Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Fineus on December 23, 2005, 05:46:36 am
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Hello all...
I've been out of the computer building/upgrading scene for a while now since the advent of PCI-Express for graphics cards.
However the time to upgrade has come again - and unsuprisingly money is a factor. Unfortunately from what I gather it's going to be an expensive process this time around. Hence me asking here...
I want to upgrade to an AMD 939 socket, PCI-Express graphics and motherboard. I already have RAM and a sound card (and I presume nothing else has really changed). As this is just a "step up" I'm not too bothered about a massive performance increase. This is merely to get me onto the current level of tect. Right now I have an AGP 8x motherboard and therefore can't upgrade my graphics or processor to anything worthwhile in future without upgrading the motherboard as well.
Of course, I'm looking to do this as cheaply as possible. The end result must be a machine that can be further upgraded in the future but be no less powerful now than my existing 2.4GHz machine with Radeon 9800 Pro.
Cheers!
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What will you do with your old machine? Send it my way maybe? :p
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Hah!
No, my father needs to upgrade his Pentium 2 350MHz. Yes, you heard me right. It really is that crap.
He'll be getting this machine :)
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Dang, well I had to try.
A P2 350 MHZ? That's better than some of the machines at my old high school.
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The end result must be a machine that can be further upgraded in the future but be no less powerful now than my existing 2.4GHz machine with Radeon 9800 Pro.
Is that Intel or AMD CPU? Personally, I would simply upgrade the CPU (unless it is AMD Athlon 64) and buy either Radeon 850 Pro or Radeon 800XL. And if you have less than 1GB RAM, get more.
I was pretty much in the same situation as you are now. My rig was AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB RAM and Radeon 9800XT. I only bought Radeon 850 Pro and I got very nice performance improvement over 9800XT.
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How do you people afford this at Christmas? :wtf:
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I don't... but I need to start thinking about it this year.
Mr Fury.. I'm on an Intel system at the moment but am not especially bothered between Intel and AMD (although Intel seems a lot quieter/more stable than the AMD chip I had before it).
Is it worth upgrading to another AGP card... rather than the obvious step up to what seems to be the next generation of graphics/motherboard interfaces? I'd rather be on that rung at the low end and work my way up than be stuck at the top of the last gen cycle...
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How do you people afford this at Christmas? :wtf:
Maybe he doesn't have a girlfriend. That is a wonderful way to save cash. Personally, that is my method. I don't drink either which helps personally. :p
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you want a socket 939 and PCI-express capable board?
Get the ASUS A8N32-SLI. it's an awesome board. i built my computer two weeks ago, and haven't had any problems since ;) :p
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Coincidentally, I finally recieved the last item for my new machine last night, a DFI SLI-DR motherboard. I'm running stability tests now. No issues yet, although I am expecting certain problems to arise with that board. Hopefully everything will be good to go by tomorrow night.
Is it worth upgrading to another AGP card... rather than the obvious step up to what seems to be the next generation of graphics/motherboard interfaces? I'd rather be on that rung at the low end and work my way up than be stuck at the top of the last gen cycle...
I would advise against it at this point. Unfortunately, last year's high end AGP cards have been phased out and aren't dropping in price anymore, just becoming hard to find. There are much better deals for video cards on PCIE at the moment and you can get a good PCIE board for under $100 now. Unless you are interested in buying my AGP 6800GT. :D
Maybe he doesn't have a girlfriend. That is a wonderful way to save cash. Personally, that is my method. I don't drink either which helps personally. :p
:D :yes:
Get the ASUS A8N32-SLI. it's an awesome board. i built my computer two weeks ago, and haven't had any problems since
It's ridiculously hard to find that board at a reasonable price. Newegg got 30 in stock on Wednesday evening (after two weeks of OOS) and was sold out in less than a hour, at $35 over MSRP. :p It's going for over $300 on ebay regularly.
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redmenace: I don't drink as much as I used to, that helps. As for having a girlfriend.. it needn't necessarily be that expensive ;)
Stealth: Cheers, I'll look into it. 2 weeks sure makes it reliable! hehe... though from the sound of what CP5670 is saying it's quite expensive!
