Might as well buy a new motherboard and AGP video card, then reinstall your OS, then play games again.

In summary, onboard sucks.

Yes the PCI card should be an improvement but don't expect a miracle, that ATI card is definately not the latest and greatest chip out there but it should make a nice difference. I agree building a newer pc would be better but if your rig is pretty new then I guess the card would be a better option. What are your specs? You may be able to upgrade to a new case(if you have a proprietary system only), motherboard, and video card for less than $225 and have a significant increase in performance depending on your current hardware.

thanks for the help but im building a pc in the summer so i want to get something cheap for now, btw this is my brothers pc im getting the pci card for so i dont wanna waste alot of money on it.

One thing i found out is the 9200se is only 64-bit while other cards are 128-bits will there be a big dofference between 64-bit and 128-bit?

I'm going to break this down for you.

In an AGP based system, you're going to have a bus that has access directly to the memory and CPU, along with the PCI bus. The PCI bus has to travel through another chip called the southbridge, then to the northbridge before any processing and redirection of raw data is written into and out of the CPU and memory.

For a rough analogy, the AGP bus is its own highway, one that is not cluttered with other cars and slow drivers to impede it's way to the destination. At standard 4x AGP, you're getting somewhere around 1.2GBps (gigabytes per second) of theoretical bandwidth.

Compare this to the PCI bus, which is riddled with all of your other system devices: hard drive controllers, sound card, network and modem cards, USB, firewire, PS2 ports, serial, and parallel...it's highway is cluttered, indeed. Any PCI card has to contend for a lane, waiting for other drivers to get out of it's way, waiting on a chance to get out into the lane. On a standard 32-bit, 33MHz PCI bus, you're getting 133Mbps (megabytes per second of theoretical bandwidth.

You get other ~8 times the bandwidth with AGP versus PCI. You can do so much more with AGP than you can with PCI, and that's because all the engineers and such knew that graphics subsystems would be hungry for the bandwidth needed.

It's not going to matter if the PCI video card you buy is 64-bit or 128-bit. You're limited by the PCI bus, no matter what the power of the video card you decide to lay your money down on.

fine ill get a new mobo and video card now is the 9600 a good card at X4 and is the mobo hard to change?

The motherboard can be a pain to change and it is best if you reload the system after you switch it- it is best if you want to be absolutely sure you should have no problems with Windows. If you want to gamble you can boot into safe mode before you take the old motherboard out and remove all the devices from the device manager and if may work be redetecting everything- that has worked once or twice for me when I could not find the drivers for certain PCI cards that the system had. I believe the 64-128 bit on the video card has to do with how wide the pipeline is that the GPU can access the RAM at, if that is the case then it is significant but for that card should suit your needs as you stated.

ok as for the mobo can i be certain that

ASRock P4M266 Chipset Motherboard for Intel Pentium 4/Celeron Processors, Model "M266" Retail
Specifications:
Supported CPU: Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4/Celeron Processors
Chipset: VIA P4M266
Max FSB: 400MHz
RAM: 2x DIMM for DDR266 up to 2GB;2x DIMN for SDRAM up to 2GB
IDE: 2x Ultra DMA66/100/133 up to 4 Devices
Slots: 1x AGP 4X, 3x PCI, 1x AMR
Ports: 2xPS2,4xUSB2.0,1xLPT,1xCOM,1xLAN,1xVGA,Audio Ports
Onboard Audio: 2 Channels AC97 audio codec
Onboard Video: ProSavageDDR 3D Graphics
Onboard LAN: 10/100Mbps Ethernet
Form Factor: Micro ATX
will support
my cpu , a Celeron 2.2GHz 400mhz fsb mPGA 478?

and i have a dvd and cd burner will they plug into my new mobo?
I have a 160GB hard drive does this mobo support the full 160GB? and can i install my 80GB hdd as well? at the same time. I have PC2100 memory will that work on this mobo?
these are just some questions i have plz help me out as for the changing my mobo, do you think I can screw up badly doing it and ruining something cause if i do ill pay someone else to do it.

FINALLY!

Backup everything that you can/know of/want to, swap in the new motherboard, install XP.

It will support the 2.2 Celeron, but for the hard drive, you'll want to email Asrock and see if it has the 48-bit LBA addressing for drivers larger than 132GB. I would assume that the board would support the large drive, but I really don't know if it does or not. Shoot an email to them.

Otherwise, yeah. Buy a 9600XT, disable the craptastic onboard Savage4 video, and play games without issue. And everything else as well.

er.. i was getting a 9600 not a 9600XT
cause when i build my new pc im putting a 9800XT in and I dont want to spend money on a 9600Xt right now ($199 right?) the 9600 is only $118