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Upgrading from X850XT-PE?

B

Borgschulze

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 28, 2005
Messages
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Well, not really an X850XT-PE, but an X800GTO^2, unlocked and overclocked far beyond X850XT-PE speeds.

I have been running this card for 2.5 years now.. only complaint is lack of PS3.0 support, still has plenty of raw power to play most newer games at 1680x1050 if they support the dying breed.

I've been eying the 4850, but I'm not sure. At $189.99 it seems like the absolute no questions asked price-performance murderer right now.

Not sure if that's spending too much for my older Opteron 146 @ 2.8ghz though with 1gb ram, which I will upgrade to either 2 or 3gb RAM depending on the fact I'm using a DFI board and can pretty much say it's not going to boot up with 2x512 and a 1gb stick.

Mainly upgrading for Diablo III, and wouldn't mind a little more FPS in Counter-Strike Source and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. so I can actually enjoy the game. I might even wait till a few weeks before Diablo III comes out to upgrade, just to save money.

Some actual important questions now...

Will my 520w OCZ Powerstream handle a 4850?

Also, does anyone know if the mounting holes are the same spec as a 4 hole 6800? I'd really be pleased if my waterblock could bolt onto the card so I don't have to tear down the loop and put a new block in, since I have both, ATi x800/x850 mounting hardware and nVidia 6800 mounting hardware for this waterblock. Yes I know I would need a heatsink for the other chip (stream processor?) on the card. How about memory cooling? Are Ramsink actually necessary now? Or are people just trolling still saying they help like those dumb copper plates that come on system RAM?

What's this PCI-E 2.0? Are these new cards compatible with my PCI-E 1.0 slots?

Maybe I'm severely CPU limited? What would be a cheaper alternative? 8500GT 512mb with a 6400+ and 3gb RAM is roughly the same performance as my PC, some games still run better on mine though. So obviously I won't be looking at anything lower than an 8600GTS?, and I'm sure my PC would play Diablo III fairly well when it's released anyways, but I'd like an all out eye candy experience with a release like Diablo III, definitely the most anticipated game ever for me.
 
you're going to be cpu bottlenecked and pci-e 2.0 is compatible with pci-e 1.0 slots. how much are you willing to spend altogether ?
 
I'm really enjoying the X800XL->4850 path on my Pentium D 950. On many games I am definitely CPU limited but I've been able to pretty much run anything at 1280x1024 with 4XAA (edge-detect, so effective 12X AFAIK), 8XAF, etc-- before getting into the "eye candy" stuff pretty much turned many games unplayable in that combo (I'd have to drop to 1024x768, or drop the AA/AF). That said, it really depends on the game-- I haven't bought many "newer" games due to issues with SM3.0 and the like but I saw a big difference in Overlord-- on the X800XL it was a slideshow, around 5-10FPS if I was lucky, even in 1024x768. The 4850 runs about 30-45FPS, depending on the scene, in 1280x1024.

I'm using a PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI power supply and it's working fine... I'd imagine your system probably draws less than mine, just with how power hungry the Pentium Ds are.

The 4850 will work in a PCI-E 1.0 slot just fine...

Have no idea about your other questions. Basically, it IS a great upgrade as it gives incredible performance and the CPU limitation can work in your favor in a way to allow for "free" AA/AF (since the card isn't maxed out anyway). I'm sure you'd get better performance rebuilding entirely but for the price the 4850 is a really nice addition..
 
The Opty will bottleneck your system for sure but I'd still upgrade to a 4850. I'd also be on the look out for a cheap 939 dual to pick up, as that's going to be the main slow. The card should work fine even tho you have a PCIE1.0 slot. The 520w PSU should be fine. I have no idea about the mounting holes matching the X850 but I know the holes match a 3870. IMHO ramsinks on the card are useless. Don't go with any 8 series video card other than a flavor of 8800, the others ones all suck for gaming period. Just buy the 4850 and be happy and upgrade your proc asap. Things might change if you're going to wait a few months for D3 (It better come out in only a few months!). Anything to help a fellow Diablo fan :D
 
Not sure yet. I'm unemployed right now, I'll have to see once I get a job.

Going to try and keep on a very limited budget, in case I can't get into Diablo III, I haven't had any motivation to play any video games lately, so unless that changes I'll probably only upgrade the video card and RAM.

