I’m damn tired of the current crops of games I want to play (Oblivion, Titan Quest, an as yet unnameable MMO) running like a dog. But I’m on an old socket 478 board with AGP. I can’t afford to build a whole system from scratch. So I’m looking at the following:
I know the MB has a performance penalty on the PCI card of about 10%. But I figure even then it’s still a significant upgrade from my current:
P4 2.8 HT
GeForce 6600GT
And as more money becomes available I can upgrade the memory next (the Asrock will use my current DDR3200; I can go up to 2GB of DDR2-667 or DDR2-800 next, then a bit after that switch over to a new MB to get rid of the performance penalty).
The only other option I have to make things run better is a better AGP card, but that seems silly since it’s a dead end path. I can get a PCI-E 7600 GS for <$100, the MB is only $50, and a AP 7600GS is around $150. While I still have to pay for the processor, it looks to me like I’m not paying a premium at all for making the format switch now, in this way. (Other than shaving 10% off the performance of the PCI-E card while using this MB, but that’s at least reversible.)
I figure I’ll either upgrade piecemeal or be happy with this system until tax time, at which point I’ll finish the upgrade. In the meantime, I’m probably goin gto retrofit my current 2.8 Ghz system into a HTPC.
Any suggestions for a better way to go about doing the upgrade? (Or for whether or not I should look into other video cards for small price premiums that would have better longevity… while I’d like to go with the $325 X1900 XTX I’ve found, that just seems like it’s stupid overkill for a system that’s not realistically going to be running at > 1280x1024 in the next year.)
I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that while fast processors are very helpful, having a powerful video card almost always gives a bigger improvement. That’s why i decided to go for the x1900 xt (or whichever is close to that pricerange when i fill my order).
Consider the X1800 XT by Sapphire at Newegg. It’s 200$ and is much faster than the 7600 GT; probably it’s a better buy for the dollar.
Check out this page from Firingsquad to compare these cards’ performance in Oblivion. The 7600 GT isn’t listed in this article, but it will probably fall about halfway between the 6800 GT and the 7800 GT.
Yeah… but I have to upgrade the processor anyway. I’m pretty sure a Core 2 Duo 6300 is plenty fast for games for the foreseeable future (and there’s always overclocking). The issue is I can’t really upgrade video cards without paying an arm and a leg and throwing money into a dead platform. PCI-E seems to still have legs.
Consider the X1800 XT by Sapphire at Newegg. It’s 200$ and is much faster than the 7600 GT; probably it’s a better buy for the dollar.
After I posted I did some more reading. I’m down to these three I think:
$90ish for a 7600 GS (won’t do much for Oblivion but should be a solid upgrade over my current 6600GT for a lot of stuff; the idea here is to upgrade as cheap as possible now, and wait to upgrade for high power until later.)
$200 for a X1900GT (The X1800XT seems to benchmark a little better, except on high memory load/high resolutions/high shader count apps. I believe the latter will be where new games will go, what with HDR and bloom and multipass texturing and vertex shaders and the like.)
$330 for an X1900XTX (Currently the king of the crop amongst non SLI’d solutions [counting the 7950GX2 as an SLI solution]).
If it weren’t for oblivion I’d go cheap, but it seems like even at 1280 Oblivion can bring the GT down to barely fluid rates, which bodes ill for future games IMO. I’m tending to lean toward the XTX or the GS, either get something I expec to last two years that’s still reasonable price, or something I know will last only 6ish months but is damn cheap.
I think $200 for the X1900GT vs. $150ish for the 7600GT is pretty much a no-brainer at this point, since the X1900GT ties or beats the 7900 GT.
Don’t be so sure. A GS is typically slower than a GT, so a a 7600GS may essentially be a 6600GT.
I’d probably wait until tax time and do a real upgrade, rather than go with a half-assed one now. I think you’ll regret the money spent on this piecemeal motherboard.
I want to upgrade my box, but the closer I look at the market right now, the more I feel like technology is in a state of flux and its a bad time to be buying a new system.
