Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: mike8318 on September 04, 2012, 08:10:57 PM
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I have an 8 year old Dell Dimension 8400 that has performed flawlessly since new,but the recent updates have sent my frame rate to below 15fps,even with everything turned way down. My system consists of a Pentium 4, 3.4GHz,and 4 gigs of ram. The graphics card is the Radeon X300. I'm maxed out on ram,so about all that is left is to upgrade the card. I'm wanting to try this before I invest in a new system.Dell recommends the Radeon HD4650 PCIe 1GB HDMI. Any ideas? Thanks folks!
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That would be throwing good money after bad.
Even if the video card up grade helped (I don't think it would be much help) the lack of ram and a single core cpu is just going to create a different area that is going to slow you down. You most likely wouldn't see much of an improvement.
Personally I'd save my money until I could buy a new system.
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Yep, ditto to Fugi's post.
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before you invest in a new system. which is the logical way to go, perhaps you should give TD a call or build your own. it will be better than anything that you can buy at a store and it will be money well spend.
semp
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According to this page (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-2.html) over at Toms Hardware, the Radeon HD 7750 is "...the fastest graphics card you can get right now that doesn't require an auxiliary power input; it draws all that it needs from a 16-lane PCIe slot. If you're upgrading an older machine with limited power supply capacity, that's an attractive point to consider. "
However, although you could probably measure the performance improvement, you might not be able to even see the improvement with the naked eye.
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The P4 3.4 should at least have HTT so one physical but two locical cores.
I would not invest too much money on this system but you may want to test a cheap low-end card to boost performance, the X300 is some of the slowest possible cards for PCIe (if that's really a PCIe-system, please verify first!).
Very cheap low end cards should be Ati HD4350 or HD5450, I doubt your CPU is fast enough to feed the HD4650 properly with data.
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8 years is quite a long time in computer life, +1 @Fugi & Masherbrum.
Denniss has a point, too, but I'd like to take the idea one step further. The X300 is at the low end of Radeons of its era, but instead of a much newer card I'd look for a second hand high end card of the same age or one or two generations younger to be in par with the rest of your system. You can get an X850 on Ebay for around $20, an X1950 for $30 or an HD2900 for $45 which shouldn't be too big an investment. Something like that might give you time to save for a good AH rig for the next 8 years to come. If not, it still would run old games like a charm.
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8 years is quite a long time in computer life, +1 @Fugi & Masherbrum.
Denniss has a point, too, but I'd like to take the idea one step further. The X300 is at the low end of Radeons of its era, but instead of a much newer card I'd look for a second hand high end card of the same age or one or two generations younger to be in par with the rest of your system. You can get an X850 on Ebay for around $20, an X1950 for $30 or an HD2900 for $45 which shouldn't be too big an investment. Something like that might give you time to save for a good AH rig for the next 8 years to come. If not, it still would run old games like a charm.
One should remember when buying HD 2xxx series that they were notorious for high power consumption + heat. So check power supply resources first.
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According to this page (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-2.html) over at Toms Hardware, the Radeon HD 7750 is "...the fastest graphics card you can get right now that doesn't require an auxiliary power input; it draws all that it needs from a 16-lane PCIe slot. If you're upgrading an older machine with limited power supply capacity, that's an attractive point to consider. "
However, although you could probably measure the performance improvement, you might not be able to even see the improvement with the naked eye.
My 4770 has started acting up. I think the GPU is dying and it won't clock over 250. So I just ordered a XFX Double D FX-775A-ZDP4 Radeon HD 7750 Black Edition from Newegg. Let you know how it works in a few days.
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My 4770 has started acting up. I think the GPU is dying and it won't clock over 250. So I just ordered a XFX Double D FX-775A-ZDP4 Radeon HD 7750 Black Edition from Newegg. Let you know how it works in a few days.
