T4molie

Guys,

Have been toying with the idea of upgrading my home PC for a while but find myself wondering whether the outlay of cash is really worth it!?!?!

Currently running P4 2.6, 1Gb Ram, 120GB IDE HDD with ATI Radeon 9600 GFX (AGP).

I use the machine for the usual surfing, occasional office docs but mainly gaming

I read in a recent post that the best AGP GFX card at the mo is the GeForce 7800GT(?), so I find myself wondering whether I would see much improvement by just upgrading the GFX or whether I should just upgrade the lot?

So come on all you PC Gamers... what you running?

Cheers

Andy

Iain Young

I upgraded from a p4 2.5, 1gb ram with a 6800 graphics card to my current machine (Amd 4800+, 2x7800GTX 512mb running in sli, 2gb ram, 1tb of hard disc space), and the speed increase is incredible.

Obviously the sli 7800s help the most when gaming, but the 4800+ has made everything else I use the machine for (video editing and photoshop work for example) so much quicker.

I'd say that if you can afford it, I'd upgrade the lot. If you put a 7800 in that machine, the cpu will be the bottleneck, and you won't be running the gfx card at its full potential...

imo of course

T4molie

Cheers for the reply Iain

Can I ask what made you decide on an AMD CPU? I've historically gone for Intel (not anywhere up to speed on PC H/W for a long time cos I deal mainly with Alpha stuff for work now).

The AMD's seem to run at a lower clock speed? or am I talkig out of my ar.....

ScoobyJawa

I ran almost an identical spec (inc graphics) - upgrading from 512 to 1GB memory was really noticable.

I've since added a 6600GT for 100 notes and used CPUCool to overclock the proc so its now running a stable 2.9Ghz. I'm running the 6600GT overclocked at 550mhz and 1Ghz opposed to 500/900. These 2 things again have made a noticable improvement from what it was and it still plays pretty much anything I throw at it - eg CoD2.

T4molie

SJ,

If you're overclocking the proc and GFX do you have extra cooling / fans inside your box?

Iain Young

They do have a lower clock speed, but because the internal architecture is more efficient than the Intel chips, you can't use this as a comparison. In the dual core chips, Intel has a slight edge where floating point performance is concerned, but this is only really noticable in applications such as photoshop / 3d rendering etc. Games mostly use interger maths where possible (it's a lot quicker than floating point), and the Amd is much quicker than intel on this front. The new FX chips are simply blistering where games performance is concerned...

I doubt whether increasing your memory on the current spec will help that much. It would have helped ScoobyJawa by upgrading to 1gb from 512mb, but seeing as you are already there, I doubt whether you'll see a lot of improvement (especially in games) from going to 2gb...

ScoobyJawa

Box is as stock as it comes! Its an aldi system though and I've removed the "flying saucer" from the side opening it up to more fresh air, plus I also bunged a 450w hyper PSU in it, which has more efficient fans...... Monitoring the temps using CPUCool and a motherboard diag tool - nothings getting too high yet - or after a few hours intensive CoD2 use

Grand total for the upgrade was £150 - nice Ok its not cutting edge but will keep me going for a while yet!

DrEvil

As most know, I upgrade quite regularly... So will spare you the gory details.

Current gaming system is:

X2 4800+
2Gb Corsair TwinX (2x1Gb)
XFX 7800 512 XXX
X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS

Runs everything I throw at it at present, on HIGH/MAX settings @ 1280x1024 (limit of 19" TFT).

My advice, decide on your exact budget, then work out the finer points.

P1Fanatic

If you want to play the current games and future ones in a half decent res/detail you need a complete overhaul.

I have a A64bit 3200, 1gb mem, XFX 7800GT pci-e 256mb and it still struggles on Call of Duty of 1280x1024 full details when the full on action kicks in.

Simon.

T4molie

Looks like I'm heading for an upgrade

DrE - you must spend quite a bit on your PC's

P1Fanatic

Concentrate on high spec cpu and gfx card.

Alex - I thought u ran dual 7800 GTX's?

Simon

T4molie

P1 - can you recommend any?

DrEvil

T4molie - yep - I have a DR gaming box, which is an X2 4400 / 7800GTX 256 XXX / 2GB Corsair / Audigy 2

Simon - Nah, just don't need it for a 19" TFT at present (excluding Oblivion), was considering it next round (2x G80s), but will depend on whether a) it is needed and b) I have a larger TFT by then.

Couple of basic specs for you T4, Nvidia are better value for midrange, but the X1900XTX is king of the cards at the moment.

Midrange:
X2 4400+ (250 ish)
XFX Nvidia 7900GT 256Mb (235 ish) (or Sapphire X1900XT 512Mb for 300 ish)
2Gb GEIL Value dual channel (120 ish)
Asus A8N-SLI premium (120 ish) (if X1900, then look at Asus A8R32-MVP Delux Crossfire - 130 ish)
X-Fi Extreme Music (90 ish)
Enermax Liberty 500W ELT500AWT ATX2.2 (73 ish)
Seagate 7200.9 SATAII HDs (£ depends on size...)
NEC DVDRW 4570 (30 ish)

High(er):
X2 4800 (450 ish)
Sapphire X1900XT-X 512Mb (375 ish)
Corsair TwinX XMS3200C2PT 2x1Gb kit (160 ish)
Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe Crossfire (130 ish)
X-Fi Extreme Music (90 ish)
Enermax Liberty 620W ELT620AWT ATX2.2 (105 ish)
Seagate 7200.9 SATAII HDs (£ depends on size...)
NEC DVDRW 4570 (30 ish)


Depends on your budget - you could mental and go much higher spec wise... QUAD SLI & 900W PSU anyone?

But you should be aware that:

1) Intel have a potential AMD killer due, according to the current benchmarks, but how the price / performance will stack up
2) AMD have a new CPU range and motherboard socket standard due in Q2'06 - AM2. Judging by the 754 - 939 skt move a couple of years back, you won't see a big drop on skt 939 chip prices for a while...

T4molie

DrE - you the man Cheers fella

Have just started reading through tomshardware.com... man that place is a wealth of information

DrEvil

You'd be better off reading stuff here: http://www.anandtech.com/

IMHO

TopBanana

You don't need to spend a bomb. I have an AMD 3000+ overclocked from 1.8 -> 2.6GHz (easy), a 7800GT and 2Gb of branded standard RAM. I can run BF2 on max everything.

jfrf

you might just be able to get away with a gfx card upgrade and leave the cpu alone.

i run a amd3000 cpu along with a 7800gtx card and 2 gig or ram.
alos i play a lot of games and get great smooth performnace

the 2 gig of ram is not essential although it has helped run battlefied 2 smoother on high graphics settings

i think youd see a fair improvement going from a 9600 to a 7800gt

DrEvil

The current gen games seems to need more than 1Gb RAM if running 1280x1024 + HIGH/MAX detail etc.. As jfrf says, the extra memory gives you a smoother feel because its not hitting the paging space (virtual memory).

Crysis (new game from the makers of Far Cry) will run best on 4Gb ram apparently

T4molie

4GB!!!! Holy cr@p

DrEvil

Personally, if you want your games to run smoothly and at high detail, 2Gb is the new standard for gaming, imho.

With the 7800 / 7900 and 1800 / 1900 series GPUs most of the new titles seem to be pushing the 1Gb barrier memory requirements wise.

T4molie

Putting this all into perspective a gamer is gonna need a bigger pc at home soon than some people run for their 24/7 apps servers at work