New Gaming Computer

[tomster2300]

Hey,

I'm tossing around the idea of building a new pc from the ground up and have a question about hardware. I would have to purchase parts periodically over the next few months (pretty much when I have money to spare) so it would most likely be summer before I could have a completed pc. I want another gaming rig, and am willing to throw some money at it to ensure longetivity. My question basically is are the next couple of months a good time to build? Is anything looming on the horizon that will knock my socks off and make me regret my purchases? When is ATI's new cards coming out? Should I wait for Crossfire, or is SLI the future? Dual processors not performing?

I have read some articles and reviews but it's been a long time since I've really done my homework. I'm going to get on that in the next couple of days, but am hoping for some solid advice in the meantime.

Thanks as always,

Tom

[doctorgonzo]

There's always something looming. If you wait for the next big thing, you will never build. I would suggest saving your money until the summer and purchasing everything then if you want a new build.

[tomster2300]

Do you think salvaging the system I have now and upgrading it would be the better choice? The problem seems to be that I have so much to upgrade.

EDIT: My 6800 GT is AGP - would it be smart to just buy the highest end motherboard that supports AGP and 64 bit processors, pick up a new processor, and just squeeze all the juice I can from my video card? I'm pretty sure it's being bottlenecked by my computer. Would I get significant improvements in gaming?

[doctorgonzo]

Since AGP is a dead-end right now, I don't think that buying an AGP motherboard is a good idea. There are some dual AGP/PCI-E motherboards out there, but they are not made by quality manufacturers, so I wouldn't go that route either. You could salvage the memory and everything else if you wanted, though, but realistically, you are looking at a new motherboard, processor, and video card.

If you want to leave yourself the maximum upgrade potential, getting an SLI motherboard wouldn't be a bad idea.

[tomster2300]

I just bought that card a year ago and am wondering if I'm getting anywhere close to it's full potential with my current configuration. I know my processor hampers it, but to what degree? Would I just be looking at a slight performance increase or would it blow me away? I guess I made a poor choice in purchasing an AGP model of the card. Unfortunately at the time of purchase it was my only feasible choice - pci-e was somewhat of a niche back then and I didn't have the money to make the full upgrade.

How much would an AGP motherboard + processor cost me? My quick glance on newegg said around $400 or so for a nice asus AGP mobo and a processor in the ballpark of an AMD 3700+.

How long do you think a quick fix like this would last me? A year or so? I suppose that isn't worth it price wise is it.

[doctorgonzo]

Originally Posted by tomster2300 How much would an AGP motherboard + processor cost me? My quick glance on newegg said around $400 or so for a nice asus AGP mobo and a processor in the ballpark of an AMD 3700+.

You could probably get a good pair for less than that, maybe $300. I have an AMD 64 3200+ overclocked to 2.2 GHz, which is 3700+ performance levels. I think the 3200+ is a good value.

I'm not sure how much your current setup is hampering your video card, but the answer is probably not much. You probably aren't going to see a huge increase in video performance by just upgrading the processor and keeping the same video card.

[tomster2300]

Is there a performance increase between a pci-e 6800 GT and an AGP 6800 GT? Is pci-e faster? I always thought that a 6800 GT would be able to run something like BF2 maxed out with at consistent framerates (around 60) at 1280x1024, or even 1024x768 - mine has problems when dong this. I stay in the 30s and below for the most part, if not lower. Also AOE III has low framerate problems as well with everything on their highest settings at 1280x1024.

Do you think upgrading the hard drive would make a difference? I have an IDE 40 gig WD with 8 mb cache, would a new SATA make a big difference? Unfortunately my current mobo cannot support SATA.

Also, what is the deal with raptors, why are they so popular in gaming?

Thank you for your help Doctorgonzo and for putting up with my questions.

[doctorgonzo]

I don't think there would be much difference between the AGP and PCI-E versions of the same card, because I don't think the card is running up against the bus bandwidth limitations for either AGP or PCI-E. Ditto for PATA versus SATA. SATA wouldn't make any difference there; again, it's not bandwidth availability that is limiting the drive.