My personal experience has been that GPUs are more sensitive to overclocking than cpus. Every GPU I've tried to overclock has died a premature death with symptoms being first unstability at overclock settings and after a while it won't stay stable even on regular clocks. Even the one that I went the extra mile with and installed a water cooling block on it :furious
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My personal experience has been that GPUs are more sensitive to overclocking than cpus. Every GPU I've tried to overclock has died a premature death with symptoms being first unstability at overclock settings and after a while it won't stay stable even on regular clocks. Even the one that I went the extra mile with and installed a water cooling block on it :furious
How difficult was that?
I have a 6870 2GB with a single fan and it is loud as hell...but I am pretty nervous to install an aftermarket cooler or something. Seems like a hassle. I wish I could hook up a Corsaie H80 to both the CPU and GPU.
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How difficult was that?
I have a 6870 2GB with a single fan and it is loud as hell...but I am pretty nervous to install an aftermarket cooler or something. Seems like a hassle. I wish I could hook up a Corsaie H80 to both the CPU and GPU.
It's not difficult at all on most cards. You just unscrew the old cooler, clean the badly applied factory heat paste away and apply arctic silver or similar everywhere that the new cooler covers, then screw the new cooler in and you're done.
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How difficult was that?
I have a 6870 2GB with a single fan and it is loud as hell...but I am pretty nervous to install an aftermarket cooler or something. Seems like a hassle. I wish I could hook up a Corsaie H80 to both the CPU and GPU.
I have installed a couple of aftermarket coolers without problems. They usually are more effective but less noisy. Also quite cost effective. Just stick with known good brands like Arctic (http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga.html) for quality in fitting.
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I have installed a couple of aftermarket coolers without problems. They usually are more effective but less noisy. Also quite cost effective. Just stick with known good brands like Arctic (http://www.arctic.ac/en/p/cooling/vga.html) for quality in fitting.
I looked at some of them...I wish bestbuy had some decent stuff so I could use this giftcard up. I was heavily looking into the H80, but I was pondering if the vga cooler would help me more. The card is loud as hell whereas the cpu fan (stock, all my other coolers were the wrong socket) isn't too bad. I don't care to OC much, nor do I want to do a full WC loop...the hybrid fan/liq vga coolers look pretty cool but are way too expensive. My card has got to be the loudest thing in my computer right now, followed by the cpu fan and oddly enough what seems to be the front intake fan.
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Back in the heyday of Radeon 9800 Pro I had an Arctic cooler, first on a Rad 7500, then on the 9800. It had a switch for silent and full speed. The silent slow speed kept my GPU cooler than the original screamer, and on full speed it was still quieter. Much easier to install than a passive/active Zalman I also have been playing with...
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before you invest in a new system. which is the logical way to go, perhaps you should give TD a call or build your own. it will be better than anything that you can buy at a store and it will be money well spend.
semp
Spoke to TD this evening and there will be a new system in my future. Luckily,he lives about 30 minutes away from me. Yeehaw!
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Have one of his Mage III's with a memory upgrade,bigger powersupply,and video card in the works. Can't wait!! Got to see his system run with WOT and it was really impressive.
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nice dont forget to post pictures :).
semp
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Should be ready by the end of next week. Now I just need to pick out a monitor worthy of such a system. Ideas?
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if you can afford it, a 27in led backlit would be a good fit...if you have deep pockets, get 3.
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I was looking at a 27" Acer. Don't have enough room for 3 of them,yet. :D
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I was looking at a 27" Acer. Don't have enough room for 3 of them,yet. :D
Do some research on input lags before you buy a gaming screen. Pretty picture won't matter if you keep missing your shots due to your image lagging behind action...
Here's a shot of some monitors and their input lags, there are pretty big differences. http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3116/7/lg-ips277l-bn-review-lgs-latest-generation-ips-monitor-test-results-response-time-and-input-lag
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I wound up getting the Acer Gamers GD235HZbid 23.6" LCD Monitor - 2 ms . Was going for a 27",but I wanted performance over screen size.
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Do some research on input lags before you buy a gaming screen. Pretty picture won't matter if you keep missing your shots due to your image lagging behind action...
Here's a shot of some monitors and their input lags, there are pretty big differences. http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3116/7/lg-ips277l-bn-review-lgs-latest-generation-ips-monitor-test-results-response-time-and-input-lag
:lol all that graph shows is gray to gray response times, where are the input lag measurements? i suppose they are trying to associate input lag with response time... :lol might want to find a better source.
