Upgrade recommendation

agibby5

Gawd
Joined
Feb 8, 2006
Messages
538
Hey all!

I am trying to upgrade from a P4 system. I want to get:

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=322728

and

a AMD X2 4400 CPU.

I'd like to know if this is a pratical setup. I am planning on using it for writing papers, coding, web design, making dvd rips (video encoding), and perhaps some video editing.

EDIT: I also want to play some games like AOE3 and Doom. But my current does reasonable in this area.

I'm not too worried about the speed, because I'm doing alright w/ my P4 2.8 setup but want to try to get out of that while I can still get a reasonable amount of money for it.

The reason I wanted recommendations is because this totals to almost 800.00 just for hte mobo, vid card, and CPU. I have never paid that much for so little parts.

Thanks in advance,

agibby
 
If gaming is not your main focus, then you might want to consider this video card:
MSI Geforce 6800GS 256MB $170 = $190 - $20MIR
You can sacrifice a little performace and save a lot of money. This card can play any game out there with very good quality and resolution settings. The 7800GT is a VERY nice card, but the 6800GS will give a better performance per dollar ratio. Just a thought.

Good processor.

Make sure you'll have at least 1GB of ram. Video work tends to benefit if you go to 2GB.
 
pj-schmidt said:
If gaming is not your main focus, then you might want to consider this video card:
MSI Geforce 6800GS 256MB $170 = $190 - $20MIR
You can sacrifice a little performace and save a lot of money. This card can play any game out there with very good quality and resolution settings. The 7800GT is a VERY nice card, but the 6800GS will give a better performance per dollar ratio. Just a thought.

Good processor.

Make sure you'll have at least 1GB of ram. Video work tends to benefit if you go to 2GB.

That video card looks nice. THe price is also more attractive. I guess anything out there right now is better than what I have in the ATI Radeon 9600.

What mobo would you recommend when going with that processor and hte 6800??

Thanks alot!
 
I agree with everyone that that video card is too expensive for what you need. However, so is that CPU. Get an X2 3800+ if you need dual core.
 
PWMK2 said:
I agree with everyone that that video card is too expensive for what you need. However, so is that CPU. Get an X2 3800+ if you need dual core.

Would I notice a great increase in performance over hte P4 setup I currently have?

Thanks,

agibby
 
agibby5 said:
do you have a model number?

I was looking into the Asus A8N32-SLI


The ASUS A8N32-SLI is not worth the money. All of the benchmarks show almost no increase in performance and some even show a small decrease with that board. For what you're doing the ASUS A8N-E would be plenty good. If you're not going to be doing much gaming, then paying extra for SLI probably isn't necessary.

The AMD X2 3800+ would still be faster than your P4 2.8, especially if you did a lot of miltitasking, video editing or had mult threaded encoders. If your programs only take advatage of a single core, then you would see a speed roughly equivolent to a single core athlon64 3200+.
 
Thanks for your input. Normally I have like 15 programs open at all times (firefox, dvd rip stuff, music, movies, IM, Office stuff, Bit torrent, WinRAR, Photoshop, DVD Shrink, etc).

I read that DVD Shrink is coming out with a version that takes advantage of the dual core.

Would it be adventageous for me to do the dual core upgrade at this time?

I'm just getting more and more annoyed at the declining performance of my P4 2.8C.

Thanks again,

agibby
 
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