PC upgrades

Aither

Aither

/Wrists
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Well, its been two years since I have dont any -major- PC upgrades.


Current system now its
MSI Mobo - no PCI-E ; ; Main reason for upgrade

Processor - 3.0 HT p4 Got rid of Stock fan Running OC @ 3.4 stable

Ram - 4G - 4 1G sticks Kingston Hyper X

Video - ATI 9800 128 - Got rid of stock cooler and running it overclocked

Now my big beef is my FPS in games like CS Source and FEAR suck...

Espically FEAR.

FFXI runs fine, could be better zones where dust kicks up like Tharonghi (sp)
KILL my FPS and I get choppy when running around. Pisses me off hardcore.

Of course events like dynamis and things are laggy, I can deal with that. but these updates should reaaaally make my game time more enjoyable

New Mobo Im lookin at:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=18777&vpn=M2N-SLI DELUXE&manufacture=ASUS

New Processor:
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=18453&vpn=ADA5200CSBOX&manufacture=AMD

New Video:
http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2456679&Sku=B52-7858

Should crank my PC up a few notches for sure... The processor makes me kinda sad due to the price but the other AM2 versions only have 512 L1 and L2 cache's :(

Any critiques / additional info / other hardware is very much welcomed!
 
good choice on going to AMD- i really like their stuff alot better than Intel. ASUS motherboards are typically very good, so ... yeah.

im more of an ATI fan than NVIDIA, but, that appears to be a good card.
 
Im an ATI fan too Neo but, ATI kinda makes me sad now and all the reviews and compairs between the two NVIDIA seems to win, I figured its time for a brand switch anyways, never run an AMD system or a NVIDIA card...Give em a shot hell theres no way the card can be worse than mine atm lol.
 
Your total budget is about ~$1k after taxes? You'd be better off reducing your processor and upping your GPU. Get an X2 4400 or 4800, both are still dual 1mb L2 90nm so you won't take a hit in the cache at least. Spend the extra cash getting a... well I hate Nvidia so I don't know their model lines, but spend the extra cash getting the best GPU you can afford.

You will notice much better FPS in FEAR and Oblivion (if you play that, if you dont well... why the hell not?) if you go with a better gfx card. With the pieces above, your GPU will be a noticeable bottleneck once you start cranking on the AA and AF.
 
Shaunessy said:
AMD is the suck. That video card is pretty good though. Are you going to go with an SLi system then?
Click to expand...

Probably will upgrade to SLi on the next pay and get two of those 512's running together later on.

Im also going to get a 22 inch widescreen monitor too lol
 
If you do, look into water cooling. I have 2x 256 Evga 7800GTX's and those fuckers get hot. I would imagine with 512 they would put off slightly more heat than what you would want in the case.
 
Water cooling scares me, I got a good case when it comes to cooling, The stock fans on the GPU looks decent but theres always room for upgrades...How hot does it get?

Edited as a side note....these cards like PNP or what Shaun? Do I just hook two in and bam they work in tamdem or what? lol
 
Aither said:
Water cooling scares me, I got a good case when it comes to cooling, The stock fans on the GPU looks decent but theres always room for upgrades...How hot does it get?

Edited as a side note....these cards like PNP or what Shaun? Do I just hook two in and bam they work in tamdem or what? lol
Click to expand...
You get a special bridge that you connect the 2 cards with and from the looks of the MB that's about it for SLi. Mine has this chip that you need to turn around dependant on if you have 1 oe 2 GPUs, I don't see that on the MB you have in the link though.

Well let me put it this way. GPUs are probably going to be the hottest running component of your system, and with SLi you have 2 of them running an inch or so apart. They get pretty damn hot when you start putting high graphical demand games through them. Or you can butcher a case and put a 120mm fan right on top of them to use as an exaust. I'll tell you one thing though, if I ever lose heat this winter all I need to do is load up FEAR or BF2142 and my tower will heat the whole room.
 
Shaunessy said:
You get a special bridge that you connect the 2 cards with and from the looks of the MB that's about it for SLi. Mine has this chip that you need to turn around dependant on if you have 1 oe 2 GPUs, I don't see that on the MB you have in the link though.

Well let me put it this way. GPUs are probably going to be the hottest running component of your system, and with SLi you have 2 of them running an inch or so apart. They get pretty damn hot when you start putting high graphical demand games through them. Or you can butcher a case and put a 120mm fan right on top of them to use as an exaust. I'll tell you one thing though, if I ever lose heat this winter all I need to do is load up FEAR or BF2142 and my tower will heat the whole room.
Click to expand...


How is BF2142!?!? Im getting it for x-mas me thinks I loooove BF2

MY PC sounds like a fucking seaking when I turn it on, I have something like 12 fans all 80MM in it

2 in the front as intakes 2 at the back as exhaust one on the top as exhaust and one on the side as intake.

PC temp under load is like 35C (inside case) My room is pretty cold like 8-10C cause I hate heat.