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:lol all that graph shows is gray to gray response times, where are the input lag measurements? i suppose they are trying to associate input lag with response time... :lol might want to find a better source.
Yes I noticed that myself also after viewing the graph more closely. The title is misleading. It's hard to find proper charts for input lag.
Most links seem to confuse input lag and response time. This article has some info: http://www.squidoo.com/new-monitors-gaming
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Mike I had an identical rig that wasn't a Dell. I had a 3.4 ghz unlocked P4, 4 Gigs of redline ram, a 4670, 1GB AGP video card all on an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe mobo. I had it overclocked to the limit of air cooling and it just wouldn't cut AH at all and that was before this latest graphics update. Junk it bro. There's no shot at going any farther with that rig. It's a museum piece now.
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Mike I had an identical rig that wasn't a Dell. I had a 3.4 ghz unlocked P4, 4 Gigs of redline ram, a 4670, 1GB AGP video card all on an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe mobo. I had it overclocked to the limit of air cooling and it just wouldn't cut AH at all and that was before this latest graphics update. Junk it bro. There's no shot at going any farther with that rig. It's a museum piece now.
lol mike has a new computer that most of us want :). he got it from td.
semp
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Build your own. It was fun & newegg & lots of other places with help you match up parts, video instructions. I did it & am pleasantly surprised most days running max settings on texture 1024.
I don't want to worry about liquid cooling or Overclocking to the point of endangering my processors... If I had a little money left I would have gotten the i5 2500K model, but I lost money on a bad power supply. I really like the SSD, now the 256gig are the same as I paid for the 128gig. Have fun!!
4/10/2012
MSI P67A-G45 (B3) LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
SeaSonic X-1250 1250W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply
4/10/2012
ENERMAX FULMO Advance ECA892AG-BL Black SGCC 0.7mm ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
4/19/2012
EVGA 01G-P3-1556-KR GeForce GTX 550 Ti (Fermi) FPB 1GB 192-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support ...
8/6/2012
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL8D-8GBXM
8/6/2012
Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics ...
Sony Optiarc 24X DVD Burner, Bulk Package Black SATA Model AD-7280S-0B - OEM
Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
Western Digital Caviar Black WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Good luck whatever you do. :cheers:
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Build your own. It was fun & newegg & lots of other places with help you match up parts, video instructions. I did it & am pleasantly surprised most days running max settings on texture 1024.
I don't want to worry about liquid cooling or Overclocking to the point of endangering my processors... If I had a little money left I would have gotten the i5 2500K model, but I lost money on a bad power supply. I really like the SSD, now the 256gig are the same as I paid for the 128gig. Have fun!!
<snip>
Good luck whatever you do. :cheers:
*sigh* it seems your advice is a bit more than a day late and a dollar short...
Spoke to TD this evening and there will be a new system in my future. Luckily,he lives about 30 minutes away from me. Yeehaw!
Have one of his Mage III's with a memory upgrade,bigger powersupply,and video card in the works. Can't wait!! Got to see his system run with WOT and it was really impressive.
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http://www.prad.de/en/index.html (http://www.prad.de/en/index.html)
and
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk (http://www.tftcentral.co.uk)
are good sources for monitor reviews, including input lag measurements :aok
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*sigh* it seems your advice is a bit more than a day late and a dollar short...
I wouldn't call it advice...I wish I had talked with Skuzzy before I built & asked him to look over once & tell me what he thought...This is a What I did for what it's worth... :old:
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Picked it up today,and got to watch it run before we boxed it up to take home. It's so smooth it will make you airsick.(lol) Pretty much everything wide open and the frame rate never got below 50 or so. My current system does good to get me 15 fps. I am really happy with it.
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Got the 660 TI and I tell you it is pretty darn nice. Does what I want. I even upped some of the settings a tad and it's good to go.
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Finally got online with it the other day. Framerate hovered around 60 the whole time with everything turned up. Didn't know the game was this much fun! :rock Now I just need a squad!