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Keep my old shuttle alive?

N

naxos

n00b
Joined
Apr 19, 2004
Messages
60
Hello all I find myself at a crossroads. I have loved my little Shuttle SN95G5 and its still going strong but its not quite able to drive my new 24'' widescreen monitor at full resolution 1920x1200 when Im playing games. The current shuttle has an Athlon64 3500+, an xfx 6600gt and 1gb in dual channel. Here is the question - should i put a little money (around 200 bucks) into the box to give myself a little performance boost - or is it dead in the water and i should just deal with the low frames and lower resolution until i can get some more money together?

I figure I could upgrade to a Athlon64 X2 3800+ for about 68 bucks and throw in a XFX7600GT (I know..agp is dead) for about 99 bucks for a quick cheap boost? Or I could upgrade to 2gbs of ram but thats a bit more expensive at 134 bucks.

Any input would be appreciated. Also can that little 240watt psu drive the 7600gt? Thanks guys
 
Don't waste time and money on side-steps. Save up and get a whole new computer. If you're still running AGP, then at the very least, you need to upgrade your motherboard and get a good PCIE card. I'd recommend nothing less than an 8800GTS 320MB if you want to run 1900x1200.
 
As far as i know i can't just upgrade my shuttle's mobo? or do they use non-proprietary boards? I would love to upgrade to get pcie but right now i cant afford buying the entirely new computer right now. Thanks for the advice though.
 
That's almost exactly where I am... I have almost the exact system (sn95g5, 6600GT,1GB RAM, though with a 3000+ instead of the 3500+). It's struggling to run my widescreen monitor (only 1680x1050) on pretty much any recent-ish game, but I don't have the money for a whole new system (gotta pay for school first). I've had the system for about two years now without any major upgrades, and I would think that such an upgrade like the one naxos is looking at, which is pretty much where I was thinking, would get me another two or more (based on my past experiences).

Not to threadjack, but if I (or the OP) decided to go the X2 3800+ and 7600GT route (or something similar) how would the system hold up with the stock power supply and cooling? I know that the Shuttle PSUs are very capable, but what's the most that could reasonably be expected out of a little 240W (IIRC) power supply?

Or, alternatively, what are the options for buying a more up-to-date motherboard for a G5 chassis (with support for PCI express, etc)? I can't seem to find any indication on Shuttle's site that they sell stand-alone boards, and last time I checked (admittedly that was back when I bought the system) the only option was to swap with a similar Shuttle (which doesn't exactly make sense as an upgrade).

Again, sorry if this seems like a thread-jacking, but the situation was almost exactly like mine, so I didn't see the need to create a whole new thread for essentially the same discussion.
 
Dont see it as a threadjacking at all! You really summed up exactly my dilema! and my concerns a lot better than I originally said. If i could upgrade the mobo..but like you said...i havent seen anything indicating thats possible - i would go pcie. Good luck and let me know what you decide to do.
 
No, you can't upgrade the mobo, which is why I don't buy Shuttles. They're not futureproof. Forget about keeping this system alive and build a whole new computer. New case, mobo, PSU, everything new. Better to save up and get a new computer that's with the times than to spend $200 on side-grades now and then have to spend another $200 on more side-grades.
 
TWO515TY said:
No, you can't upgrade the mobo, which is why I don't buy Shuttles. They're not futureproof. Forget about keeping this system alive and build a whole new computer. New case, mobo, PSU, everything new. Better to save up and get a new computer that's with the times than to spend $200 on side-grades now and then have to spend another $200 on more side-grades.
Click to expand...

Actually, Shuttle announced this summer that they ARE going to market Upgrade Motherboards for those Shuttle owners that want to upgrade a mobo for newer technology while keeping their current chassis and periphials.

And dude, NOTHING is future proof...
 
The CPU upgrade that you mention would not help you at all for gaming. The overwhelming majority of games cannot support dual core so going from a 2.2GHz CPU to a 2GHz dual core CPU would probably slow down your games a little. You could do some very light overclocking with your current CPU and gain free performance there.

You are really limited by your graphics card. Going from a 6600 to 7600 is really not worth it IMO. If you can find an ATI 1950pro AGP card, that would probably be your best increase in gaming performace for your system. In fact, I just found this which is a single slot card and only ~$135 after rebate:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814241041

Upgrading your RAM to 2gigs is always a good idea to increase general system performance.
 
