Current - upgrade?

[blackdog68]

It is possible to upgrade my system, I'm trying to determine what if any better AHII usable performance I'll get out of it.

First, the current specs:

AMD Socket 939 3000
Asus A8V Deluxe
1GB RAM
256 MB 6800GT

All slightly OC'd...I usually get 59 Frames, 1/2 of mem used, very low % video Ram used.  Image quality is "OK" on a Samsung 19" 8ms 931B, 1280x1024  Occasional but rare and short duration stuttering with the detail slider all the way up and ground slider about 75% to full.  My main complaint is difficulty seeing detail.

I was thinking of Dual Core, 8800GTS, 2mb RAM, etc.  Basically a builld almost identical to Sharkyextreme.com's high end ($2500) buying guide.

But, I don't really want to spend the dough unless it will really make for a better AH experience.  

Will I see much improvement?  Or is there another rec to get better image quality?

[humble]

Obviously you've got a lot of room for upgrade in the CPU...

 The 6800 GT is a fairly good card, The 7900GS/X1950PRO are both "best value" from toms in the $175 range...

Bumping memory to 2 gig might be biggest value since it lests you run better textures/detail.

I'd find a cpu/mb combo you like and use same VC (for now). Go to 2 G of DDR2 memory and see what performance you get...you can always upgrade VC if you feel the need...but your cpu/memory is your bottleneck IMO....

[eagl]

If the motherboard supports X2 cpus, get the latest mobo bios and slap in a dual core Athlon X2 cpu.  Don't wait too long, since the socket 939 cpus are getting tough to find.  AMD has priced them very low to get rid of them.  I think that would be your biggest bang for the buck now that the socket 939 cpus are so cheap.  Make sure your mobo supports them with the latest bios though.

After that, if you play battlefield or other memory hungry games, you could consider jumping to 2 gig of ram, but remember that you won't be able to use DDR memory in your next major upgrade cycle so any money spent on ram now is going to be tossed out in your next upgrade.

After cpu and memory, consider a new video card.  According to a quick search, it looks like that mobo has an AGP slot instead of a pci-e slot, but you can still get a later generation vid card if you don't mind getting ripped off by about $60.  There are AGP 7800 series vid cards that may work, but they cost about $60 more than essentially identical pci-e cards.  I couldn't get an AGP 7800GS to work in my computer but that might have been the fault of the weak power supply I was using at the time.  So if you upgrade the cpu and vid card, make sure you have a good power supply.  450 watts in a quality PSU ought to be enough, but if you get a really nice one (500+ watts) then you're more likely to be able to re-use it in your next system buildup.

[Schutt]

Hi Blackdog,

I have a verry similar system and decided against upgrading. By sheer fortune i got 2GB of RAM now and i dont see any diffrence in AH2. I am not sure what your complain is with lack of detail, if its aircraft detail you can try to set a higher texture size. If you dont like the rough edges try to set AA to 2x or 4x. When you want more performance (get rid of occasional stutter) try to set no AA if you have it enabled or lower it.
To be honest i am not sure if AH2 currently offers more detail that what you already get.

Probably best bet for an upgrade is buy a better cpu, check first which is supported by your motherboard. You might have to flash your motherboard bios with a new one and check the revision of the board. In germany the 939 cpus are already pretty expensive, since a lot of people buy em as last chance upgrade for their comp.

Graphic card is good... dont think youll get much upgrade from a diffrent one without waisting to much money.

You dont mention a sound card. If you dont have one i would get a decent sound card and a nice 7.1 sound system instead of other upgrades. While the performance gain is probably not noticeable the gain in sound quality is quite nice compared to onboard.

Otherwise, maybe i did read your post wrong. Instead of upgrading you could buy a completly new computer, as in buying new motherboard/ram/video/cpu. Then my pick would be getting E6300 with 2GB and ATI X1950pro . As mentioned i really dont know if that gives you that much of an upgrade in ah2. I would rather hope for Christmas then.... better cpus and more choices in video cards, lower ram prices.

