• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

How long will it last

K

KarmaPolice

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 24, 2004
Messages
214
How long will a ...

3500amd64..
6800GT
1G ram

system last me...not like ultra settings in games but playable ..
 
Good CPU, very nice video card indeed. The main problem in the video area being that soon PCI-E will become relatively popular with it's higher bandwidth as well as the fact that PCI-E will easily support SLI (though I must point out that I read somewhere AGP 3.0 allowed the potential for having a second AGP card -- regardless, there is no board I know of with two agp cards, whereas the PCI-E video cards supporting PCI-E are very nearly finished with the production and about to hit the shelves in a month or so.) In other words, you have a few years in you yet, especially when the 64-bit version of windows becomes mainstream useable and games start more or less supporting 64-bit operations.

The amount of the ram is good for a while, memory usage seems to have slown down a bit. The main question there is, what kind of ram? DDR400 (PC3200)? Or is it something slower? Timings matter a bit too, but not so much that it truly affects the future of your system really. Lol, if you had 1GB of DDR200 memory, it wouldn't do you much good. ^_^

In the meantime, it looks like you should get great quality settings out of Doom 3, which many games in the not so far future will be using the engine from. I'm sure in the near future a game using it's engine will be made that uses more powerful graphics, but you can at the very least get good quality settings, nothing very low. From what I've seen of Half-Life 2 -- which most of the other games in the near future will be utilizing the engine from -- won't have requirements that are TOO much higher (it looks mostly equal, but there will be far larger areas, at the same time it uses less complicated lighting and all.) There are already two games in production using the HL2 engine and you can expect a lot more in the future. Basically, if you can get those to run smoothly, you are set for a few years.

Really, you probably well off until Far Cry 2 or Unreal 3 or whatever, and even then probably won't have to set your quality settings TOO low.
 
Good to hear..

I am specifically looking at the corsair XMS pc3200...and also the Balistiks that i keep hearing about..

But really i dont know anything about memory or overclocking and i dont plan to do any of it untill i really need to.


on the PCI-E thing..I have been waiting for it but i just dont feel like it anymore. I have heard that video cards dont even come close to using all of the AGP 8x yet..am I right? And by the time i want to upgrade i could just get a new mobo with PCI-E with my 939 socket.

Really i dont upgrade at all..for long periods of time...

Right now i have a 1.4 GHZ P4...its just not cutting it anymore.
 
Well, by next month or so, the Geforce FX 6600GT should be out for PCI-E. It will be another month before it comes out in AGP. This thing should at the very least be darned close to the capabilities of a Radeon 9800 Pro. Imagine two of them working together? It may not be literally 2x the power, but it should be a lot better than a 9800 XT I'd bet. I suspect it would be better than the high end GFFX6800s too.

Oh, one thing to look out for with PCI-E. All the nVidia cards in the future will be natively PCI-E. They will be using a translation bridge to make those cards work on AGP. This means the same cards should do better in PCI-E even if at equal speeds. ATI hasn't announced anything of this sort so far, they actually make a chip natively for each of the two right now, so their cards would be ok. In other words, if you plan going nVidia in the not so far future, bear this much in mind if you have an AGP board.

Really, from what I've understood of PCI-E so far, it looks to me like it truly is better. It is supposed to be capable of 16x even in this first generation, though I would assume no card can truly take advantage of that just yet. Probably the biggest threat here is that it IS newer technology, so it's harder to find support and it's more likely that one will find bugs/issues. For what it's worth though, nvidia and ati are racing like crazy to have as many PCI-E cards out as quickly as they can.

EDIT: Oh, and that corsair memory is pretty good from what I hear. I think the main advantage of the DDR500 memory is just that it is made for the next DDR specification which, as far as I know, isn't really used yet. That makes it able to do higher clocks, making it better for ocing theoretically. My current memory chips followed this idea back in the DDR333 days, but, it can't ACTUALLY reach DDR400 speeds regardless of it's claim. It goes up to 185x2 or so tops. In other words, it's almost a marketing gimick, but, SHOULD yield great results on systems that don't actually go up to a 250x2 memory bus...
 
well right now i have the AGP EVGA 6800 GT...in my house..

But your saying that there will be a performance diff between the 6800GT PCI-E and the 6800GT AGP?

I really dont think I will upgrade untill I have to, Is it really that bad of a time to buy this PC?

Thx for the answers by the way!
 
