[magatsu1]

Mr Financial Strife:
"Wahaaaa! Mr magatsu, I see you have a little spare cash for a change! I'll take that! Haahahhhahhaaa! Watch as I unleash my evil "computer obsolete" materia on your pc!"

That's right. My 1ghz (Athlon), 256mgb and TNT2 won't cut it anymore. Unreal 2 gave the poor sod a good kickin', and now Homeworld 2 has come along and kicked it in the teeth while it was down.

So I'm thinkin' of upgrading with:
Processor in the region of 2ghz
GeForce chipset (G4 or maybe even FX for DX9 support)
and a shed load more memory.

Place thoughts/observations here.

[diamondgeezer]

Get an Athlon XP 1880 Thoroughbred or more and and a fat heatsink and overclock that mofo. I went from 1.53 to 2GHz.

And yes, I keep posting this fact, but it's a good story and I like telling it

Oh, and don't touch the GF FX cards with a pole. Way too expensive, unless you're desperate for DX9 suport, in which case get an ATI

[magatsu1]

"Get an Athlon XP 1880 Thoroughbred or more and and a fat heatsink and overclock that mofo. I went from 1.53 to 2GHz."

wouldn't that invalidate my warranty ? (natch!)
I'm thinking sticking with nVidia would mean an easier job upgrading ?

(heheh, "mofo". I like it)

[Drew]

Originally posted by diamondgeezer
Way too expensive, unless you're desperate for DX9 suport, in which case get an ATI

on the contrary, i just found FX's cheaper than most ATI cards....

hes right tho, ATI's are better in general tho they are expensive...

on the memory issue, what OS are you using? If your using XP its a good idea to load as much memory onto that sucker as you can (i learned the hard way i only have 256 on my XP machine)
if not you can probabl settle for less imo

[Odyssey]

Get a bank of Pentium 90's... Then play so many 2D games that it has the illusion of action-packed-3D-ness.
Alternatively, play some less demanding games. I can recommend many of the best games ever that'll run on a 386 (NOT 386Mhz... You know, the classification).
(I have serious issues with having to do everything fast ^_^)

[Unknown Target]

Originally posted by magatsu1
"Get an Athlon XP 1880 Thoroughbred or more and and a fat heatsink and overclock that mofo. I went from 1.53 to 2GHz."

wouldn't that invalidate my warranty ? (natch!)
I'm thinking sticking with nVidia would mean an easier job upgrading ?

(heheh, "mofo". I like it)

Mag, there's a "Quote" button at the bottom right of everyone's posts

[Grey Wolf]

GF FXs.... No real reason to get one. The only ones that are any good are the FX 5900 and the new FX 5700 and 5950.

If you want to future-proof your computer, get either a 2100+ or a 2500+ (or a 1700+/1800+ if you can ensure a good stepping), some PC3200 RAM, and a nice NF2U400 based board. Those are basically what I have. Only I wish I had the PC3200 RAM.....

[diamondgeezer]

3200 RAM's the next thing on the shopping list. As for the FX cards, they're just too damn expensive. The bottom of the range one, the 5200 - you could get a high-end GF4 Ti or Radeon for the price of it. ~So it really depends on the DX9 support, though like I said if your're that desperate get a Radeon.

Now me personally I've got my super-duper Ti4800 SE in there. It's loud as a freight train, but it's *****in' fast

[magatsu1]

Drew: I'm stuck with ME, though it hasn't been too bad.
UT: yeah, I know!
Odyssey: Maybe I'm just a graphics tart, but who here doesn't want Halo, Thief et' all ?
My PC "as is" sure as hell won't run 'em, and I'm tired of playing old games. ('part form the modded examples 'course)

[Admiral LSD]

Get a 2.4Ghz (or even the 2.6Ghz part) "C" Class Pentium 4 with the 800Mhz FSB and then wind the FSB up to about 250-255Mhz (giving you a Quad-Pumped FSB of 1Ghz and an overall clock speed of 3-3.2Ghz). They're designed for it (you shouldn't need to adjust the vcore or use anything but stock cooling) and it'll be faster than anything AMD has in the same price range. AMD really lost the plot when it released the Barton's, let's hope the find it with the Athlon 64 (although their new policy of phasing out the faster chips in favour of simply cutting the price seems to indicate otherwise) as someone has to keep Intel honest. Oh, and be sure to get a decent i875 motherboard and matched dual-channel RAM sticks.