I, of course, may be completely wrong. However, I feel things will be more fleshed out in 6 to 8 months. Hopefully vista will ship in the beginning of Q1 2007 and so buying something at the beginning of Q2 2007 might be a much better idea.
Also, unless you buy all bare bones parts, everyone seems to insist on shipping windowsxp for your system and you can’t opt out of it. So you get charged for that, and then a few months later a new OS comes out and you need to pay for it all over again.
Except that it’s always in a state of flux :). We know that DirectX 10 is inevitable; but we haven’t the slightest whiff of info regarding what these new DX10 cards will be like. If they are based off of new archetecture it’s certain they’ll command a premium at least till Q3 or Q4 of 2007.
We know Vista is coming one or another day, but whether it’s worth upgrading to it will probably be determined by DX10 from gamers’ points of view.
Core 2 seems to have a technological lead over AMD for the foreseeable future.
I guess, it’s a question of “Do Vista and DirectX 10 matter to me?”. If yes, then it would be better to wait.
An AGP 6800GS is under $200 and ~50%+ faster than a 6600GT. Honestly, I think that’s a better stopgap upgrade than a half-assed PCIe / Core 2 Duo setup: your video card is usually more important than your CPU when it comes to games. That or save up for a full-fledged upgrade, IMHO.
I’ll sell mine for 150$ :). It o/c’ed to Ultra speeds, 16/6 pipes. But it was crashing alot and it might be due to my powersupply not providing enough amps (17a vs. 18a needed). It also might be dying. Though, either way, you can get a new one from BFG with their lifetime warranty. I just bought an X800 XL as i’m becoming lazy about computers as i age…
Of course, imo, the X800 XL sucks compared to the 6800 GS, which is why i’m jonesing to upgrade ^^.
The CPU market is pretty stable right now, since AMD’s next generation is still a ways off and looks to be server-oriented anyways. I’d consider that the most important part since that usually dictates what motherboard and memory you’ll be using, and the video card is a lot easier and cheaper to replace.
I’d consider it a pretty good time to put a new system together, aside from a few Core 2 Duo motherboard quirks (make sure you get a mobo+memory combination that’s been verified to work). If you’re worried about DX10, get a cheap mid-range video card and replace it later on.
It seems to be in a more fluxier state now then usual. For example, it seems to me that current motherboards have been re-engineered to work with 64 bit CPUs opposed to one that was designed from the ground up as a 64 bit motherboard.
The current crop of MB also seem to be weak on the PCI-e front. The entire bus should be PCI-e, not just the video card slot. This also makes me think of the re-engineered (as in hacked) opposed to designed with PCI-e technology from the beginning.
Also, if I was not mis-informed, there is a transition between single silicon dual cores from double silicon dual cores.
Then there are the new super high-speed drives, and gigabit Ethernet, and all that. All very new and very expensive with little time and grade.
Finally, there is the Vista issue.
Maybe in 6 months it will still be a cluster-fuck, but ATM it most surly is. Maybe some of these things will have resolved themselves better.
Any thoughts? I noticed suddenly that most intel boards only offered 2 PATA spots and i needed 3 or 4, and suprisingly the ECS popped up. It’s super cheap, but i had good luck with my other ECS board back in the days of the Celeron 400mhz.
Motherboards don’t really care much, since they’ve had 64-bit data busses for ages now. Addressing might be slightly different as we cross the 4GB barrier, but it’s not really an earth-shattering change since the memory module interface is the same.
The current crop of MB also seem to be weak on the PCI-e front. The entire bus should be PCI-e, not just the video card slot. This also makes me think of the re-engineered (as in hacked) opposed to designed with PCI-e technology from the beginning.
Most motherboards I’ve seen do have multiple PCI-E slots, and not just for SLI setups. Vendors are still transitioning to PCI-E, so plain old PCI is going to be present for a while yet. If you’re waiting for an entirely PCI-E-only system with all the cards you might want available, you could be waiting a long time.
(And I’d have to verify this, but I think the PCI support is implemented through a bridge, so PCI-E is the native bus. Nothing really prevents a system from having multiple busses, either.)