6600, not 6800. The 6800 was AGP first, so the PCI-E version (assuming there is one) should probably end up being natively so. The 6600 series should be better on a PCI-E board than an AGP board is what I'm saying. The PCI-E version MIGHT be better. Maybe. Assuming they don't come up with an AGP->PCI-E bridge. ^_^

If I were you, I'd wait just a few months on the whole PCI-E thing. I see great potential there. Especially when SLI hits mainstream. Give it a little time for people to discover and iron out bugs and other issues as well as to find out from places like hardocp just how well PCI-E truly performs. I don't doubt that they will test a two 6600GT SLIed together solution as soon as they get their hands on that stuff.
 
hmmm i dunno if i can wait anymore lol.. I have a 6800GT here right now and just ordred a 3500 and MSI Neo2 Plat today!

how much would those two 6600 cost do you think?


It would make sense that if they can convert PCI-E to AGP that they could go AGP to PCI-E.


I want to wait..but i dunno if i can.

Also isnt there the whole thing about getting new tech as it comes out...paying the high price on untested tech?

Again thx!
 
A 6600GT is supposed to be in the $200 area. Two of those would be a total of 400. But, if you already have a 6800GT, then you'd have to wait for someone to actually test it before taking such a risk. One 6600GT is easily beneath the capabilities of one 6800GT. And, they are after all quite new, so maybe they don't utilize PCI-E and SLI as well as others will in the future. Later on though, when PCI-E has been out a while, it is guaranteed that a PROPER SLI solution will be better than single AGP.

If you've already ordered the motherboard, I guess it doesn't really matter anyway. And I'm not sure I'd personally want to buy a new video card just yet if you already have such a high end card to begin with. You may wish to wait just on that to see what ATI and nVidia come up with next. (ATI is overdue for something. I assume a 10000.) ^_^
 
Oh i dont plan on buying a another vid card other then the 6800GT if thats what you mean.

I mean the 6800GT and the 3500 Should last me a good year of gaming with good performance when i shouldht have to worry correct? Those are top notch..Maybe in two years yeah ill have to turn it down a bit.


The SLI does sound awesome..but expensive. Lets say this stuff does come out in two months...its gonna cost a pretty penny!

I just wanna know if my current system build serve me well for years to come lol.
 
Ah, I'm sorry. I must have gotten this mixed up with the thread by the person planning to upgrade by november. My original point was only that these will be in a few years considered the norm. So in the not so far off future, games will be expecting you to have a decent PCI-E card. This is still a few years off though. They will all scale down to AGP for a while yet. And, right now, perhaps PCI-E can't directly compete with AGP just yet (don't expect this to take much longer if it is true.)

Yes, PCI-E will be great. And, technically, $400 for two 6600GTs IS cheaper than the latest greatest AGP solutions currently out. The question remains as to whether or not two of those will truly perform better though. They have the advantage of each doing half the work, but, in the end, there are still limits like pixel pipelines and bus bandwidths.

Anyway, your system will last you a couple of years with decent quality at least. Between that CPU and video card, you are pretty well off.
 
Nazo said:
Ah, I'm sorry. I must have gotten this mixed up with the thread by the person planning to upgrade by november. My original point was only that these will be in a few years considered the norm. So in the not so far off future, games will be expecting you to have a decent PCI-E card. This is still a few years off though. They will all scale down to AGP for a while yet. And, right now, perhaps PCI-E can't directly compete with AGP just yet (don't expect this to take much longer if it is true.)

Yes, PCI-E will be great. And, technically, $400 for two 6600GTs IS cheaper than the latest greatest AGP solutions currently out. The question remains as to whether or not two of those will truly perform better though. They have the advantage of each doing half the work, but, in the end, there are still limits like pixel pipelines and bus bandwidths.

Anyway, your system will last you a couple of years with decent quality at least. Between that CPU and video card, you are pretty well off.
Click to expand...

Hmmm thx a lot, and no problem getting confused with the topics. You have been very helpful..

I have a hard time buying computer stuff as it seems. I have been waitng a year to buy this thing when i could have done it so long ago. But the AMD64 seems to be worth the wait along with the Vid cards. Before this I have only owend things like gateways(I know its bad) and my brother just recently ordred a PC from ABSPC.com. They make very good computers but over priced. So this will be my first build becuase i believed i coudl make it for cheaper. And indeed i can.. My price right now is 1,800 Roughly...thats with a monitor on a budget of 2 grand. While my brother bought the same caliber system a year ago for 2,300 without a monitor.

As long as this thing serves me well for 2 years I will be happy. I dont know how to play the upgrade game..i just upgrade at big chunks at a time.

Again thx!
 
whats up with AMD having no PCI-E mobos out yet anyway...weird.

also theres the whole BTX thing.
 
