upgrade suggestions

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zakter2003

Limp Gawd
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Aug 14, 2004
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I am looking to upgrade a few parts of my gaming rig and new a few suggestions. My first purchase will be a new monitor that will replace an old dell 2000FPW that died.

ASUS VK266H 25.5 Wide

#1 Hard drive(s) - 2 Western Digital Caviar Black WD6401AALS 640GB
#2 Video card - I was considering a 4890HD (not sure if Geforce 9800 GTX will be sufficient for the new monitor)
#3 going from 4gigs ram to 8gigs for only 45.99
 
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hard drives are realy personal preference.. depending on price.. reliability, size..

the 9800GTX would actually work if you were on a budget but the 4890 is a much better choice.. the 25.5" display is only 1920x1200 and i run a 8800GT @ 9800GT speeds with most games maxed out except AA and AF, at 1920x1200.. im personally not a fan of monitors that use stretched native resolutions like that.. id rather stick to native sizes like 17,22,24,30..
 
The best bang-for-your-buck hard drives are the 640GB Caviar Blue (WD6400AAKS) and Black (WD6401AALS) drives from Western Digital. Performance-wise, they are among the fastest hard drives around.

The HD4890 would be a better choice over the 9800GTX if gaming is your primary concern.

Unless you use a memory intensive program like Photoshop or Maya, or you plan on running multiple virtual machines at the same time, there's really no reason to get 8GB of RAM.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
hard drives are realy personal preference.. depending on price.. reliability, size..

the 9800GTX would actually work if you were on a budget but the 4890 is a much better choice.. the 25.5" display is only 1920x1200 and i run a 8800GT @ 9800GT speeds with most games maxed out except AA and AF, at 1920x1200.. im personally not a fan of monitors that use stretched native resolutions like that.. id rather stick to native sizes like 17,22,24,30..
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I have heard so many good things about the ASUS VK266H 25.5 Wide monitor.
 
tiraides said:
The HD4890 would be a better choice over the 9800GTX if gaming is your primary concern.
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How much of an improvement would i see from going HD4890?

tiraides said:
Unless you use a memory intensive program like Photoshop or Maya, or you plan on running multiple virtual machines at the same time, there's really no reason to get 8GB of RAM.
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I was considering the 4 to 8 gig jump for Windows 7.

I am also looking any other suggestions that would enhance my gaming. I should also note the games I play are WoW,Dawn of War2,Company of Heroes and Unreal Tournament 3. I am looking forward to Diablo 3,Starcraft 2,and Bioshock 2.
 
zakter2003 said:
How much of an improvement would i see from going HD4890?
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A big improvement.

zakter2003 said:
I was considering the 4 to 8 gig jump for Windows 7.

I am also looking any other suggestions that would enhance my gaming. I should also note the games I play are WoW,Dawn of War2,Company of Heroes and Unreal Tournament 3. I am looking forward to Diablo 3,Starcraft 2,and Bioshock 2.
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The biggest factor for gaming at 1920x1200 is the GPU. So definitely get the HD4890.

Your current CPU is more than enough for a vast majority of games out there. You really only need 4GB of RAM unless you tend to leave a lot of apps open in the background while you're gaming (IM apps, web browsers, etc). In that case, 8GB of RAM would help out with your multi-tasking capability.

The newer hard drives will only decrease the load times in games, not increase your FPS in games.
 
Hanns-G tends to make decent monitors. Not high-end mind you but decent enough.
 
From an earlier PM:

zakter2003 said:
I just have a few questions. I went ahead and ordered a few things we had discussed a few weeks ago.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10010082&prodlist=celebros

So, I purchased 2 of the above hard drives. I am wonder if my current system board would allow me to do Raid 0. Also do you even suggest raid zero? This will be my main box which I game from and do some part time work while out of the office. Here is the main board I use.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products...rboard&ProductID=2599&ProductName=GA-P35-DS3L

After reading the latest write up on Dawn of War 2 I went against the better judgement and purchased a GTX 280. (was going to purchase a HD4890) I hope this card is a decent one. Here is the link.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130492

I pick this model because 1 it is EVGA and 2 I wanted the call of Duty game :)
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First off, I don't believe that the Gigabyte P35-DS3L has onboard RAID. But it isn't a deal-breaker, as you could use both drives separately (one for an OS, and the other for storage). If you feel as if RAID is a must-have, there are some (relatively) inexpensive RAID cards available. The big risk of RAID 0 is that it doesn't offer guaranteed run time -- in other words, if one of your drive crashes, all of your data is lost. (There are guides in the GenHard FAQ that explain RAID in more detail.)

As for the video card, if you believe that the "free" game and the lifetime limited warranty is worth the extra money on, say, an HD4890, then go ahead and get it. Depending on the benchmarks/reviews you look at, the HD4890 can compete with (if not beat) the GTX 280, but the HD4890 has generally been priced cheaper than the GTX 280.
 
It doesn't sound like the tasks you'll be doing would benefit from RAID0, so I wouldn't bother. RAID0 helps with sequential data transfers... like if you do a lot of transcoding, for instance.

GTX280 decent? Its one of the highest end cards. :p Not your best bang for buck, but still a great card, though a bit old now.
 
update.

Videocard came today. I put it in my box and first thing I noticed was the fan never started spinning. The green led light is on and video works fine. Guess I have a DOA fan on the card. RMA time? :confused:
 
zakter2003 said:
update.

Videocard came today. I put it in my box and first thing I noticed was the fan never started spinning. The green led light is on and video works fine. Guess I have a DOA fan on the card. RMA time? :confused:
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Play a game while watching the GPU temps using Speedfan.
 
... if it doesn't turn on, the GPU should fry and you'll need to RMA it anyhow. ;)
 
zakter2003 said:
It starts to over heat before i can get the drivers installed.
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What app are you using to monitor the temps? Do errors occur when the card overheats before you can get the drivers installed? Or can you still go through the driver install? Do note that the GTX 280 is rated for 100C IIRC.
 
When I say over heat i should have said the following. the system rebooted during driver install. Also kept rebooting after the bios screen flashed. I put my old card back in and everything works just the way it use to. This sucker is already in a box and out the door.
 
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