been a while since i upgraded

N

nobody_here

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Feb 1, 2006
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from the sticky.......

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc
web surfing and the occasional game, mostly Crysis/Crysis Wars based mods

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?
hoping to use proceeds from selling 939 parts

3) Where do you live?
USA

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. Please be very specific.
Motherboard, CPU, Ram

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.
Antec Earthwatts 550W PSU, and Asus 9600GSO 384Mb 96SP PCI-E vid card

6) Will you be overclocking?
if necessary to get maximum value for money invested

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?
19" so 1440x900 native, not planning on upgrading, if i do it wont be much, maybe a 22 if i find one for almost free

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?
once i have sold my other parts, perhaps before if tax time works out to my benefit

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? etc.
nothing out of the ordinary, dont use RAID or Firewire, not really into SLI or CF

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
Yes, Windows 7 Ult



so thats the deal, not really a pc gamer, but just looking to upgrade my experience, like being able to run Crysis at high settings smoothly (really into the MWLL mod for it is about it as far as taxing), and while the 9600GSO isnt the most powerful around, it can already run at Medium pretty well,

i am thinking the 1.8Ghz Opteron 165 I have in it and the 2Gb's of DDR400 memory is holding things back, while it can be overclocked quite a bit, 2.6-2.7Ghz stable easy on air, the punch just doesn't seem to be there, there's been a lot of developments since i built this system, wanting to get back somewhat current, theres been several generations of cpu's and systems since then and im really not sure what would be a small upgrade and what would be a noticeable upgrade now.....im under the impression that a core 2 duo system would even make this feel slow...but i dont want to believe the hype, i want those who know to give me some input please

so what would you do if you could not invest much if any extra cash beyond what you end up getting for the items i am going to eventually get rid of? or should i even be looking at a system upgrade or maybe just a vid card upgrade would be enough? i really dont think so to be honest, i had a 8800 SLI setup running on this same system and it didnt seem tons faster than this single 9600GSO so i think i am system bound, not gpu bound
 
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You're bound by both, GPU and CPU. Sell the GPU too, and let us know when you have the cash in-hand. Do you have any cash to throw on top of what you get for your used parts?
 
would rather not but i might spend a little to boot.....since i havent sold anything and i am not buying anything right now, i have no set budget, but i can tell you, just as an example, lets say i netted $150 for my cpu/mobo/memory/vid card combo, i might be willing to spend another $100 or so on top of that to upgrade.....i have no real need nor interest in spending $400-500 to build another system, if i cant take my proceeds and add a little with it and make an appreciable upgrade, than i'll just wait it out longer, time is on my side, CryEngine is getting older, tech is getting faster, have no interest in playing any of the new games out now or coming out soon, all my gaming is done on the 360 other than playing MWLL Crysis mod
 
So that would be a Athlon2 240 + Gigabyte 770T + 4 Gigs of DDR3 (G.Skill Ripjaws, Corisair XMS3 or OCZ Obsidian) will fit in your budget.
 
bah....i just oc'd my system back to 2.7Ghz, im not spending several hundred bucks on a pc that already cuts the mustard of which i have no intention of gaming on in the future anyways other than this one mwll mod, it runs it fairly well already, i was looking for a cheap fix me up to boost that one aspect, but my system is holding back the graphics performance, so in order to get the goody out of a new video card i would need to upgrade the rest...and then we've come full circle....i'm not spending several hundred bucks to play games on a pc....
 
You can get a 9800gt/2gb ram/mobo/dual core cpu here on the FS forums for 150ish...
 
well, i guess i forgot to add what i already have, its a dual core Opteron 165, running at 2.7Ghz comfortably, has 2Gb of DDR400 ram, some GSkill stuff, and the mobo is a good EVGA one.....so the only real upgrade in that would be the 9800GT, which i dont think i would get the goody out of in my system, do you think? over the 9600GSO 384Mb 96SP card?
 
nobody_here said:
well, i guess i forgot to add what i already have, its a dual core Opteron 165, running at 2.7Ghz comfortably, has 2Gb of DDR400 ram, some GSkill stuff, and the mobo is a good EVGA one.....so the only real upgrade in that would be the 9800GT, which i dont think i would get the goody out of in my system, do you think? over the 9600GSO 384Mb 96SP card?
Click to expand...

right now you have cpu bottleneck. better videocard isn't help much
 
right, and there's not really anywhere to go to get past what i have now for a cpu on socket 939, i mean, a 2.7Ghz dual core 939 cpu is almost as much as you can get in 939, at least close enough that any money spent upgrading would be a waste....
 
My bad. You would see some performance improvement in gaming, since, as shiro mentioned, the newer architecture is faster, clock for clock. Your minimum fps should definitely increase as well as your average fps, since you're gaming at a lower res, which does need more CPU power than if you were gaming at a higher res.

You could use the X2 5200+** vs. the X2 250 on AT's bench to see the performance difference between your OC'd 165@2.7Ghz vs shiro's recommendations (A2 X2 240). Then you can guess how much better it would perform from that point on, since you can OC the 240/245/250 to around 3.7Ghz. Then you can decide if that performance difference is worth the cost of upgrading. Also, consider buying used to save even more money. ;)

**note: The X2 5200+ is pretty much the same architecture as your Opty, just updated for AM2/DDR2, which didn't really yield any performance difference over 939/DDR1.
 
yeah, i was once looking at that 5200, but as you found out, it was really more of a move to a DDR2 memory controller more than anything with initial AM2 performance numbers being almost identical to their 939 counterparts clock for clock.....thats why back then i didn't upgrade either, no real benefit.....

im kind of stuck between what i have being good enough and what i want still costing too much for the benefits gained, no real value per dollar spent IMO, so i think i am just going to focus on overclocking and tweaking this one for now

thanks for the suggestions guys, will come back to this thread later, i was just thinking after so many changes i would be able to upgrade for little money and see big improvements like when i first went from a P4 3.0Ghz system to this one.....of course money was no problem then too, i paid $330 for my CPU when they first came out, but i got it from Monarch Computers in person and was able to pick out a CCB1E stepping core, so it was worth it i suppose, thats been a long time ago now and this thing is still rockin out pretty well
 
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