Raptors are popular because they are faster, for the simple reason that they spin at 10,000 RPM instead of the standard 7,200 RPM. Since the drive is physically spinning faster, you can get more data off of it in any given amount of time. Again, though, I don't think it would make a huge difference in gaminh, other than to make loading and changing levels (if applicable) a bit snappier. I'm sure they are popular among hard-core gamers because those people want the best products for all their components, and the Raptors are fastest right now.

[tomster2300]

I guess I'm not going to gain much by just buying a nicer processor and board without upgrading the video card - and that means making the jump to PCI-e. (I enjoy beating a dead horse). I don't get it though. I used to look at the benchmarks on places like Tomshardware.com for the 6800 GT and found that I never got their kind of performance. Switching to a 64 bit processor from my 1.8 Ghz AMD 2500+ won't make a difference in gaming?

[doctorgonzo]

Upgrading the processor may make a difference, but probably not a huge one. A 2500+ processor is not terribly obsolete, and you have 1 GB of memory, which is more than enough. Remember, the most important part of video performance is the video card itself; the whole point of a video card is to take away the impact that the CPU has on rendering video. A faster processor might make a difference, but probably not a gigantic one.

I think I would save up the money and then buy a new motherboard, processor, and PCI-E video card all at once.

[tomster2300]

How much fps increase do you think I'd see if I were to get a new mobo and a 7800 GTX? Would it be higher than 20 fps?

I found this online

http://images.tomshardware.com/2005/...pgrade-big.gif

and this

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/...05/page29.html

and finally this

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/...ii/page14.html

What do you think of these? They kind of confuse me a bit.

[doctorgonzo]

I have no idea how much of an increase you could see. I don't carefully follow all of the latest cards since I do not game a whole lot. I've never played any of the games you do, so I haven't had much experience with how hard they tax cards.

[blue60007]

If you ask me, save up your money until this summer and buy all the parts you want. I think there are some new ATi cards coming out soon, and who knows what else. You've got a pretty good rig right now. I don't see a good reason to upgrade the CPU or anything right...at least not anything worth the money. Sure you could upgrade the CPU (or whatever), but is it going to be worth the money?

[tomster2300]

Originally Posted by blue60007 Sure you could upgrade the CPU (or whatever), but is it going to be worth the money?

That's what I'm trying to figure out. I was hoping that something was bottlenecking my video card and thought that upgrading the processor would allow me to make full use of it. According to that graph I could get 20+ more fps by upgrading the processor and mobo, but you're right. Is that worth $300 or more when I would just have to replace everything again when I wanted to upgrade once more in the future? I don't know. It might be awhile before I upgrade my pc again. I don't seem to make many changes like hardcore gamers do. I just alter things every couple of years, so perhaps the processor upgrade would be enough for me for awhile. I'm afraid that games will soon bypass the 6800 line's capabilities pretty quickly at the rate video cards are coming out now, so I don't know what to do.

Question: I noticed that there was a regular PCI-e mobo, then they went to the x16 one. Will they continue updating that and force you to buy a new mobo, or do you think there will be only two versions, like AGP had with its 2x, 4x then 4x, 8x?

EDIT: Question 2: If I did get a SLI board, would my ram work for it? Does SLI need specifically certified ram? I have a gig of Corsair ValueSelect DDR400.

[tomster2300]

bumping to the top.

[blue60007]

Keep in mind that the x16 slots have no where near been maxed out. I imagine it'll be a while before they start (if) adding more lanes.

RAM doesn't really matter to SLI, just as long as it's compatible with the board (check Corsair's configurator).

Personally, I'd wait till another card(s) comes out and then hopefully the prices on the existing ones will drop. Then you can go for the 7800 series or the X1800 series and do the whole system upgrade.

[tomster2300]

Thank you blue60007 for helping me with my questions. I have another one about ram in general. What is cas latency? I believe mine is 3 - I don't know the others (I know there is either three or four numbers). I doubt that 3 is very good, is it.

[jayb1234]

As far as new technology, Intel's 975 motherboards and Pentium D 900 processors should be out in the next few weeks. The board has 3 pci express x 16 slots.

Suggested order of purchase: Get the hard drives, optical drives, Windows, floppy drive, keyboard, mouse, and monitor first.

Then the motherboard, processor, case and power supply. Watch out for whether the case front panel wiring matches up with the motherboard.

[tomster2300]

bumping to the top. Still curious as to what cas latency is.

