Upgrade times

[MIkkyo]

Reeeeeeeeeeet oh I feel like spending what little cash I have on upgrading my pootah, only not sure if its worth buying a new motherboard and starting from scratch or just upgrading and spending less (with the chance of everything going out of date in like a week).
So as most of you know far more about hardware than I could ever be arsed to geek up on maybe you might be better able to point me in the right direction.

Code: Select all

MB: ASUS A8N-E
Processor: AMD Athlon 64+ 3200 (dunno if I can go duel core or not? do I need to?)
RAM: 1 gig (but going to buy another in a bit)
Graphics: RADEON X700

Anyother details needed ask and I shall provide

[thewombleofdeath]

how much monies do you have to spend?

[MIkkyo]

not much, trying to keep it low as possible, which is why I want to see what I can still do with my mother board, a few hundred is about all I can spare.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Your machine is kind of at a dead end due to being socket939, so cpu choice will be fairly limited.

However, your mobo will take any pcie graphics card you throw at it (though, 8800s will be cpu limited) I'd probably look at an x1950pro or a 7900gt/gto. (assuming your psu is up to the job)


Doing that will probably run you ~£160 all in, and will get your machine as fast as it's likely to go.

[MIkkyo]

Your machine is kind of at a dead end due to being socket939, so cpu choice will be fairly limited.

However, your mobo will take any pcie graphics card you throw at it (though, 8800s will be cpu limited) I'd probably look at an x1950pro or a 7900gt/gto. (assuming your psu is up to the job)


Doing that will probably run you ~£160 all in, and will get your machine as fast as it's likely to go.

How long is that processor likely to last? how much faster is it that my current in terms of soemthing my code monkey brain will understand, like running kittens.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

It'll last until you cry about it being too slow, It's by no means fast by today's standards but it'll be a fair bit faster than your current under the right circumstances - that is, stuff that can use both cores.

clicky

Should meet recommended specs for UT3, if that's your thing.

[buzzmong]

We'll I've got the upgraded version of your mobo Mik,

it runs a 4400 dual core AMD in it, and a x1950 XT.

Is quickish.

Run's Bioshock smoothly with pretty much everything on, Beef2 sits happily between the framerates of 60-90 (normally 80-90 though, but depends on map, what's being drawn, amount of action etc).

Wasn't too expenisve.

[MIkkyo]

We'll I've got the upgraded version of your mobo Mik,

it runs a 4400 dual core AMD in it, and a x1950 XT.

Is quickish.

Run's Bioshock smoothly with pretty much everything on, Beef2 sits happily between the framerates of 60-90 (normally 80-90 though, but depends on map, what's being drawn, amount of action etc).

Wasn't too expenisve.

Think I'll wait until the start of next year and upgrade then. For the moment just buy some more RAM, cheers for the advice chaps

[HereComesPete]

Tear out the innards of this rig, and place a new one in there. (Unless you want a new box too)

C2d is silly cheap, and the prices are slowly falling all the time, with the more efficient stuff appearing, the 65nm architecture, the 'go' stepping, the higher fsb's. If you can survive on one more Gb of ram until after xmas, you'll probablty be able to make a machine that shits on stuff for 300-400 quid.

In fact This ebuyer cart shows it all really. It is objective though, the ram that stoat got was cheaper, because overclockers had a dealio on that made some good stuff v cheap, but it is a rough guide to a very well priced and very good rig. I haven't put a gpu in there, but if you want gtx, then ebuyer have a stock of oem reference cards, these cards were made for nvidia by asus, and it's a cupcake card for very little amounts.

[FatherJack]

It's often a sound strategy to save up and go for new bits in big increments. You notice a huge and immediate performance gain and feel your money's been well spent, rather than buying single components whose performance gain a bit of tweaking could have equalled.

Unless the rumoured tri-core AMD cores take off in a big way, I can't see them making big inroads into the mid/budget-range gaming market, ditto for where ATi seem to be. The Intel+nVidia combo is certainly targeting the high-end, but there are enough lower cost options to make it affordable, particularly now a number of people (like myself) are thinking of dumping the duos and going quad.

I've owned either hyper-threaded or multicore boxes for years now, and it's gratifying that the game developers are starting to catch up - so I want to make the best use of it. It's not so very long ago that I had to disable processors in order to get some games to work.

[MrGreen]

If you can/will overclock, buy this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... subcat=793

Damn things can be shit hot at a decent clock speed, and you can be quite ham-handed in overclocking because they're not much moneh lost if you fry them.

If you want my other reccomendations (well, authoritative pokes in a reasonable direction) get:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... subcat=689
Note, it's completely OEM, so nothing comes with it apart from the board

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... =GX-051-OK
Same as Pete's suggestion from eBuyer

Note, if you don't overclock the CPU, it'll bottleneck the kuntcard.

[MIkkyo]

After Much talkign with the Berk on X-Fire I've decided to get a new system and the Mrs is taking my old one to Play the Sims 2 on.
All the Shiney New Parts Arrive on Wednesday (tomorrow) hopefully.
x1950 Pro is the highlight of the system.