Although I'm trying to do this on a budget.. I'm also trying to get something stable for the future. I guess that means the motherboard should be the expensive item and I should get a cheap PCI-E graphics card of comperable power to the Radeon 9800 Pro (maybe slightly better... heh, if the price is right).
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not sure exactly what CP5670's trying to say... i bought mine from Monarch Computers about 3 weeks ago, and got it in under a week. Monarch has them for $247 (what I paid for it).
It's a great board... nothing but good reviews all around, practically designed for overclocking.
also remember if the board's selling out almost immediately, nad is hard to find, that tells you something about the quality of it ;)
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also, i was kidding when i said i've had it for two weeks :p ;) still, it seems pretty good.
but yeah, i didn't expect to give the impression it's an extremely reliable board ;) i don't know that by experience :p
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not sure exactly what CP5670's trying to say... i bought mine from Monarch Computers about 3 weeks ago, and got it in under a week. Monarch has them for $247 (what I paid for it).
It's a great board... nothing but good reviews all around, practically designed for overclocking.
You must have gotten lucky. It's OOS just about everywhere now. It's a nice board but I definitely wouldn't pay $250 for it. The dual x16 doesn't do much for current cards and there are some limitations; the expansion slot layout is not the best if you want to actually use the SLI functionality and there are considerably better overclocking boards available for less money. I think it's main attraction is the passive cooling, which I would take any day over the little 40mm fans on most boards.
Although I'm trying to do this on a budget.. I'm also trying to get something stable for the future. I guess that means the motherboard should be the expensive item and I should get a cheap PCI-E graphics card of comperable power to the Radeon 9800 Pro (maybe slightly better... heh, if the price is right).
Actually you should go the other way. Get a cheap motherboard and CPU and go heavy on the video card to get the best performance for your money. There are some cheaper boards like the Asus A8R-MVP that perform and overclock nearly as well as the more expensive ones. AMD is also switching to a new socket and DDR2 memory in a couple of months, so you can't really be future proof with motherboards at the moment.
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Unless you are interested in buying my AGP 6800GT. :D
How much are you asking for it, and what subvariety is it?
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Hello all...
I've been out of the computer building/upgrading scene for a while now since the advent of PCI-Express for graphics cards.
However the time to upgrade has come again - and unsuprisingly money is a factor. Unfortunately from what I gather it's going to be an expensive process this time around. Hence me asking here...
I want to upgrade to an AMD 939 socket, PCI-Express graphics and motherboard. I already have RAM and a sound card (and I presume nothing else has really changed). As this is just a "step up" I'm not too bothered about a massive performance increase. This is merely to get me onto the current level of tect. Right now I have an AGP 8x motherboard and therefore can't upgrade my graphics or processor to anything worthwhile in future without upgrading the motherboard as well.
Of course, I'm looking to do this as cheaply as possible. The end result must be a machine that can be further upgraded in the future but be no less powerful now than my existing 2.4GHz machine with Radeon 9800 Pro.
Cheers!
I'm in the market myself and while I'm doing the research now I don't plan to buy till late Summer 2006. Here's my suggestions.
1) AMD all the way - the current prices of Intel chips are far too high for the performance numbers they are turning out. Extreme Edition P4's which cost over $1000 are in a number of gaming related tests scoring less than the slightly above average AMD64 X2 around the $600 mark. I've seen nothing from Intel in the last 3 years that was really worth jumping onto. Now that has the possibility of change as Intel is planning to bring out a new P4 core in the new year with things like the 64bit and dual core stuff designed in from the start (supposedly anyways - we'll see!) instead of tacked on like right now.
