Author Topic: Time to Upgrade? (Read 356 times)

woodfordb · « **on:** October 14, 2002, 03:04:55 PM »

Hi,
Dont know if its time to upgrade or not.

I have a P4 1.7 (423 skt) on a 850 chipset board. Running 512mb of PC800 RDRAM and have an Audigy sound card + GF4 Ti600.
My frame rate maxes out at my vsync when not much happens (85). it drops to as low as 28-30 when a big mission takes off. I run at 1024x768.

I am thinking about either swapping for a skt 478 board like the new asus 533 and getting some 1066RD ram + a 2.53ghz. or holding fire for the new NForce 2 board and what ever is the fastest XP cpu.

Any idea's? have an aging TBird 900 that seams to go on and on, so dont have any issues about AMD v Intel. Just want decent speed with out having to spend £600 on a chip (P4 2.8)

Regards

Mandrill

SKurj · « **Reply #1 on:** October 14, 2002, 03:39:42 PM »

what resolution do u play at? FSAA on?

Its always possible to turn things up too far no matter what card you have or cpu.

SKurj

woodfordb · « **Reply #2 on:** October 14, 2002, 03:48:31 PM »

Run at 1024x768 32bit. FSAA off. Settings in display for best image.

Cheers

Mandrill

SKurj · « **Reply #3 on:** October 14, 2002, 05:31:22 PM »

heya Mandrill

That doesn't seem a whole lot better than my own gf4 mx setup...
XP 1800@1900 and 512 mb sdram with gf4 mx 440 64mb ddr...

Although mine won't hold 85fps, it does peak at over 110 fps..
and probably dips abit lower than your own setup.

How do you score on 3dmark2001?

Just curious if there maybe a little tweaking left with drivers or something.

SKurj

eagl · « **Reply #4 on:** October 14, 2002, 10:29:27 PM »

You'll likely get more bang for the buck with an athlon system and the nforce2 chipset includes a very cpu-friendly network chip and surround sound onboard. If you can wait, that might be a great solution for you along with the latest athlon cpu.

Hussein · « **Reply #5 on:** October 15, 2002, 02:29:51 AM »

Wood those PIV 1.7's are monsters at overclocking. Buy a powerful heatsink/fan combo and overclock that puppy.

It's not uncommon to go easily to 2Ghz with those. That is my first advice. If you fry it, hey.. what do you have to lose?

At maximum your mobo and cpu will die which you had to replace in any case. In most cases though you'll just run it with more speed and no troubles. Do small speed raises at once (even 1Mhz at a time, boot to windows) untill you find out that the system goes unstable. When you find the limit, turn the speed back a couple notches and you're good to go.

If you raise the FSB too much at a time your system might not boot up anymore - but that is easily fixed by clearing CMOS in 99 cases out of a 100.

gatt · « **Reply #6 on:** October 15, 2002, 07:31:59 AM »

Mandrill, take a look here:

http://www.powerleap.com/Products/P4N.htm

I had a Dell-8100 with an old P4-1.6 Willamette (socket 423). With the Powerleap adapter I could upgrade to a new P4-2.4 Northwood (socket 478). Very cheap and very easy to mount. The special heatsink/fan they send with the adapter is also very good.The only thing you need are bucks for the new CPU

Now the system is *very* fast. I usually run AH at 1280x1024, 32bit with 4XFSAA. Never below 60fps (with the GF4-4600).

woodfordb · « **Reply #7 on:** October 15, 2002, 03:45:06 PM »

Thanks for the help guys,

The new NForce 2 does look good, and will probably wait for that.

As for my 3dmark2001se score, 8700ish with out any clocking of the vid card. close to 9500 with clocking the card.

Motherboard OC'ing... cant be done, running a Intel D850GB board, no oc features. Also think that is why my system is slow compared to a similar spec machine on say an Asus board. Intels memory timings are not agressive, and geared towards 24/7 stability (Which it does day in day out)

Thanks for the post regarding the 423 -> 478. http://www.upgradeware.com do one as well, but that like the powerleap is not available in the UK just yep. Might order one in from the US, but after the cost of the unit + postage and then the new CPU it might be cheaper to actually buy a 478 board and cpu and utilise my exisiting parts.

Thanks again for the help.

Mandrill

-lynx- · « **Reply #8 on:** October 16, 2002, 01:12:06 PM »

I get just under 10K 3D Marks with 1600XP+ (1.4Ghz), 512MB PC2100 and Soyo Dragon Plus mobo - nothing is overclocked. Oh, I use Crucial 9700Pro...

My monitor maxes out at 75Hz though - darn TFTs:(

Wood - check crucial.co.uk they are the cheapest 9700s around and they ship them free too.

As for utilizing the old stuff - don't forget eBay. People go nuts there for some reason, I ended up buying a brand new mobo cuz the second hand ones were sold at ridiculous prices. You can easily sell your old stuff and make the upgrade less painfull...