[pyro-manic]

I'm having the same problem. My mobo kicked it in april, and I've had no money until now, so I was thinking of a Barton 2800, and an Asus A7N8X v.2 Deluxe to replace my Athlon 1200 and Gigabyte GA7-DX (the graphics - a GF2Ti - will have to wait at least a month until I get paid again ), but that P4 idea has got me thinking...

Admiral: are the P4s good for overclocking and stuff? I haven't done it before, but that sounds pretty good to me. Will I have to get new memory, or will my old PC2100s do? I got 2 256Mb sticks, and I can't afford new ones at the moment (like I said, I gotta wait till I get paid again).

[HotSnoJ]

What ever you do get a mobo that had dual-channel DDR.

AMD is better for gaming IMHO since it can handle complex things that 3D game need. Intel gets the "speeds" it gets because it just forces stuff through many, many times (including FSB). So AMD is a better choice.

IMHO anyway.

I don't know much about graphics cards but I found this awhile ago and am thinking of getting one myself http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=587444&Sku=C261-6043.

[Admiral LSD]

The "C" class are perfect for overclocking. They're really just 3Ghz chips sold at lower clock speeds and so will ramp up to 3Ghz without any trouble whatsoever. Just set the FSB to about 250Mhz and you're away, no need for vcore adjustments, extra cooling, nothing. There really hasn't been an easier chip to overclock since the Celeron 300A.

As for RAM, your existing sticks may work but then again they may not. Dual channel RAM works best if the sticks are matched performance-wise. Some chipsets, nForce2 in particular, are extremely picky about this but I wouldn't know how the Intel chipsets fare in this regard.

[aldo_14]

I just bought an FX5600 to go with new compy stuff, and I've no complaints - my 3dmark scores went from 1300 to 8500 since I rebuilt me Pc innards.  Of course, i did previously have possibly the worst card on the market.....

[magatsu1]

I'd be inclined to put more money into a decent graphics card than the processor. A decent card would make a high end processor somewhat un-necessary. IMO.

[aldo_14]

Depends a lot on what you;re doing with it..... I mean, stuff like physics and AI is probably going make processors become a lot more important than they may have been regarded as before.

Although, I did sacrifice getting a really good processor (got a mid-range-ish Athlon 2400) ot spend a few bob more on the gfx card... but I figure I ended up with a fairly balanced system.

[IceFire]

You've got to balance your processor, memory, and video card requirements.  The latest games use that high end processor to do the physics calculations while the video card does the visual rendering.  The split is almost total these days...games with high physics loads on a slow processor and a fast video card are still slow.

So you'd be best to sort of get something inbetween for both.

Right now I'm recommending the FX cards less and less.  The recent DX9 tests show their current inadequacy.  There are issues that need to be resolved....DX9 needs to be updated for them to work better (the current DX9 does not support the architecture that nVidia is employing to get the maximum out of their cards) and nVidia needs to implement new drivers.  Nonetheless, the ATI cards are a good choice these days.

A Radeon 9700 Pro is still a top performer (I have one ) and its price is very low...if you can find one.  Same will be for the 9800 Pro because the 9800 XT just came out and its quite a bit faster too.

[Grey Wolf]

Actually, go for a 9800 Non-Pro (Note: Not the 9800SE). Same performance as a 9700 Pro, but cheaper.

Between a 2500+ and a 2.4C for overclocking: They both overclocka hell of a lot.

Will PC2100 RAM cut it? Only if you are using a AXP with a rating of 2400+ or below.

Does A64 compare with P4s? Quite well, with the A64 FXs (the renamed Opteron 148s) kicking the P4 3.2Cs ass.

[pyro-manic]

Yeah, but an  Athlon64 FX costs the wrong side of £600, plus £150+ for the mobo. VERY bad unless you're loaded....

[Grey Wolf]

True. If you were going to go for one of the new A64s, I'd suggest the 3200+. That would only put you out the same amount as an equivalent P4.