2) Video Card - a tough call...I like the ATI lineup but I'm less and less enthused about their drivers. I personally do not like Catalyst Control Center and much prefer the old ATI Control Panel. As the actual hardware is hit and miss back and forth between nVidia and ATI it seems to me that the deciding factor is price and drivers. At the moment, Foreceware seems to be less glitzy and just as capable as CCC and that seems to be the deciding factor to me. Price is also hit and miss...but the GeForce 7800 lineup IS REALLY well priced for its performance VS the X1800 series. While the GTX is rediculously priced the GT is an excellent card. If you can wait till the new year...they are slated to fill out the 7000 series cards and they seem to do better than the 6000 series for power consumption and heat as well.
3) RAM - Get at least 1GB...the difference between the expensive paired stuff from Corsair and the generic cheap stuff isn't all that different and I haven't seen much to change my mind on that. But if you are doing any sort of major system tweaking the more expensive RAM with the head spreaders and all that can make a difference in stability.
4) Soundcard - I'm still researching...X-Fi may or may not be the best choice if you're looking for gaming sound. Otherwise, even the onboard solutions are good enough for the basics.
5) Motherboards - While the new ATI chipsets for AMD look interesting they aren't mature yet. The nForce 4 seems to be just as good as the nForce 2 was when I bought my current system 3 years ago.
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I understand an X800GTO is probably the best "mainstream" card at the moment, or the new Geforce 6800GS.
I've got a mag. ATi group test, here's the results:
2.4ghz Athlon 64 4000+, Asus A8N-SLi Delux 1GB RAM (I assume DDR)
X1300Pro 256Mb(£76): HL2 34 fps (@ 1280x1024 4xAA 8xAF)
Far Cry 25fps
Fear & CoD2 < 10 fps
X1600XT 256Mb(£120)
HL2 32fps
FarCry 55fps
Fear 23fps
CoD2 15fps
X1800XT 512Mb (£400 :shaking:)
HL2 91fps
FarCry 57fps
Fear 48fps
CoD2 37fps
\
Most interestingly they reckon the only benefit of the X1600XT or a X800GTO is Shader Model 3 support. but I duno what that is.
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You must have gotten lucky. It's OOS just about everywhere now. It's a nice board but I definitely wouldn't pay $250 for it. The dual x16 doesn't do much for current cards and there are some limitations; the expansion slot layout is not the best if you want to actually use the SLI functionality and there are considerably better overclocking boards available for less money. I think it's main attraction is the passive cooling, which I would take any day over the little 40mm fans on most boards.
i think it's a great layout for SLI. you can easily fit a card between the two PCI-Express slots (probably a sound card, because the onboard sound is a joke), but you've got dual gigabit ethernet, and everything else the average user would want. passive cooling is awesome, and the board comes with a little fan just in case you go with a passive processor cooler, or water-cooling.
read reviews on it though... this board's designed for performance. it's so easy to overclock, it almost looks like the BIOS is designed for it :p
Overall, with a good 10-12 computers i've built, this may not be the cheapest board i've ever bought, in fact it's probably one of the most expensive... only server boards i've paid more for, but go and read some reviews. but the motherboard is the backbone of your computer... it defines how far you can upgrade it, how far you can push it, and pretty much everything else... and i'd always pay for a GOOD (<-- read) motherboard and power supply than anything else.
plus it's got everything he's looking for, including dual x16 PCI express slots and socket 939 ;) arguably one of the best boards you can buy, price aside :p
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How much are you asking for it, and what subvariety is it?
It's a BFG card, the blue one with the copper heatsink and a small stock overclock. They go for about $270 used on ebay, but I can sell it cheaper here to people I know. Although I'm actually not sure if I want to sell it or not, since my brother wants me to make him a extra computer for him with this and all the other stuff I pulled out of my old setup. :p
i think it's a great layout for SLI. you can easily fit a card between the two PCI-Express slots (probably a sound card, because the onboard sound is a joke), but you've got dual gigabit ethernet, and everything else the average user would want. passive cooling is awesome, and the board comes with a little fan just in case you go with a passive processor cooler, or water-cooling.