For reference, here is the system mentioned by sharkyextreme, note that they have a glitch on their website and call the core2duo system pentium D, probably they copied that from an old article:

----
Intel Pentium D System

Case: ThermalTake Armor VA8000BWS Full Tower w/Antec 550W TP3 PSU - $239
Processor: Core 2 Duo E6600 (2.4GHz) Retail - $315
Cooling: Retail HSF - $0
Motherboard: ASUS P5N32-SLI Premium - $215
Memory: 2x1GB Corsair XMS2-6400 (TWIN2X2048-6400C4) - $256
Hard Drive: 2 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB SATA - $194
Video Card: GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB - $399
Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 204B 20" LCD - $345
Sound Card: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer - $80
Speakers: Logitech THX Z-5300e 5.1 Speakers - $134
DVD-/+RW: Samsung 18x DVD+RW/-RW SH-S182D - $29
Communications: Onboard LAN - $0
Mouse: Logitech MX Revolution Laser Cordless Mouse - $75
Keyboard: Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard - $68
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2 with Vista Upgrade Coupon - $139
Floppy: Generic - $5

Total: $2,493
-----

My take on this is that it is far to expensive. Using E6300, X1950pro, diffrent motherboard, cheaper case, smaller hard disks, simple mouse/keyboard i come off 700$ cheaper with still pretty good performance in ah2 and nothing reduced but the whizz factor. The 8800 is the only card that can in theory use directx10 and has by far best performance, but 400$ is a lot for a graphic card. If you need it for new games, ok. But 700$ is already a week of nice vacation somewhere with hot chicks on the beach... uhm i mean good food and wellness offers..

[blackdog68]

Thanks all.

I've been playing with the video settings, first of all I've mistakenly been playing at 768 not 1024, lol.  Obviously, that was a big difference.  I'm going to try other settings as well.  Stupid me, I did not realize that video settings from the intro menu was different from the in game video settings.

Frame rates are now in the lower 50's, and I preloaded textures.

As for the sharky build, they list retail prices (I think) as I was able to put together a PO incl OS for $1800.  Obviously I already have monitors, speakers, etc...

[blackdog68]

OK, now that I've done the software tweaks, I decided that the CPU was my worst bottleneck and found the best chip my MB would support, an FX-60, for $360 shipped.  I considered a whole new system for the price delta but reality is AH2 is the only graphics/physics intense game I play or have time for.

I'll keep everyone updated on the results, and thanks again for the recs!

[38ruk]

I bought a X2 4400+ for $150 and am clocked over FX-60 speeds with ease at 2640 mhz . The Fx-62 is clocked at 2.8 ghz , and i'm currently testing 2.8ghz for stability . Even thou the FX-62 is AM2 , i should be close to its numbers for little money .

For all the guys with the 939's i would recommend getting an X2 or opteron in the near future as they are getting harder to find .  This will greatly extend the life of your current setup with little impact on the wallet .  38

[Helrazr1]

Just a thought, but could your problem have to do with the fact that your monitor has such a high latency?  I used to play AH with one that ran at 5ms, and it sure wasn't great, so I upgraded to a 2ms version of the same monitor.  Been great ever since.  Just guessing that if I had problems at 5ms, you'd really have problems at 8.

[blackdog68]

I could do a new monitor, move my current one to the 2ndry multi-mon, and move my existing 2ndary multi-mon to the laptop, any recs?

As for the sound card mentioned earlier, I'm covered there, and am using the Klipsch THX speakers/woofer.


Thanks again for any/all input.

[SIK1]

Originally posted by 38ruk
I bought a X2 4400+ for $150 and am clocked over FX-60 speeds with ease at 2640 mhz . The Fx-62 is clocked at 2.8 ghz , and i'm currently testing 2.8ghz for stability . Even thou the FX-62 is AM2 , i should be close to its numbers for little money .

For all the guys with the 939's i would recommend getting an X2 or opteron in the near future as they are getting harder to find .  This will greatly extend the life of your current setup with little impact on the wallet .  38

I would really like to keep my current system for a few more years, especialy with the release of Vista. Right now I run AH just fine with Athlon 64 3800+ 1GB Ram, and an fx5700 vid card I'm able to maintain 60fps for the most part. I would like to upgrade the vid card so that I can take full advantage of my new 42" 1080p lcd monitor. My vid cards max rez is 1280x1024 so I have black pillars on each side of the monitor right now.

I was thinking about upgrading to a AMD x2, from a Athlon 64 3800+, but how do I know if my mobo supports an x2? How much of a performance increase can be reasonably expected? I use the computer just for AH, so is a dual core cpu going to give a noticeable improvement?

Thanks for any insight
SIK1

[republic]

Originally posted by blackdog68

Frame rates are now in the lower 50's, and I preloaded textures.

