Want to upgrade, need a bit of up-to-date info on HW

[hogenbor]

I currently run AH2 on an Athlon 1800+ with 1Gb of RAM and I have a Ti 4200 vid card. Screen size is 1600x1200, graphic detail cranked way down.

The game is playable with frame rates from 24-43 but sometimes in a big furball it drops to unacceptable levels.

I'm really out of touch with current hardware developments. What would be a wise choice to upgrade?  I figure I need at least a new motherboard, fast processor and good vid card. Undoubtedly there has been progress in memory speeds and bus speeds as well but these have completely passed me by. I also found out about PCI-express graphics adapters as oppossed to AGP. I suppose this is better too.

Hehe, when I read this I feel like some old f*rt when less than a decade ago I was a college student and knew everything about the best HW  Priorities shift. At least now I can afford it.

Can someone fill in the developments of the last 4 years for me? Thanks in advance. To be frank I only need the speed to be able to play AH2, nothing much has changed there at least, speed to play games.

[Balsy]

I have ASUS SLI Deluxe MB
1 MB Corsair XXL cas 2-2-2-5 memory
AMD FX53
BFG 6800 GT PCI express (didnt go SLI).

My frame rates rarely drop below 60 at 16x12 512 texture, and sliders 3/4 to detail.

The thing to concentrate on is CPU power however you go about it.  I could add a second vid card but it wouldnt matter cuz my CPU doesnt have enought horsepower to push it.

So you could get away with a non SLI board if AH is your mainstay.  I think others with SLI would back me up on this.

[boxboy28]

Balsey what did your rig run you $ wise?

[Balsy]

Well it included the whole shebang.... box, power supply etc...

The whole PC etc... was around$2500.

but if your MB, memory, chip and ram only your talking a lot less.

$1500-1600 or so.

[eagl]

http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=158193

[Aqualung]

I just put together a system a couple weeks ago and researched all the new tech.  Here's my recommendations based on only playing AH:

Case:
     Wide variety available.  My preferences  went to Antec, Coolermaster, Lian Li, and Thermaltake

Power Supply:
    At least 480W (>500 would be better).  Would only get from Antec, Enermax, OCZ, and PC Power & Cooling.  If you're on a tight budget, look for a case that includes the power supply.

Processor:  
     single core AMD
     Budget: 3200+ Venice core
     All-out: one of the FX line

Mobo:
     Budget:  nForce4 Ultra (non-SLI)
     All-out:  nForce4 SLI
EPoX has had a lot of good reviews lately about being a fast, stable, cheap nForce4 board.  If you plan to overclock, look into the DFI's.  Note the DFI's are also tempermental - they are meant for overclockers to tweak every last bit of speed from the system.  You also cannot go wrong with Asus.

Memory:
     Budget:  Corsair ValueSelect 1GB (2x512) Dual channel Kit.
     All-out:    Corsair, OCZ, RedlineMushkin 1 or 2GB Dual Channel Kits.  There are different types of ram offered by each company.  Ram with the lower timings = better = more expensive.

Video Card:
     Budget:  nVidia 6800GT or Ultra 256MB
     All-Out:   nVidia 7800GTX
I personally prefer nVidia over ATI for the main reason of nVidia supporting PS3.0.  There are no games that support this *yet* but when I plop >$350 on a video card, I plan on keeping it for quite a few years where games may be released that support it.  If you have the money, the Mobo, and the desire, go SLI.  Just realize that 2 video cards does not equal 2x the perfomance.  I don't know if you will even see an improvement in AH.

Hard Drive:
    Go SATA.  If you have the money, I'd recommend a Western Digital Raptor as the non-budget drive to get.  As a budget drive I prefer Seagate and Western Digital due to their reliability and warrenty.  Hitachi and Maxtor are faster, but there are more stories of failure from these drives.  I wouldn't bother with Raid 0, the performance  isn't worth it, but Raid 1 is good for mirroring of data.  

Sound Card:
    Budget:  On-board sound
    Non-budget:  Creative X-Fi

CD / DVD:
    Go with a DVD-RW drive, they are pretty cheap nowadays.  

OS:
    Go with Windows XP Home or Pro.  Don't go 64bit.



This is the system that I ended up putting together.  Its a blend between cost and performance with me leaning more towards performance.  I'm planning on overclocking the processor and Ram so I paid extra for better, more stable components and cooling.  Total cost for everything (including case, cooling,  and monitor which are not shown) was around $2200:

AMD 4400+ X2
Antec NeoPower 480W
ThermalTake XP-120 Heatsink
DFI Lanparty nForce4 SLI-DR
2GB OCZ Platinum DDR400 (2x1GB)
BFG nvidia 6800GT 256MB
Seagate 7200.8 250GB HD
Plextor 712SA SATA DVD-RW
Creative X-Fi XtremeGamer SoundCard


-aqualung

[buzkill]

your'e right about dfi mobo's....my friend keeps losing/corrupting his GART driver, so his fast rights are turned off and his AGP drops to off.

[Schutt]

What aqualung suggested looks verry good.

Motherboard: get a brand name, and one that supports athlon x2. DFI,MSI,Asus,Aopen are good in my opinion, but thats not really a hard fact.

[Aqualung]

One thing I should have noted above is that the nForce4 boards are PCI-E, so you would need to get a PCI-E video card.

I have a DFI board and have not had one bit of trouble with it.  It seems that most people who are having problems have cheap ram or a sub-standard power supply.  DFI also has the best support I've seen from any of the mobo manufactures.  There is a large community at http://www.dfi-street.com with a couple of DFI employees posting there as well.

I was really debating though whether to go with the EPoX or the DFI, but the large support site swayed my opinion to the DFI.