Processor sits around like 50C under load 35-40 idle

Not sure what my GPU is at I ripped off the stock POS cooler and put on a hufe sleeve that uses a PCI slot port on the back of the PC and exhausts the head directly out.

I got let off early at work! THE INTERNET IS SAFE so...no posts for 15-20 mins lol
 
If you're not quite ready for water cooling, Arctic Silver's Accelero coolers are pretty awesome. Got one for my X1900XTX and the sound level at max load went from "airline runway" to "dead mouse buried 50 feet under a parking lot".

@load temps dropped a good 15º (C).
 
CmdrFly said:
If you're not quite ready for water cooling, Arctic Silver's Accelero coolers are pretty awesome. Got one for my X1900XTX and the sound level at max load went from "airline runway" to "dead mouse buried 50 feet under a parking lot".

@load temps dropped a good 15º (C).
Click to expand...

LOL @ the dead mouse

Yea im for sure going to take a look into after market coolin for my CPU and GPU
 
Shaunessy said:
If you do, look into water cooling. I have 2x 256 Evga 7800GTX's and those fuckers get hot. I would imagine with 512 they would put off slightly more heat than what you would want in the case.
Click to expand...

I got the same one lol
and they do get HOTzzzzz

Room Temp @ 65-70F = Idle Temp on those 2 card is 53-57C, Full Loads= 70Cish lol

if you on upgrade and don't wanna pay the quad core lol

Go AMD Althron x2 4800+ or 5000+ they are both fairly cheap and still as good as intel
Neverwinter Nighr 2 need 3.0GHZ as requirement, i have AMD X2 4800+ and is running just fine.

Try to get a MOBO with Vista Ready capaitiy sinice Vista will be releasing soon to the public.

8800GTX... no now.. too early, too expenive, wait 6 months and they will drop price to maybe <$300

Get 7900GTX or 7950

DDR still faster then DDR2
Lower Cas Latency = the Better and DDR2 gave 3-5 CL, while DDR range 1.5-3 CL, (thats what i heard), but newer MOBO only support DDR2800 it seem

You need Power supply around 650W-1kW depends how long you need to til next upgrade

2 8800GTX need at least 800W-1000W, 7900 or 7950 need only around 650W-1KW


If you have $$$$ to spend, go go www.alienware.com
 
you pay for the name with alienware, tho those cases are fucking hot, I wouldnt want to have someone make a PC for me anyways I want it all in boxes and get to do it myself!!

PC's are like lego to me half the fun is building em
 
Fuck PCI-E!

"Oh, you want a new mobo? You'll have to get a new CPU too... and a new video card.
 
Bustaballs said:
Fuck PCI-E!

"Oh, you want a new mobo? You'll have to get a new CPU too... and a new video card.
Click to expand...
It's called upgrading. You don't buy a new MB to put all your old hardware on it. So are you going to give us 20 links of why PC's are evil should be impeached now?
 
Vandoura said:
Go AMD Althron x2 4800+ or 5000+ they are both fairly cheap and still as good as intel
Click to expand...
Nothing will compete with quad-core. Even AMD's Quad-FX doesn't compare. I hate Intel with every sliver of meat in my heart, but I have to admit they are winning the war right now.

Granted, there is precious little today that will take advantage of four cores. But it's not far off, and any game developer worth their weight in pennies is designing their up-and-coming titles with SMP in mind. But as of right now, nothing in the home user market is "still as good as Intel".

Vandoura said:
Try to get a MOBO with Vista Ready capaitiy sinice Vista will be releasing soon to the public.
Click to expand...
The "Vista ready" certification isn't anything worth wasting your time looking for. If your drivers work with WinXP, there's a high probability they'll work with Vista even if it's still missing that little badge. Even if your hardware doesn't work, by the time Vista is released, your vendor will have the drivers out for it.

"Vista ready" only means it's been tested and confirmed to work on the new OS.

Vandoura said:
Lower Cas Latency = the Better and DDR2 gave 3-5 CL, while DDR range 1.5-3 CL, (thats what i heard), but newer MOBO only support DDR2800 it seem
Click to expand...
Memory timings are a bag of headaches to understand. Well, for me at least. But lower CAS does not always mean better performance. It will depend largely on your chipset; in my case (mobo: Asus A8R-32 SLI Deluxe), 3-3-3-8 was the optimal choice for timings as opposed to the 2-2-2-8 that seems to be the uber-sought setup. Well, was the uber-sought setup at the time of my upgrade. The difference was only a handful of points on the benchmarks though.
 
Shaunessy said:
It's called upgrading. You don't buy a new MB to put all your old hardware on it.
Click to expand...

No shit. But maybe I want to upgrade my processor and memory without upgrading my video card. They should have at least one AGP port in every other new mobo for the people who aren't trying to play Crysis on maximum graphical settings.
 
Well if you are still using AGP I doubt that processor and memory are your biggest problems. Time to just realize that you can't save a 5 year old PC from going to the graveyard, and just start from scratch.
 
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