Is this upgrade worth it?

Canis Lupus

I currently have:

xp2600 oc'd to 175*12.5
Asus A7N8X mobo
Herc 9800XT
1GB 3200 ram

want to upgrade to:

A64 3800
MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum mobo
MSI 6800GT

Upgrade cost 900e give or take.

I use my pc solely for gaming for all types of game from FPSs to RPGs to RTSs and I like all settings maxed.

For my 900e am I gonna see a definitive increase in performance cos I sure as hell don't wanna upgrade for that kind of money and have no real performance benefits.

Or am I better off just upgrading the mobo and cpu and leave the GFX card till later OR should I just invest in the GFX card although I was hanging back from this as I'm pretty sure my current mobo and chip would be a bottleneck.

EDIT: Or should I just leave it for a few months and wait for prices to drop pr better stuff to come out.

Cheers for any advice.

CL.

garthv

No,
Id wait a few months if I was you. With the introduction of the new dual core processors, single core processors are going to become cheap as chips as soon as the dual cores become more readily avaliable (stock and price-wise). The machine you have now is grand for the next couple of months and youll be kicking yourself for splashing out so much on a single core processor

Khannie

I'd try to wait a bit too, but if you want to upgrade now, you most definitely will see a huge performance increase with the new rig. 3800 + 6800GT = Stonking.

2600 + 6800GT = bottlenecked
3800 + 9800XT = less bottlenecked, but still bottlenecked.

HTH

Canis Lupus

Yeah whats the story with these new dual core chips I've read about briefly? Are they supposed to be any good and what kinda price tag will they have?

uberpixie

Canis Lupus wrote:

I currently have:

xp2600 oc'd to 175*12.5
Asus A7N8X mobo
Herc 9800XT
1GB 3200 ram

want to upgrade to:

A64 3800
MSI K8N NEO2 Platinum mobo
MSI 6800GT

Upgrade cost 900e give or take.

I use my pc solely for gaming for all types of game from FPSs to RPGs to RTSs and I like all settings maxed.

For my 900e am I gonna see a definitive increase in performance cos I sure as hell don't wanna upgrade for that kind of money and have no real performance benefits.

Or am I better off just upgrading the mobo and cpu and leave the GFX card till later OR should I just invest in the GFX card although I was hanging back from this as I'm pretty sure my current mobo and chip would be a bottleneck.

EDIT: Or should I just leave it for a few months and wait for prices to drop pr better stuff to come out.

Cheers for any advice.

CL.

I went form a 2400xp, 9800, 512mb pc2700 ram

to a 3500 AMD 64, 1 gig of pc 3200 ram and kept my 9800.

Noticed a big increase in performance. Especially in halflife 2, went form 45 frames in the stress test to 110. New cpu makes a big difference.

Another option for you would be to buy an n3 board with an agp slot.

Keep your 9800xt for a while, then upgrade to the new gen gfx cards (which will be available in agp).

Keep the 9800xt to 1074x768 in FPS games and you get good performance. Similar to the 6600gt.

For RTS the CPU is more important, you an crank the gfx up as much as you want.

That will save €400 off your budget.

Also go for the 3500 Amd 64 not the 3800. Very little difference in performance and the 3500 will o'c to the 3800 easily. That saves you another €100.

It's just another option. If you go nf3 you won't have pci express.

But as things stand pci express won't be very important until another 2yrs, any of the next gen in gfx will come in agp.

Going nf 3 is cheaper and when prices go down a bit after the next gen you can get your 6800GT or better in agp.

All 939 mobos will support dual core cpus with a bios update. Not that dual core really matters until the software supports it.....

Canis Lupus

In order to O/C the 3500 I'll want 3700 ram (least this is my understanding anyway) which I don't have so that would be more expense now or further down the line.

Ciaran500

So when will these dual core processors arrive?

uberpixie

Canis Lupus wrote:

In order to O/C the 3500 I'll want 3700 ram (least this is my understanding anyway) which I don't have so that would be more expense now or further down the line.

Up the bus speed by 20mhz and your 3500 runs at 2.4. Same speed as a 3800.

The difference in performance between a 3800 and a 3500 is not worth €100. IMHO.

But if you want a 3800 go for it.

garthv

Ciaran500 wrote:

So when will these dual core processors arrive?

They've been released already(anything from €800 - €1200 iirc). Its just a matter of time before they become more popular and prices drop

Canis Lupus

uberpixie wrote:

Up the bus speed by 20mhz and your 3500 runs at 2.4. Same speed as a 3800.

The difference in performance between a 3800 and a 3500 is not worth €100. IMHO.

But if you want a 3800 go for it.

But have you done that? I was of the impression that 3200 would be running at it's max with an A64 what is the FSB of this chip? Just like you can't use 2700 ram to overclock an XP2600.

jozi

Your ram should overclock, how much depends on the quality of.
You'd have to tweak the timings and voltage as far as i know.

Jozi

Ciaran500

GaRtH_V wrote:

They've been released already(anything from €800 - €1200 iirc). Its just a matter of time before they become more popular and prices drop

I thought only dual cores for servers were released and that a desktop version is out soon.

Shiny

Canis Lupus wrote:

But have you done that? I was of the impression that 3200 would be running at it's max with an A64 what is the FSB of this chip? Just like you can't use 2700 ram to overclock an XP2600.

eh yes you can.

I have practically the same rig as you except i have a ****ty
GeForce 5200 Ultra.
I plan to get a 6800LE and soft mod it to a bad 6800GT, speed
for cheap. : )

I overclocked my XP2600 to the equivilant of an XP3333. Well
thats what it said on SiSoft Sandra anyway and I have 2700
ram.

