What would you uprade?

What whould you get?

  • Total voters
    73
DejaWiz

DejaWiz

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Apr 15, 2005
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Hello [H] goers,
I have a slight dilemma and need advice and comments on what I should upgrade.

My current system specs:
Venice 3000+ at 2.4GHz
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP SLI
eVGA 7800GT CO SE
4 * 512MB PC3200
3 * IDE HDD's (300, 200, and 120GB)

What I will be upgrading:
Replace the 200 and 120GB IDE drives with 2 * 300GB SATA 3.0Gb/s drives.

What I am having a hard time deciding between:
Get a second 7800GT or an X2 3800+.

I use my system mostly for gaming (I'll provide a list below) and some DVD and audio ripping/encoding, but not simultaneously. In other words, I don't generally do anything in the background while I am playing a game. I do have to simultaneously open rather large documents and spreadsheets, but again not while I am doing anything else intensive. I can't afford 2 hdd's, a second 7800GT, and an X2 all at the same time, so I've narrowed it down to the 2 hdd's, and either the X2 or the GPU (since they are both right around the $300 mark). I will someday have both a second GPU and an X2 in my system, but that probably won't be for another 9 months at the minimum.

Games I play:
HL2
SC:CT
Sims 2
NFS:MW
Far Cry
Lots of older games, but nothing too demanding on the hardware (think Age of Empires 2, Freelancer, and Ultima IX when it doesn't crash).

So what I would like to know is what you all would do given a similar situation. Would you get a second 7800GT to benefit games, or get an X2 to increase overall system responsiveness?

Thanks!
 
I voted X2. One 7800GT is nice considering my "old" 6800GT AGP works great even for BF2. You don't need 11ty billion FPS do you?
 
CRXican said:
You don't need 11ty billion FPS do you?
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Not just yet, but I'm working on getting it there lmao :p

Thanks for the input. Much appreciated.
 
Video card is good. I would say dual core :D I'm in the same boat as you, I would like to get a X2 4400+ or something. That would be a nice upgrade.
 
Thanks for the votes and feedback so far. Keep it coming! :D
 
Hrm, proably the vid-card.

Dual core is nice, but the games you listed arent exactly SMP aware. You''ll be losing 400mhz in clock speed unless you count on an overclock.

Dual core is nice for stuff that really isnt gaming at this exact point in time.
 
Bullitt said:
Hrm, proably the vid-card.

Dual core is nice, but the games you listed arent exactly SMP aware. You''ll be losing 400mhz in clock speed unless you count on an overclock.

Dual core is nice for stuff that really isnt gaming at this exact point in time.
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That's just it...I never count on an overclock as it's just a free bonus. I think from a cpu standpoint however, having two cores at 400MHz slower than a single core is still an advantage even though none of those games I listed are SMP capable. Just for the fact that games that are able to take advantage of an SMP system are soon to be on the shelves.....

And another thing that I'm mulling over is that the newer Detonator drivers do get a benefit (albeit a small one) from a multi processor system.

But on the other hand, a second video card sounds nice because it will benefit the games I already play, not just future releases.

Decisions, decisions.
 
What's your display and its max resolution? At 1280x1024 or less a second graphics card wouldn't have much to do. If you've got a monitor that does crazy high resolutions (above 1600x1200) definetly go SLI. Otherwise you'd be better off getting the X2 (or a better monitor.)
 
Niloc said:
What's your display and its max resolution? At 1280x1024 or less a second graphics card wouldn't have much to do. If you've got a monitor that does crazy high resolutions (above 1600x1200) definetly go SLI. Otherwise you'd be better off getting the X2 (or a better monitor.)
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Using a Compaq FS940 19" CRT. Max res is 1600x1200 60Hz. Right now I normally have to play games at a max of 1280x960 85Hz because I set AA to 4x or 8x (or HDR if possible), AF to 16x, and everything else max. Anything above that and games start to get a bit choppy here and there.
 
My timeframe for purchasing the new hardware will be shortly after the 3rd of Feb (tax return should be in my account by then). So get your votes and/or comments in!

Again, thank you to everyone that has participated thus far.


:D
 
consider the tweaks and time to correct the x2 CPUs in order to play games. ie there are always needs to D/L and correct x2 CPUs for most games, also the bios corrections in your MB to add the x2, Not life-threatening but tweaks that will take some fussing. I think I'd add the other 7800 card......just a simple 2cents.
 
