time to upgrade

F

FalconSS

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 2, 2004
Messages
1,297
alright... im looking to upgrade my computer now that my baby can't perform as well. I built it about 2 years ago, but now I actually have to look at the REQUIREMENTS on the games... :(

here's what I got

ABIT IC7-G MAX2 Advance
Intel p4 2.8c
1GB(2x512) Cosair XMS low latency PC3200
ATI RADEON 9800Pro 128mb
2x 80Gb SATA WD in RAID 0

Since I know my girlfriend is going to buy me F.E.A.R for christmas, I need a computer that can run it at a high setting at least at 1024x768. I was out of the building business for the last year and have been trying to play catchup the last couple of months. I have been overwelmed by all the changes. such as...

AMD is now leader?
NVidia beat out ATI?
SLI?
Crossfire?
PCI xpress?
SATA II?
DDR2...
tons of new chipsets and sockets
BTX?
ect. ect.

now I know what these are but as you see the market has drastically changed since I last built. with the Athlon 64, AMD took the lead over Intel; and with NVIDIA winning the GPU battle for now.

heres the question.
would it be better(and cheaper) to just upgrade my graphics card to a faster and stronger AGP soulution...and maybe throw in another gig of RAM...
(around $500-$600
or

rebuild... with a Nforce4 SLI board, AMD chip, PCI xpress card, and moving over my drives and ram...maybe still adding another gig.

I'm not made of money so the rebuild will be significantly harder for me...
(looking at $1200-$1500)
and it will also be spaced out over the next year...in which case, it will become outdated, especially at the rate these games are pushing our systems these days

I run Half-Life 2 with no problem and doom 3 on medium 800x600 with rare stuttering.

any help will be appreciated.
 
If your just needing the tower with no monitor,speakers,ect then you can build a beast for that.

If it's gonna take you a few months or a year to build a almost complete system I wouldn't bother. Unless it's still gonna take a few months to to just get the card and memory. I wouldn't wait a year just be able to play Fear and it look good and be playable.

If I was you I would get another gig and buy a 6800GT or similar and o/c your P4 if possible. You should be able to run Fear on high setting(no soft shadows) 1024x768 and it run smooth. I am running 3000+@2.4ghz,1gig and a PCI-E 6600GT and played through Fear with most everything on maximum at 1024x768 and had little slowdown throughout the game. The 6800GT smokes the 6600GT so you should have almost zero slowdown.

Also I think Fear makes use of 2gb of memory.

Either way LongShotHero is right AGP is dieing and will continue to die out with each new released video card. It will end up like PCI is now in a few years. But by then PCI-E,SLI,ect will be cheaper.
 
Here is a thread where the guy configured an AMD machine for about $1300. I would go for something like that, except with 2x1gb of RAM(G.Skill is a good buy if you want better than value RAM). And you could also use onboard sound and only one 120gb HD. Then maybe you could get an nVidia 7800gt and it would still be around $1300 cause cutting out the soundcard and second HD is about $200, and my modifications to the system cost about $200.
 
thank you... I think I know what im going to do now... and yes I was just talking about the tower...my moniter,speakers, ect. are all still up to date. (not to mention I could probobly get new ones when taxes roll around) I just can't stand that blasted medium setting..."shivers"
I will most likely take out a loan and just buy everything. I work at a bank so I would probobly get a decent interest rate. 6 months... $1500 (so I splurge) $250 a month... hmmm...maybe a year... ... $125... thats more like it. or... I could sell my trumpet (played in jazz band in college but not anymore) that could fetch me $900-$1000. naaa...I think i'll just get the 6800 right now, and some more memory. then when Vista comes out do a complete build. then i'll have seperate XP and Vista builds and don't have to worry about dual booting.

Athlon 64 4200+
2 gigs of cosair XMS
ASUS board (ive had bad luck with ABIT...the whole northbridge fan thing)
probably the 7800GTX OC ...by then it probably would be down in price
maybe two
raptors RAID 0
thermaltake tai-chi case

thats the plan...going to be revised as I go but basically it.
can anyone make suggestions or changes?
 
ok...update!

everyone!
whats the best card under $200?

My girlfriends brother got me an ipod shuffle and gave it to me early...
now...

i've been up since 8 last night trying to get this thing to work...(it is now 5 A.M.)
i'm tired of dealing with it so im just going to take it to best buy and get the money.

