Author Topic: Enough upgrade talk, show me the money (Read 339 times)

eagl · « **on:** January 07, 2005, 06:10:07 PM »

Enough talking about what SHOULD I get, how will this work with that, blah blah. This is on it's way to my mailbox from newegg.

Athlon 64 3200+ 90nm winchester core, 10x mult, 2.0ghz
2x512 meg crucial ballistix PC3200
MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum
200 gig Seagate ATA100 7200 rpm (cause they were out of the 7200.8 300 gig drives)
Thermalright XP-90 heatsink plus speed adjustable 90mm fan

Reused components from my existing system:

Lian-Li PC-60 USB aluminum tower
Thermaltake silent purepower 480 PSU
Western Digital 80 gig special edition
Nvidia GeForce 6800GT
Creative Labs Audigy2 ZS
Sony DRU 510A DVD +/- R/RW
Generic 16x CDRW
NEC 17" LCD (6 bit color and no DVI... ugh)
Cambridge soundworks 5.1 digital speakers
Win XP Home

Controlled by a generic 101 key keyboard and a microsoft optical wheelmouse

Game controller - Saitek x36F stick/throttle and analog CH pedals

Lesson learned - Save up FIRST, then buy all of your desired upgrades at once. Buying one part at a time = lots and lots of small upgrades that never quite give you the performance you want, and cost more than saving up and doing it all at once. Buy quality stuff and make it last with minimal upgrades. Hopefully this rig will last as long as my soon-to-be-replaced setup.

Grits · « **Reply #1 on:** January 07, 2005, 06:33:12 PM »

I am going to buy the same MB and CPU. Let us know what kind of FPS you gain from what you get now.

eagl · « **Reply #2 on:** January 07, 2005, 06:37:12 PM »

Ok. I'm eager to see myself. It'll take at least a week for the parts to show though...

boxboy28 · « **Reply #3 on:** January 07, 2005, 06:42:07 PM »

If your spending the money get a SATA drive!!!!!!!!!!!

Believe me its worth it!

eagl · « **Reply #4 on:** January 07, 2005, 06:55:06 PM »

I have some loser reasons to keep with ATA-100 instead of SATA... Mostly regarding moving drives to older computers, but rest assured this is most likely the LAST ATA-100 drive I'll ever get, just like the nvidia 6800GT is most likely the LAST AGP card I'll ever get.

Basically I have 2 external HD cases and they both use ATA connectors, not SATA. Whenever I get around to putting an SATA drive into my main rig, the 80 or 200 gig ATA drive will go into one of my external cases for my wife's use. Right now the drive in that ext case is a 30 gig IBM deathstar, a storage disaster waiting to happen. I wanted to be able to up that to a larger size someday, so I went with one last ATA hard drive purchase this time.

In a year or two, I'll probably refresh this system with a new cpu and possibly an SATA hard drive, moving the old components into secondary machines I have for various things like my multimedia box that tends to collect older parts from my main rig.

You're right though, in the absence of other (probably stupid) reasons, SATA is the way to go now. I was a bit torn between this 200 gig drive and the new 300 gig seagate 7200.8 SATA drive, but the 200 gig drive was half the cost and like I said I have a reason to get one more ATA drive. One more reason is that I know the 200 gig seagate drive is QUIET, but I have no data on the 7200.8 drive noise level. Next time though...

38ruk · « **Reply #5 on:** January 07, 2005, 10:40:46 PM »

nice , i recently did a similar system amd 64 3400 , and was very happy with it , ram is the most crucial component for these processers which im sure your aware of . make sure the ram will run at a 1t command rate , as 2t comand rate really show a performance hit on my system . also memory timmings are fun to tweak , the best setting i have found for my ram is 2-3-3-7 , ymmv depending on the ram . GL 38

DREDIOCK · « **Reply #6 on:** January 08, 2005, 10:02:44 AM »

Quote

just like the nvidia 6800GT is most likely the LAST AGP card I'll ever get.

[/B]

Hold the phones a sec.

IT was my understanding and I beleive I even asked here once and got the responce that AGP was better then PCI?

Which is it?

Kaz · « **Reply #7 on:** January 08, 2005, 10:12:34 AM »

AGP is better than PCI but not better than the new standard PCI Express. Even though PCI Express hasn't hit its full potential it's already proving to be faster than AGP. AGP might be around for awhile longer though, because making the jump to PCI Express would mean getting a new motherboard, CPU, and of course graphics card.

[EDIT] I think during the early PCI Express days the cards were slower or on par with the AGP counterparts. They've gotten faster now for the most part.

Ghosth · « **Reply #8 on:** January 08, 2005, 10:36:03 AM »

Why SATA?

Is it that much faster?

eagl · « **Reply #9 on:** January 08, 2005, 11:52:40 AM »

PCI Express and AGP vid cards are pretty much the same speed right now because memory access across either bus is still so much slower than memory right on the card. Nvidia is doing stuff with SLI setups and 2 PCI Express slots so you can use 2 vid cards working together just like the old 3dfx voodoo2 cards, but that's a bit extreme even for gaming whackos.

PCI-X is fairly new, and cards only started hitting the streets with them in 2004. There was a big stink about it because the first PCI-X cards were really built with AGP interfaces and a bridge to the PCI-X format, but in practice that didn't seem to affect performance much at all.

PCI-X will probably benefit integrated and low-end graphics more than anything else. What PCI-X does for a gamer however is move the bus up to the next tech generation just like we saw when PCI replaced the old ISA bus. It will mean more over time than it does now.

Right now however, switching to PCI-X is simply a matter of deciding to look for the harder to find PCI-X motherboards and video cards when you make your next upgrade. There's nothing wrong at all with going to PCI-X right now except that it'll probably cost a bit more in the short term. But then you'd be able to put next year's video cards into your computer without having to hope nvidia and ATI build AGP versions, or without having to upgrade the mobo at the same time. I personally decided I'd get the best of what is probably the last generation of AGP stuff and save a bit right now, and then when I upgrade I'll wait as long as possible then upgrade everything again.

Right now it's not THAT MUCH faster, but there are still a few good reasons to go to SATA. First, it's faster and the standard has room for improvement. Second, the cables are much thinner and easier to work with. Third, there is something called "NCQ" that the newest Intel mobos support, that supposedly can dramatically improve hard drive performance. Fourth, Parallel ATA (EIDE, etc) is on the way out, and eventually it'll be tough finding a motherboard that supports those hard drives. The transition will probably take a few years, but it'll happen just like the old MFM and RLL hard drives started disappearing with the old IBM AT 15-20 years ago when the drive controllers started being integrated into the drives and motherboards.