Dodger02WS6 said:
Actually, Shuttle announced this summer that they ARE going to market Upgrade Motherboards for those Shuttle owners that want to upgrade a mobo for newer technology while keeping their current chassis and periphials.

And dude, NOTHING is future proof...
Click to expand...

Yes, I heard about that, but when is it going to happen? And is it going to be for all Shuttle's or just certain models? What if his old Shuttle isn't upgradable?I still think it would be wiser if the OP went for a new system altogether. At the end of the day, having a Shuttle limits your options, even if you can get a new Shuttle mobo.

And I disagree that nothing is futureproof. Unless they decide to make radical changes to the mATX form factor, my Lanbox will take any mATX mobo from now until the end of time. It'll take any ATX PSU. And if i had a more up to date mobo, it would take almost any LGA775 CPU coming out in the future. That's what I mean by futureproof. I could easily get a good year or 2 more out of my system and still have up to date components, while it's not as easy to do so with a Shuttle.

When I say futureproof, I don't mean it'll last forever, but rather that it allows upgradability to more current technologies. Shuttles currently don't allow you to do that without buying a whole new Shuttle computer...

The CPU upgrade that you mention would not help you at all for gaming. The overwhelming majority of games cannot support dual core so going from a 2.2GHz CPU to a 2GHz dual core CPU would probably slow down your games a little. You could do some very light overclocking with your current CPU and gain free performance there.
Click to expand...

Depends on which games you play. Most games nowadays support dual core CPU's, and the new games coming out are talking about supporting quad core CPU's.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/94969-13-dual-core-supported-games

And that list is from 2006, so I can only imagine it's grown since then.

Upgrading the RAM and video card are a good idea, but like I said before, once you get into spending so much on upgrades, it would have been a much better value to save up and buy a new computer instead. Spending $140 on technology that's already way outdated isn't smart in my opinion.The cheapest DDR1 2GB I see on Newegg is $90, when that same $90 can get you a pair of Crucial Ballistix. See where I'm going?
 
True that many games do support multithreading, but the perfomance impact is questionable at the resolutions that the OP is talking about (except for maybe Supreme Commander which loves multi cores).

There's a nice set of graphs showing the impact of multiple cores on Quake 4 here:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/quake_4_dual-core_performance/page4.asp
As resoltuion increases, the vid card becomes the bottle neck (at least with the generation of video cards that we're talking about here). I think the perfromance of a x1800xt used in this article would be similar to a x1950pro.

/edit: looking around, a 7900GS may be a faster card in most situations and they are available at a similar price to the x1950pro:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_x1950_pro/page8.asp
 
Did either of you two decide on an upgrade path? I'm not that much of a game player so my current video card is fine. I'm just looking for one last hurrah for my shuttle that has served me well and hoping to get a bit more time out of it before I pass it on to the kid and get myself something new.

Prices have come done quite a bit. Right now I'm running a 3500+ AMD (man, i'm way behind) with 1gb of memory and a couple of way old slow drives. Thinking of upgrading the CPU and replacing the memory and if the funds still allow, the main drive.

What is the best bang for the buck we can get from these antiques?
 
romeyde said:
Did either of you two decide on an upgrade path? I'm not that much of a game player so my current video card is fine. I'm just looking for one last hurrah for my shuttle that has served me well and hoping to get a bit more time out of it before I pass it on to the kid and get myself something new.

Prices have come done quite a bit. Right now I'm running a 3500+ AMD (man, i'm way behind) with 1gb of memory and a couple of way old slow drives. Thinking of upgrading the CPU and replacing the memory and if the funds still allow, the main drive.

What is the best bang for the buck we can get from these antiques?
Click to expand...

I have done nothing and don't plan on dropping more money into this computer. It It sounds like we have pretty similar boxes. It hangs in there for WoW but faulters a bit with newer, more graphics intensive games. It does just fine for dreamweaver, my office apps, browsing the web, and even pretty well with smaller projects in photoshop. In other words I'm saving up right now for a computer around Christmas because this computer can handle most of what I do on a day to day basis.

I think TWO515TY is probably right. Dropping money on old standards really doesn't make sense.

Sure it may only be 150 dollars worth of upgrades but saving that money and putting it towards a new computer with PCIE is going to give me a better value. I would say go ahead and give the shuttle to your kid and get yourself a new machine. Think of it as an early Christmas present to yourself - I am ;)
 
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