I will also have a little extra on my next pay check...

so i have about $200 to spend... I need to know whats the best AGP card I can get for that. (or around that, im sure im going to get some gift certificates i can cash in...)

im probably ordering from newegg

any help will be appreciated!
 
Again LongShotHero is right 6800 if you have to have one right now. But it's not much better than 6600GT in Fear which can be had used on the forums for as low as $110. Heck I seen one 6800 go for $135 used. If it was me I would spring for a 6800GT which is quite a bit faster then both or wait for the 6800GS AGP.

I plan on upgrading my 6600GT in a month or 2 and unless prices come down alot on the 7800 series I plan on getting a 6800GS/GT.
 
does anyone know when the 6800gs will be out, about how much it will cost, and most importantly, how it will perform?

also

I have heard that the new SATA II w/ 16mb of cache is faster then my sata RAID 0 w/ 8 mb cache. should I opt for a new drive or stick with my RAID?

i'm also wondering how much I could overclock my cpu. Iive gotten it to 3.08Ghz no problem. at 3.2ghz the system becomes unstable and sometimes restarts.

I wonder if its my cooling... I have arctic silver 5 and a thermaltake copper heatsink, but I had to jury rig the stock intel fan on it because the thermaltake fan blew up...(don't ask)

my temps seem to run hot anyway... 42 idle, and upwards to 60 under load.

its used to be 36 idle and 55 load.

is there something I can do to fix this?? maybe another cooler? if so what kind? Im not comfortable with watr-cooling and would like an air soulution. My case is a thermatake xaser III with the seven fans.
 
get the biggest, fastest fan that will fit on the hs and that should drop it quite a bit.

you could also put two of these in the side panel above the heatsink :D :D :D :D
 
WOW....big...big...fans... ... must get...must.... ...hold on... am I gonna have to cut some big holes into my case??? cuz i got the one with the side window... can anyone answer my other questions? and I don't want it to be insanly loud... just cool. so can you recommend any brands? ive tried the thermaltake volcano and it was extremely loud! 10,000 rpms!

how about the antec aeroflow 2?
 
ok serious opinion: get a zalman, they work great and they are quiet as hell. The 7700cu that I have is great, but its a 120mm fan so it is huge but its quiet cause it can move the same amount of air with less rpms when compared to a smaller fan.
 
ok....thats what i was looking at... what about the 6800gs... how does that compare with the 6800gt?
 
doom 3​
System:
P4 2.8C Northwood
ABIT IC7G-MAX2 advance
1 Gig Corsair XMS twinx CAS 2.5 at 1:1 ratio (F1 setting in BIOS)
ATI Radeon 9800PRO (clock-378 mem-337.5) atitool (non OC)


First runs… medium quality… 2xAA … average time using timedemo demo1
640x480 (default) – 54.8fps
800x600 – 52.4fps
1024x768 – 39.6fps
1152x864 – 33.2fps
1280x720 - 26.6fps

High Quality, AA-off

800x600 (default) – 52 fps
1024x768 –42.3fps
1152x864 –35.9fps
1280x720 – 29.7fps

High Quality, 2x AA

800x600 (default) – 46.4fps
1024x768 – 35.6fps
1152x864 –
1280x720 –

for the heck of it… Ultra Quality everything forced max trough ATI control panel

640x480 – 37.4fps
1280x720 – 34.3

I don’t know if it actually forced it or not…those are higher numbers than what I would think
Actually I think it did ultra with no AA

Second batch…
Upped 9800pro to (clock – 387 mem – 372)


High Quality 2xAA

800x600 –
1024x768 (what I want to at least play F.E.A.R at) – 37.6fps … only a 2fps increase?

Upped processor to 3.08 Ghz (had to bring RAM down to street racer setting to get it to boot…still 1:1)

1024x768 - 36.2 fps… … I think I’ll change that back… any ideas how this happened?


Well… that’s my benchmarking… its as close to FEAR as I could get and as you can see my ideal fps is far from 60 where I would like it to be… Any clues as to how close a 6800gs or gt would put me to that mark? Im too worried about ruining my only video card too overclock too much. During all this temps stayed below 60 on my cpu using ABIT’s ABITEQ .
doom 3​
 
*bump * I would really like to know if someone has benchmarking using a 6800gt and relatively same setup...just a 1024x768 High AA2x benchmark would suffice. I just want to know what kind of performance increase I would actually see...
 
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