I'd say your system is fine if AH is the only game you play.  Much of the framerate issues I've seen in AH appear to be more of a game engine issue.  Maybe it gets overwhelmed trying to draw so many objects(trees)?  I'm not a programmer by any means.  Usually I have problems over TT or when there is an overwhelming number of objects..so I'll drop down the draw distance a bit when I need to.

There was another game I often played that had the same issue (Eve Online).  No matter how fast your CPU or how beefy your video card, it had an issue with overwhelming itself with the number of objects in a specific area...only way to deal with it was to turn down the number of objects it drew, and to disable sound completely....if not it was literally a slideshow of 5ish frames per second despite how uber your hardware.

Until multi threading becomes the norm, probably continue to see that.    Especially when game engines are forced to draw both high detail in small numbers and then high numbers of players in a small area.

But really..what do I know?  lol


If you haven't played any other 3d games than AH, you'd be surprised what your system could do.    Download a demo of Fear and watch your system dazzle you.

[38ruk]

Originally posted by SIK1
I would really like to keep my current system for a few more years, especialy with the release of Vista. Right now I run AH just fine with Athlon 64 3800+ 1GB Ram, and an fx5700 vid card I'm able to maintain 60fps for the most part. I would like to upgrade the vid card so that I can take full advantage of my new 42" 1080p lcd monitor. My vid cards max rez is 1280x1024 so I have black pillars on each side of the monitor right now.

I was thinking about upgrading to a AMD x2, from a Athlon 64 3800+, but how do I know if my mobo supports an x2? How much of a performance increase can be reasonably expected? I use the computer just for AH, so is a dual core cpu going to give a noticeable improvement?

Thanks for any insight
SIK1

Skuzzy says AH2 is a multithreaded game so i would imagine there should be a  gain. I havent played on mine yet cause ive had to reformat and im still tweaking my overclock. There are only a handfull of multi thread games on the market right now but i would think their are a bunch on the way ,thats why i upgraded.  With these cpu's starting to dry up for 939 it's more of a "for the near future " or "max out the platform"upgrade . For the buck fifty i paid it was worth it to me , especially since im running over FX-60 (2.6ghz) speeds now (2.8) stable .

As for X2 support , if you know the name and model of board you have, post it and i'll look for you , or just search for the boards spec's .  

 I see your running a standard resolution on the widescreen monitor , AH supports custom resolutions , you just have to manually edit you video8.cfg file with note pad .   Hope this helps ... 38

Edit
Sorry republic , i didnt read your post which said pretty much the same thing .

[SIK1]

38ruk,

My mobo is a MSI k8n neo2 platinum. I tried looking up the specs for it but couldn't find anything that said it supports x2, so I'm assuming that it does not, or I'm just looking in the wrong place. I'm no tech guru (truthfuly I know just enough to get myself into trouble), so If I missed something and it does let me know. I would really like to extend this boxes useful life if at all possible.

I do know that AH supports custom resolutions. I am actually limited by my vid card that maxes at 1280x1024.

TIA
SIK1

[DAVENRINO]

Originally posted by SIK1
38ruk,

My mobo is a MSI k8n neo2 platinum. I tried looking up the specs for it but couldn't find anything that said it supports x2, so I'm assuming that it does not, or I'm just looking in the wrong place. I'm no tech guru (truthfuly I know just enough to get myself into trouble), so If I missed something and it does let me know. I would really like to extend this boxes useful life if at all possible.

I do know that AH supports custom resolutions. I am actually limited by my vid card that maxes at 1280x1024.

TIA
SIK1

WELCOME BACK SIK1 !!!!
I have been playing AH on a large widescreen for over three years and I don't recommend using a widescreen resolution unless you also use Track IR.

http://forums.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=194588&highlight=widescreen

[SIK1]

Originally posted by DAVENRINO
WELCOME BACK SIK1 !!!!
I have been playing AH on a large widescreen for over three years and I don't recommend using a widescreen resolution unless you also use Track IR.

http://forums.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=194588&highlight=widescreen

Hiya DJ,

I have read your recomendations in other threads. I have been using TrackIR, for a couple of months now. That is one of the reasons that I want to use the widescreen resolution. It will be nice to use the whole screen.


Funny you should respond in this thread, as I recall you tried to steer me clear of the socket 939 cpu when I was looking at this system, I guess I should have listened to you:D