Also, if I was not mis-informed, there is a transition between single silicon dual cores from double silicon dual cores.
Already in effect as of the latest generations or two of CPUs, as far as I know.
Then there are the new super high-speed drives, and gigabit Ethernet, and all that. All very new and very expensive with little time and grade.
Gigabit Ethernet isn’t really that new; my couple-year-old motherboard has it and it works just fine. Ditto for SATA; there are newer, faster SATA specs but it’s mostly marketing hype at this time since no drives are actually that fast. A plain old SATA I drive would do just fine.
So… 866.41$ if all those go through. 300$ for my current stuff… 566.41$. After 3 months.
I don’t know why it has two x16 slots honestly. Yea, i’ll still use the same case. It sucks but honestly after seeing the sweet Apple Mac Pro case even 100$+ aluminum cases look just like more chinese junk.
The XTX is only 25mhz faster clock and 100ish mhz faster memory. So… i don’t see the point. Not 40$s anyway.
I know gigabit Adapters are available, the point is, if you do not have them in a PCI-e slot, its kind of pointless. PCI-e 1x is not quite as fast as an AGP 8x slot, however, the AGP bus speed is rated in one direction only (reads or writes not done at the same time), where as PCI-e 1x slot gives you 2.5giga bits in both directions simultaneously. You can see how having a 1gigabit bi-directional device even on an 8x AGP slot would be problematic, yet on the most feeble PCI-e slot it would work fine.
So today, with PCI-e enabled MB, getting one with just one 16x slot is kind of bad if you want to do multiple high-band with things such as gigabit Ethernet, or a 2nd video card or anything else anyone cooks up that needs huge bandwidth.
As far as compatibility, which Ill grant you that I do not understand how this works, is that PCI cards should work in PCI-e slots. This is a puzzle since the bus looks totally different. I could have misunderstood the article I was reading though.
The whole SLI thing really depends on just having the right number of PCI-e slots, there does not have to be specifically two PCI-e SLI slots.
Finally the 2 gig limit does bother me. Today 2 gigs is plenty of ram, but if I plan on keeping my next box for 3 more years, I am fairly sure that 2 gigs will not be as sweet as it is today. I like being able to alt-tab into and out of games like WoW nearly instantly. I liked the dramatic performance increase I got going from 1 gig to 2 gigs. I do not want to lose that edge, however, I do not want to pay big bucks for some kind of server MB that supports more then 2 gigs. I want it to become more standard and thus cheaper.
You don’t even need a card, gigabit ethernet is built right in to most recent motherboards, it seems. And some motherboards have x4 slots as well, if x1 doesn’t provide enough bandwidth. If you absolutely need to saturate multiple networks at that speed, or need multiple non-SLIed video cards, those are really specialty applications for which you’re going to need something better than commodity motherboards though. They exist, but you will have to search a bit to find them or pay a bit extra.
As far as compatibility, which Ill grant you that I do not understand how this works, is that PCI cards should work in PCI-e slots. This is a puzzle since the bus looks totally different. I could have misunderstood the article I was reading though.
They’re compatible at the software level, so that drivers and OSes have to change very little, if anything, in how they use the cards, but they’re definitely not compatible physically.
Finally the 2 gig limit does bother me.
Very few motherboards are limited to 2GB. All of ASUS’s 965 and 975-based motherboards support up to 8GB, for example. If you’re actually referring to the per-process limit under 32-bit XP, that’s an OS limit, not hardware.
Really? Thats good to know. I suppose shuttle needs to get thier act together on thier XPCs. Like 2 weeks ago I was looking at thier boxes and all but one had a 2 gig ram limit.
Ah, yeah things are a lot more restrictive in the small form factor market, and they usually lag behind the desktops a bit. If you want to stick with those, then you might have to wait a while for them to catch up.
You might be able to build your own, but I’m not sure what fits with what when it comes to SFF.
That’s probably because most SFF PCs have only two RAM slots and presumably they only support 1GB RAM modules. Whether that’s a HW or BIOS limitiation or what, I don’t know.
Anyway, aren’t 2GB modules, like, four or five times more expensive than 1GB ones?