read reviews on it though... this board's designed for performance. it's so easy to overclock, it almost looks like the BIOS is designed for it
Overall, with a good 10-12 computers i've built, this may not be the cheapest board i've ever bought, in fact it's probably one of the most expensive... only server boards i've paid more for, but go and read some reviews. but the motherboard is the backbone of your computer... it defines how far you can upgrade it, how far you can push it, and pretty much everything else... and i'd always pay for a GOOD (<-- read) motherboard and power supply than anything else.
plus it's got everything he's looking for, including dual x16 PCI express slots and socket 939 arguably one of the best boards you can buy, price aside
I think it's a good board, but you can get most of what it offers on much cheaper boards. Some people are saying that the x-fi cards don't quite fit in the lower slot between the video cards; you apparently need to bend some capacitors slightly so they don't brush against the bottom card. The board I got actually doesn't have a great slot layout either, but it was $170 and has unparalleled overclocking capabilities. The DFI Expert and the as yet unreleased MSI Diamond Plus have much better slot layouts and I was thinking of getting that Expert instead of the older SLI-DR, but I was turned off by its socket/memory layout and the reports of it killing CPUs due to overvoltage bugs. :p
I guess I have a little bit of bias against Asus though; my last three boards were all Asus and the two more recent ones both gave me a fair bit of trouble. This DFI one has been working perfectly so far in my stress testing, even on memory that is supposed to be incompatible with it. :D
I understand an X800GTO is probably the best "mainstream" card at the moment, or the new Geforce 6800GS.
Yeah, these are both nice cards. The GTOs are especially great deals, since there are certain varieties that are fully functional X850XTs in disguise.
5) Motherboards - While the new ATI chipsets for AMD look interesting they aren't mature yet. The nForce 4 seems to be just as good as the nForce 2 was when I bought my current system 3 years ago.
I think the Crossfire boards are worth considering even at this point. nforce4 actually still has its fair share of issues and that A8R-MVP looks like a great board for its low price. I might have gotten that myself if I didn't need SLI support.
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I don't know why people are even considering SLI. It is quite overrated, and in most cases, impractical. Going for a dual 7800GTX setup would be a waste of money and load. If you want to get a good video card that will last for a while, I would recommend the X800 GTO. I'm not talking about the R480 chipped ones, those are a hit or miss and you're paying extra for a gamble.
As for the SKT939 boards, since SLI is impractical, and SLI board is impractical. I would go for an ASUS A8N5X. Unless you're running 8 hard drives, quad inerleaving, or using the system as a 1Gbit router, it's really all you need, and it's at a very decent price.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131569
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From what I have seen of it so far, SLI with 7800GTs is the thing to get if you have about $1500 to spend on your computer alone and an appropriate monitor to back it up. It's the only high end hardware solution worth spending money on. I briefly tried out Far Cry and framerates at 2048x1536 4xAA/16xAF went from an unplayable 37 average on one card to a relatively smooth 71 with both of them. This is exactly the sort of performance I was looking for. Some form of 16xAA should now be a viable option in FSO.
That being said, I don't think Kalfireth is considering this, and if you're not getting both cards immediately an SLI motherboard is not worth the extra cost, as it's not much of an upgrade option.
A stock X800GTO will not hold up much longer unless you are only looking to play older games, if my 6800GT's performance was any indication. It's only worth considering if you heavily overclock it or get one that can be turned into a X850XT. There is one Powercolor GTO with all 16 pipes enabled out of the box for the same price as the other GTOs, which seems to be a good choice right now.
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dood, Scuddie. SLI's the future ;) Maybe it's not really worth doing at this stage due to the cost, but you watch... in the future there'll be a lot more SLI ;)
dual 7800 GTs, or *gasp* dual 7800 GTX. :D :D :D
also: CP, yeah the XFI cards have trouble fitting because they have those oversized capacitors on the CARD. actually i believe it's just one that gives trouble. and yeah, i've heard just bending it a bit would work. so yeah if you plan on running two video cards and an XFI, prepare to have to bend a capacitor or two :)
you've had trouble with Asus? I've used *thinks* probably about 6 or maybe even 7 ASUS boards, and never had a problem. the rest have been a bit of everything. I used an Epox last, and an Abit before that. :)
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Did you get your second card? Nice. :yes: I'm getting GTX performance with my COs for $300 less though, which is good enough for me. :D
There is currently one SLI setup that is a very good overall buy, two 7800GTs, preferably EVGA CO cards. The others are only worth considering from a pure performance standpoint, regardless of bang for the buck, unless you get in on a good ebay deal. Two X1800XTs may also be worth a look as a super high end setup in the near future, if the master card prices come down to $500 and Crossfire gets its bugs worked out.