I would add the X2 because it'll feed your 7800GT more data than your Venice will. I think adding the faster processor will boost your GT's performance. And if you're running 1280xXXX resolutions with older games you don't need another 7800. That's simply overkill. (but in the future... :)
 
I'd get another GT and get an X2 later, when they're cheaper. None of the games he plays would benefit from dual core, and a 2.4ghz A64 is more than fast enough to keep the GPUs busy.

When people are building new systems from scratch I always recommend to go dual core, but in this particular case I can't see any good reason to replace that CPU. Plenty reasons to go SLI though.
 
I would get the X2+, one 7800GT is plenty for the resolution you play at

The real question is you just replacing your Hard Drives for more storage capacity? The actual gains in performance from IDE to SATA is minimal at best when it comes to gaming.
 
UltimaParadox said:
I would get the X2+, one 7800GT is plenty for the resolution you play at

The real question is you just replacing your Hard Drives for more storage capacity? The actual gains in performance from IDE to SATA is minimal at best when it comes to gaming.
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No I'm not looking for more performance from my hard drives, just want to start transitioning away from IDE (I had to add a PCI controller card to give me more ports. Motherboard only has two IDE ports, but 8 SATA). I see the benefits of SATA as being readily available, about the same price as IDE, and smaller cables.
 
dual core, in sandra and 3dmark06, increases your score to almost 2x. i recommend, get the cpu.
 
I'd ditch the 4x512mb for 2x1GB for ease on the memory controller. Depends on what CPU you have as to what kind of speeds you can run on the memory with 4x512, but it seems 2x1GB doesn't matter as much (although usually in higher latencies).
 
stopmenow said:
dual core, in sandra and 3dmark06, increases your score to almost 2x. i recommend, get the cpu.
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I don't play Sandra or 3dmark... They get boring after a while. Not enough immersion in those games for me. lmao [/sarcasm]


Good points you made Stopmenow, but I don't rely on synthetic benchmark programs to rate how fast a system is.
 
kirbyrj said:
I'd ditch the 4x512mb for 2x1GB for ease on the memory controller. Depends on what CPU you have as to what kind of speeds you can run on the memory with 4x512, but it seems 2x1GB doesn't matter as much (although usually in higher latencies).
Click to expand...
Not really concerned about changing my memory out right now, as I'm rather pleased with what I have now and I just don't have that in my budget. Someday I will populate all 4 slots with decent 1GB sticks when I see a need for it, but that's a ways off.

I'm using a 150 memory divider with a fsb speed of 267 (mem at 2.6V and cpu at 1.4V...stock cooling). Timings are at 3-4-4-8 which is what the memory is rated for. Equates out to 2.4GHz for the CPU and keeping the memory at 200MHz. It's been rock solid stable since day 1 of overclocking. I've been able to push the fsb up to 292 (1.475V) with a mem divider of 133, but things can start getting a little funky here and there. I can probably get it stable with a bit more vcore, but I despise overvolting.
 
DejaWiz said:
I don't play Sandra or 3dmark... They get boring after a while. Not enough immersion in those games for me. lmao [/sarcasm]


Good points you made Stopmenow, but I don't rely on synthetic benchmark programs to rate how fast a system is.
Click to expand...

3dmark06 is a great benchmark for testing not only graphics but cpu. i used to get half 3dmarks of what i get now, after buying a better cpu cooler (fan/heatsink).
 
Asian Dub Foundation said:
get dual core
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Ummm, why'd you vote for the 7800GT, then? Mouse must've backfired. :p :D jk

42-14 in favor of the X2 at time of this writing. I seem to detect some favoritism here. Which is good, because it's the whole point of this thread poll.
 
Wow, 43-16 in favor of the X2. I'm rather curious to see how this looks by tomorrow morning. Again, thanks to everyone who has voted and commented so far.
 
DejaWiz said:
Wow, 43-16 in favor of the X2. I'm rather curious to see how this looks by tomorrow morning. Again, thanks to everyone who has voted and commented so far.
Click to expand...

You might get different results if you posted in the vid card section :D.
 
kirbyrj said:
You might get different results if you posted in the vid card section :D.
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LOL true that..... or in the AMD processors section for that matter! Would probably look something like this-

AMD: 756
7800GT: 0, maybe 1 or 2. Maybe.
 
I would go for the X2 I have basically the same system as you and i wish i had the dual core but i prob multitask more than you but get the dual core you wont look back
 
Well well well, looks like I got my tax return deposited early! I'll likely be placing an order come Monday, so everyone get your last words of advice in! It's looking pretty good for the X2.
 
It's almost go time people. Get your votes and words in asap!
 
Order is slated to be placed sometime tomorrow. Last chance to vote and comment!
 
I would go for the X2 if it was me, but the 7800 GT will give you more of a boost when gaming
 
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