[blue60007]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cas_latency
http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=67892

[nicolaus corelius]

in my personal opinion, the CPU's impotence in computing performance is blown out of proportion by some people. the jump from an athlon xp to a 3200+ is gonna be felt big time. this is coming from a person who actually experinced it.

[blue60007]

That reminds me, look at THW's interactive CPU chart and see for yourself what kind of increase you'll get. The testbed uses a 6800GT, so you should be able to get a pretty good idea.

[tomster2300]

That GPU chart is wonderful. According to it, I would get an approximate gain of about 70 fps in Farcry and a 39 fps increase in Doom III by switching from my 2500+ to a 3700+.

That is astronomical.

Are they utilizing dual channeling when they perform benchmarks? My current board does not support dual channeling, but I am using 2 x 512 mb. Would that furthur enhance performance by getting a board that utilizes it?

[blue60007]

Originally Posted by tomster2300 That is astronomical.

For those games, it's not astronomical. You wouldn't see the difference between 60 and 100 fps.

Although, you might see a smaller increase if the frame rates are half that though.

[tomster2300]

Well it would increase my average fps wouldn't it? It would keep my fps higher more frequently. Unfortunately Battlefield 2 isn't in that list.

[blue60007]

Yeah, I imagine your average FPS would go up, especially on more CPU intensive games.

There is a newer CPU chart, but it's not that good because they cut a lot of older CPUs (such as yours) and cut some of the benchmarks.

[tomster2300]

I've thought about it, and I'm going to go with purchasing an AGP capable board and a nice processor. The price difference is just too enormous for me. To upgrade to pci-e would be approximately $888 (A8X-SLI, AMD 3700+, eVGA 7800 GTX) compared to $300 or less for substantial gains.

One thing I noticed is that the higher end cards (7800 GTX) are made to perform extremely well at resolutions above 1280x1024. After getting my new 19" LCD for Christmas, I won't be needing anything that is geared for higher resolutions. While that's not all they're for (they do extremely well at all resolutions) I'm still satisfied with my 6800 GT. With that said, what is the going price for them on ebay?

What motherboard do you suggest (AGP capable), and should I stick with AMD or switch to Intel? Do Intels run cooler, and are they more expensive? - I thought they were. I would do the price comparisons myself, but I can't figure out which cpus (AMD & Intel) are equivalent. I would like something that isn't as hot.

EDIT: They're selling for around $250 on ebay. I paid $400 for mine, and even with $200 or so knocked off the $888 I would still be dishing out $600. That's more than I'd like to spend right now.

[FireByyrd]

I have heard that the P4 processors, certain of them get heated real quickly and get real hot, but I also know from experience that AMD processors also run relatively hot, BUT seriously, I really doubt heating will have a issue with either processors unless your going to overclock.

Go with AMD if your value out of performance, or unless you do alot of video editing and spawn alot of different applications at once then P4 is a must. But about the heating issue, I really doubt that it matters if you have adequate cooling (stock cooler is good enough), unless agin you overclock which I won't reccomend cause Its really not that much of an improvemennt.

[FireByyrd]

Also with the prices of AMD vs Intel, YOu can get a 3.4 ghz pentium for what 325? and for that price you can get a AMD 4000+.

From experience AMD 4000+ (my new computer's) runs pretty much the same as my old 3.4 ghz. I have an even older computer a 2.60, and I can't really tell the difference between performance. As I said before, if you want to do alot of applications at once then go with the 3.4 because it utilizes the Hyper Threading, but if your playing or using one application or 3, then just use AMD, AMD is more of a RAW performance. And to anwser your question, AMD IS CHEAPER than INTEL.

See one of the advantages of an AMD is because the FSB (Front side bus), is much higher over the INTELs (800mhz). THE AMD FSB: 1000mhz, 2000mhz.

[tomster2300]

Alright, thank you FireByyrd. I say heating because my tower currently rolls in and out of a computer cabinet in my desk. It generates a lot of heat which I can feel while sitting beside it. I only have one case fan, which could also be part of the problem. Perhaps the 2500+ just runs hot. Hopefully the newer technology runs cooler.

What do you guys think of the AMD 3700+? Is it a good deal, or can you get the same performance for less money?