Well, here's a little tip for you. The TRUE capabilities of that CPU are being wasted. Wait just a little longer things to start truly supporting Windows XP 64-bit and you will see some nice results. (For a time you will have to dual boot I suspect, luckily, NT with it's nice little loader reminescent of LILO will allow this with a minimal fuss.) It's quite possible that some games not supporting it when released will be upgraded to support it even with so many Athlon 64s selling these days. The point here is that it could push the time that thing lasts up a bit higher even.

Unfortunately, I've yet to actually hear of a game supporting it properly. Maybe there is one or two (heck, for all I know, Doom 3 does.) Keep an eye out though. Surely it won't be too much longer. Those A64s are popular. The main problem is that intel STILL hasn't caught up and released a solution in this area yet. Unless you count the server stuff...
 
I know for a fact ath DOOM3 does not have any benifits on the 64 bit side..other then it being a very nice CPU. It was in a PCGAMER i read.

Isnt Intel realeasing a 64bit chip? They would be stupid not to.
 
They are amazingly stupid to not already have one. Perhaps they are, they BETTER because AMD will really screw them up if they don't by the time that games start actually using it. I pray that they hurry the heck up. I do NOT want to see Intel go down. I may not like Intel, but, if we loose them, AMD prices shoot up to $500000+ ^_^

Now, Intel DOES have some 64-bit chips on the server front. Then again, AMD has the Opteron, so still no advantages there. I hear the Opteron is doing quite well for itself.

Anyway, 64-bit has the potential to be a lot better with really intensive things (read games.) The problem is that there isn't exactly very many games taking advantage of this. Probably due to the fact that not very many people have a 64-bit os and the number of A64s still isn't THAT high yet. But it is growing more and more popular by the day. I suspect that as soon as Intel makes their own, 64-bit support will skyrocket.

Oh, and remember the chief selling factor of the A64 is that it is 32-bit compatible. That's the main problem for Intel. They have to make something both forward and backwards compatible to beat this. This isn't exactly an easy thing to do. I must admit that I was actually amazed that AMD came out with this before Intel. Intel used to be the ones setting the standards.
 
indeed it is..they can barely keep the 3500 instock!

I just cant wait for this computer..it will rule my world. I havent played games at a good FPS in a long time! I will turn white as a ghost and drop out of college lol!


6800GT is just sitting behind..still in its box un opened.

I have a feelin that it will do just fine even tho the PCI-E is coming out. I mean eveyrone cant be wrong if they are sold out!
 
Right, that thing WILL last. Like I was saying earlier, quite a number of new games in the next year or so will be utilizing those two engines most of all. Maybe a few using Crytek's as well. A few good ones will push the limits of those engines and require more video power, so you might have to lower settings from less than the highest in the not so far future, but, in the meantime, expect to use good resolution at highest quality settings for a bit yet. You won't have to go low enough to feel the need to upgrade for a couple of years. Heck, I'm still getting by just barely tolerably with this 9600 Pro, though I have finally decided I'm due an upgrade.

The thing about PCI-E is regardless of it's capabilities, game makers MUST support the majority. And it will be a while before the majority have PCI-E, and a heck of a lot longer before the majority are playing around with SLI. This means that there won't be many games asking for more than what you can expect from the best AGP for a bit yet. Even those that do take advantage of PCI-E will easily scale to AGP with great quality nonetheless. Heck, Doom 3 looks pretty decent on this card just to name an example of the scaling down thing.

XP-64 should be shipping pretty soon. Look out for it. I don't know when you can expect games that use 64-bit, but look out for those too. I figure that XP-64 will be unreasonably expensive at first though. That's fine, it will be a while before it is properly supported, so there's no hurry on that front. The main thing is that not many companies are going to support it before it has hit the common user's PC.

EDIT: BTW, on the Linux front, 64-bit versions of the OSes have been out a while. the Unreal and Unreal Tournament are the only cutting edge things I really know of that support Linux decently, and they may still not TRULY take advantage of 64-bit. Unfortunately, Linux really wasn't made for gaming. I personaly have had nothing but troubles trying to get 3D acceleration just to work in it.
 
https://microsoft.order-9.com/winxp64/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=MSTrialandEval&category%5Fname=winxp64&product%5Fid=099-92493&id=cd said:
Note regarding the CD: A new version of Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Professional Preview is on its way. The CD is currently available to pre-order with shipping expected to begin approximately August 30, 2004. Please proceed with your order. Orders will be processed when inventory becomes available.