Again, based on the 720p video of Diablo III, my computer should have no problem playing that on full settings at 1680x1050. Then again... Diablo II had so many monsters it bogged down people with 8800 Ultra's... but that's mainly due to it being so old, and using an ridiculous amount of sprites.

MaStaFLaSH said:
The Opty will bottleneck your system for sure but I'd still upgrade to a 4850. I'd also be on the look out for a cheap 939 dual to pick up, as that's going to be the main slow. The card should work fine even tho you have a PCIE1.0 slot. The 520w PSU should be fine. I have no idea about the mounting holes matching the X850 but I know the holes match a 3870. IMHO ramsinks on the card are useless. Don't go with any 8 series video card other than a flavor of 8800, the others ones all suck for gaming period. Just buy the 4850 and be happy and upgrade your proc asap. Things might change if you're going to wait a few months for D3 (It better come out in only a few months!). Anything to help a fellow Diablo fan :D
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was also a side plan... look for a used Opteron 270 that can hit at least the same 2.8ghz I run now. Definitely need more than 1gb RAM also... drives me nuts trying to play Hellgate sometimes.
 
you should try to look at the for sale sub-forum here and see if you can pick up a cheap processor 939 and spend the rest of the money you wouldve spent on the 4850 on a 8800gt/9600gt
 
im looking forward to D3 too. but i don't think it will come out anytime soon. StarCraft 2 was announced a year ago and its STILL not out...
 
I look occasionally on RedFlagDeals BuySell section since I'm in Canada and refuse to use Paypal.

Really not a huge fan of buying used parts though, especially CPU's, risk that chance of the person being a complete idiot and not packing it good enough.
 
Yeah you'll be bottlenecked by the CPU, but it'll still be worth the upgrade IMO. I went from an X850XT to a HD3870 (much slower than 4850) about a month ago and it made a huge difference in framerates, plus it can play the SM3.0 games as you mentioned

The PCI2.0/1.0 are compatible with each other, PCI2.0 theoretically offers higher bandwidth between your video card and RAM, but it makes little/no difference in games.

That PSU should easily handle the 4850, it's a very low power card.

More RAM will definitely help a lot too, I got an extra gig (went from 1 to 2GB) after I got the 3870 and it made a big difference in certain games. Gears of War became unplayable at some points with 1GB of RAM, but it's perfect with 2GB
 
I've never had a problem playing GoW.

Lowest framerate I ever got was around 20fps in a taxing scene, and I run 1680x1050 in that game too.

I guess I'll hold off even longer, wait till I know Diablo III is coming out, then purchase parts. Wish we knew when Diablo III was coming, I heard 12/31/08 and late 2009. Being 6 months away doesn't seem logical judging by the way the developers were talking, but they also kept the game secretly in development for 4 years.. so who knows...
 
My corsair 520w handles my hd2900xt and 3.84 ghz quad core 6600 perfectly. I'm not sure if it will eb enough for the 4870x2 though. You will be fine with that psu.
 
Borgschulze said:
I've never had a problem playing GoW.

Lowest framerate I ever got was around 20fps in a taxing scene, and I run 1680x1050 in that game too.

I guess I'll hold off even longer, wait till I know Diablo III is coming out, then purchase parts. Wish we knew when Diablo III was coming, I heard 12/31/08 and late 2009. Being 6 months away doesn't seem logical judging by the way the developers were talking, but they also kept the game secretly in development for 4 years.. so who knows...
Click to expand...

Hmm, that's strange. It was using the page file which caused big 10-20sec lag spikes for me (when loading areas, it ran fine other than that). Now that I have 2GB there's no problem (and it uses 1.3-1.4GB so I can see why it was swapping to my HDD)

If you are mainly concerned about Diablo III it might be worth waiting. Not only will GPUs/RAM/CPUs be cheaper by then, but you'll also know which upgrade will give you the biggest boost (some games are very dependent on CPU/RAM, some are more GPU). Not to mention certain games tend to do well on ATi cards, and some are better on Nvidia
 
Well, I hope I get a good paying job soon, probably just end up building a new computer... been running this setup since 2005, so it's about time to upgrade anyways.

I will still run Windows XP too :)
 
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