you've had trouble with Asus? I've used *thinks* probably about 6 or maybe even 7 ASUS boards, and never had a problem. the rest have been a bit of everything. I used an Epox last, and an Abit before that.
I used an A8V deluxe and an A7N8X and they both had cold boot crashing problems and caused slight interference on any sound card I used. I had to spend almost a week tweaking the A8V to get it stable enough for normal windows usage at stock speed, while the A7N8X's CPU fan controller was messed up and the onboard LAN broke down after two weeks. So I decided I would rather try some other brand this time around. :p Incidentally, the board I had before either of those (and is still in service in my retro gaming computer), an Asus A7M266, has had none of these issues.
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A stock X800GTO will not hold up much longer unless you are only looking to play older games, if my 6800GT's performance was any indication. It's only worth considering if you heavily overclock it or get one that can be turned into a X850XT. There is one Powercolor GTO with all 16 pipes enabled out of the box for the same price as the other GTOs, which seems to be a good choice right now.
X800GTO will do him just fine. Hell, I'm on a GeForce4 Ti 4200 and I can play most games without problem, and the rest of them with minor delays. The way I do it is by disabling AA and AF at the device level. Yes I would complain about only getting 4fps if I was running San Andreas with 8x AA, 8x AF, 1600x1200 resolution, and the 10x draw distance mod, but for ****s sake, why would I? I think if he's not aiming for the absolute best picture quality, the X800 GTO will suit him well :).
As for the PowercolorGTO, that's the R480 chipped one I was talking about. That one only has 40% of the units shipped out as R480 chipped that you can break the firmware to unlock the four pipes. The rest are R423(?) chipped, which don't have the four pipes to be unlocked. Also, many of the R480s were of a reject batch that could not sustain the clockspeed or stability while running 16 pipes. However, because you might find an R480 in the box, people are willing to spend the higher price tag. This is what I mean by a gamble.
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Try a newer game like COD2. That performed pretty unacceptably on my previous 6800GT at 1024x768 with no AA or AF. I could play at 640x480, but then it looks like crap. SLI is not necessarily needed but a stock GTO isn't going to cut it much longer, especially if you have an LCD and need to play at the native resolution.
As for the PowercolorGTO, that's the R480 chipped one I was talking about. That one only has 40% of the units shipped out as R480 chipped that you can break the firmware to unlock the four pipes. The rest are R423(?) chipped, which don't have the four pipes to be unlocked. Also, many of the R480s were of a reject batch that could not sustain the clockspeed or stability while running 16 pipes. However, because you might find an R480 in the box, people are willing to spend the higher price tag. This is what I mean by a gamble.
No, there are actually two different Powercolor GTO models, one of which is advertised as having 16 pipes at stock settings. And there is also the Sapphire GTO2, which seems to be a guaranteed X850XT through an unlock/overclock. That card has been out for some time now and there is still not a single known case of it not unlocking and going to at least the X850XT core and memory speeds.
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I used an A8V deluxe and an A7N8X and they both had cold boot crashing problems and caused slight interference on any sound card I used. I had to spend almost a week tweaking the A8V to get it stable enough for normal windows usage at stock speed, while the A7N8X's CPU fan controller was messed up and the onboard LAN broke down after two weeks. So I decided I would rather try some other brand this time around. :p Incidentally, the board I had before either of those (and is still in service in my retro gaming computer), an Asus A7M266, has had none of these issues.
that's funny. i've used all three models you mentioned :)