Note regarding the Download: The download is currently not available. We are expecting the download to be available mid-August. Please visit the site at that time for further download details.
Click to expand...

Well, MS is notoriously late, but, we will see.

BTW, XP-64 won't support 32-bit stuff at all, right? I'm willing to bet it won't anyway. This means that people absolutely will have no choice but to dual boot for a long time yet if it's true. I know that they have made 64-bit editions of their operating systems that weren't compatible with 32-bit stuff for things like the Xeon, but, those weren't x86, so it's really hard to say for sure. Still, I feel like it will be 64-bit only. Even if it's not, 32-bit applications, if they run at all, will go through something like the current VDM which emulates 16-bit very very poorly. (Eg horrible performance, and bad bugs.) Please correct me if I'm wrong in this.
 
yes i am willing to bet you will ned a 64 bit proc for the OS.

I hope that 32bit programs will run on it though that woudl be horrible if they didnt.

wait a second...they must run 32bit programs.
 
No no, I KNOW you need a 64-bit processor for it. I just mean it's a question of whether it will support 32-bit stuff at all. If not, then it will only work with games/programs explicitely compiled for it.

Now, if it does do 32-bit, my fear on this is that it will use a new NTVDM which does the same crap the current one does for 16-bit applications. Ok, probably the biggest issue with the current NTVDM is with legacy stuff, so maybe a 32-bit version won't be so bad. However, even if it's very good, emulation is emulation and that can't be good for performance.

Just my worries anyway. I hope I'm wrong in this. Even if I'm not, we can still just dual boot to solve that problem.
 
sorry if this sounds stupid but what is NTVDM?

I dont think they would have it so no 32bit programs would run on the OS. thats suicide. No avg user would want to change to a OS that none of their programs ran on. People complained enough when they moved to XP and some programs didnt like it.
 
They might not be marketing towards the average user. Remember, they have Longhorn in the works. I'll bet they have a great solution towards 64-bit planned with it.

Anyway, the NTVDM is NT's emulation for legacy stuff and 16-bit applications. It uses emulation to emulate those things that NT lacks that the 9x kernels had by being built on top of DOS. The main problems you can find on this front is that the legacy emulation of many things like sound is rather lacking. There has been an unofficial upgrade called VDMSound which corrects a lot of the flaws in more than just the sound, but it's still buggy every now and then.

Of course, currently the argument is that we don't NEED to be using the NTVDM in the first place for more than el cheapo installers, which really don't need too much (ever see an installer that says you have 2GB free when you have >2GB?) This argument won't apply to 32-bit for a very long time indeed. Truth be told, this is not an inaccurate argument. Most applications are better with 32-bit support anyway, and the main things that were 16-bit that people were still using would be really old games. Their argument against that doesn't have to be said. 16-bit might have faded quickly, but 32-bit won't die in any kind of hurry whatsoever. Therefore, they will work harder on it. That means maybe there won't be any bugs at all (or at least a bare minimum) and, heck, in some ways the NTVDM is better than real DOS (eg getting more out of your soundcard than you could in dos if it even HAD dos drivers which is rare indeed these days.) The main thing that worries me is that any emulation whatsoever must end up being a performance hit in really intensive things like games. Then again, the performance boost might offset this. I really don't know I'm afraid.
 
I know nothing about longhorn. What's the problem with it?

I just assumed it would be good for me because NT was NOT made for gaming. It was explicitely made for business type situations. I never liked that they forced this on us home consumers. Yes, 9x was buggy and all, but, they could have worked on those bugs instead of creating a martyr... Or, made something similar to NT, but intended for home.

Anyway, XP kind of came out ok, so I guess it doesn't matter in the end.

What I'm wondering though is if longhorn couldn't have some severe advantages for the home user. Especially when gaming.
 
heh just microsoft. Ideas of controling of what you can and cannot do....more monitoring and stuff like that.
 
Ah, that I understand. Lol, my dad got us the corporate edition of XP pro, so I'm ok there for now. I'm not terribly fond of having to someday switch to a ms os that does all that crap though. I would proably have stuck with Win9x until I couldn't get by anymore, then Win2k if he hadn't gotten this for us. I do NOT like the idea of MS sitting there watching whatever we do. And, if I upgrade a lot of my system at once, I do NOT deserve to have to call them up and explain that, no, I did not try to give my copy of XP away, I'm actually running it with minor hardware changes... Idiocy...

So, yeah, I understand that. Thanks alot. Now I'm worried on that front too and dreading longhorn ^_^

Anyway, good night and enjoy that stupid video card. Lol, darn it, I'm tired of this old 9600 Pro.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top