And yes you, like me should wait till the dual cores become affordable.
I plan my next build in March of next year.
At that stage AMD will have migrated to the M2 socket and as far
as I know they will be using DDR2 aswell.
But no matter when you build your computer, people will always tell
you to wait.
So its really up to you.
Dual cores become available sometime in mid to late June.
The cheapes one being like 500euro but it outperforms an Athlon FX 55!

Canis Lupus

really? What ram are you using? My impression of overclocking is:

xp2600 =fsb of 333
Therefore pc2700 has max speed or whatever you call it of 333 (again 166*2) = no room for an increase. I tried it myself with my own pc2700 ram and I couldn't make any sort of an increase, system just wouldnt boot.

But with pc3200 you have a speed of 400 (200*2) so you can increase the clock speed of the cpu and the ram won't cause the system to fall over.

At least this was my understanding but maybe things are different if you have decent ram.

EDIT: On the other hand of you have the xp2600 Thoroughbred with the FSB of 266 (instead of the later 333 variant) then you can O/C with pc2700 ram.

jozi

You can also use dividers but that wouldnt give any better performance for the ram.
I have DDR400 ram (pc 3200) and i from what i read on the net it can do DDR500 (possiblly 550, forget which one) if i over clock it and loosen the timings


EDIT: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2145&p=12

Shiny

Canis Lupus wrote:

really? What ram are you using? My impression of overclocking is:

xp2600 =fsb of 333
Therefore pc2700 has max speed or whatever you call it of 333 (again 166*2) = no room for an increase. I tried it myself with my own pc2700 ram and I couldn't make any sort of an increase, system just wouldnt boot.

But with pc3200 you have a speed of 400 (200*2) so you can increase the clock speed of the cpu and the ram won't cause the system to fall over.

At least this was my understanding but maybe things are different if you have decent ram.

EDIT: On the other hand of you have the xp2600 Thoroughbred with the FSB of 266 (instead of the later 333 variant) then you can O/C with pc2700 ram.

The idea of overclocking the ram always confuses me but like Jozi I just
loosen the timings of the RAM while i am overclocking the processor.

So say your ram timings are 4-3-3-4 (totally made up), then you could
loosen the timings to say 10-3-3-4. When you have pushed the processor
as far as it will go (in my case it was around 203*11.5 from 166*12.5),
then you can start reducing the timings of the ram untill the system gets unstable.

Oh yeah, I'm using OCZ ram, nothing special

padraigf

IF you want to upgrade, make sure you get a PCI-Express motherboard and PCI-Express gfx card. No point in buying AGP now, its gone. Get the Epox 9npa+ off komplett, cheap and a good overclocker.if you wanted more upgradeability you could spring a tiny bit more money and get an SLI motherboard so that you can later add another 6800GT.

Jammer

Cant believe your recommending Dual-Core's???

They perform the same as single cores with current software, they are of little benefit to anyone at the minute. Software right now is only designed for single core CPU's, so the extra one isn't really that useful at all.

If your going AMD (which you should if you're gaming), then get an SLi mobo! You can always add another 6800GT later on! Alot of people here have the DFi SLi NF4 Ultra board, and it seems to perform quite well.

IMO, dual-core is useless right now, and until software developers start making multi-threaded aplications its a waste of money. Think about it, how many software development courses there are in this country, and theres not a mention of multithreaded programs. I do software engineering in a fairly decent university, and multi thread isnt on our course, also mates with a guy doing it in trinity, no mention of it there either. It will be a while before it kicks in. Not saying microsoft or any large corporations havent done/wont do it soon but still, you get my point.

Shiny

Jammer wrote:

Cant believe your recommending Dual-Core's???

Dont know whether you are talking to me or not but eh.....

Shiny wrote:

And yes you, like me should wait till the dual cores become affordable.
I plan my next build in March of next year.

They might be taking dual core a bit more seriously st this stage I
would think.

Jammer

Shiny wrote:

Dont know whether you are talking to me or not but eh.....




They might be taking dual core a bit more seriously st this stage I
would think.

Didnt see that alright. I doubt it though.

Look at 64-bit, hyper threading (which is essentially a less physical, but still powerful form of dual core)....its all marketing.

for the sake of science, i did a test yesterday.

My brothers 3.06GHZ S478 533MHZ 512KB Pentium 4 VS my 3GHZ S775 800MHZ 1MB Pentium 4. His won, by 5% on almost cpu benchmark i could find. Intel are just sucking everyone in with all these gimmicks of L2 cache, faster FSB. Doesnt make a difference to me or you.

Obviously, it makes more sense to go 775 now, due to DDR2, PCI-E and SATA 2, which does make a difference, imo. But the processors, its just marketing. When programmers learn to code in multithread, it will be a revolution, but by that time i believe 3.2GHZ (Intel Pentium 840 is 2 x 540 P4's with EM64T) will be sluggish enough to cope, therefore personally i'll wait out the 2/3/4 years before this catches on.

Look at the recent attempt from microsoft to get everyone onto 64bit, exchange your xp pro for xp64...i wont. I'd say alot of people on here, myself included, dont even come close to pushing the boundries of 32bit. Nothing works on XP64 anyway.

greglo23

have a look here for a review of the new AMD 64 Venice core http://www.lostcircuits.com/cpu/amd_venice/

kasintahan

AMD themselves say that dual core is NOT FOR GAMERS (yet).

read : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/22/amd_dual-core_games/