Time for an upgrade....

OK, just played Call Of Duty 2, and my PC struggles... alot... at best, so as my theory goes, when summat dosn't work... upgrade!!

Now I think my RAM, Hard Drives etc are okay, I only need to upgrade the CPU/Mobo and GFX card I think...

I was thinking of maybe getting this :-

Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-101-AS) - £74.95
XFX GeForce 7800GT Extreme "LED" Edition 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI - £227.95
AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - £149.95

Total - £452.85

Now really with the GFX card I'm kinda half and half on it, if its an Nvidia I get then it'll deffo be XFX, cause I like them (And it has a Call Of Duty 2 bundled with it hehe!) But I'm not sure weather to risk it again and go for the ATi X1800 with the new Sapphire mobos....

Again with the CPU, not sure weather to go for +3500 Venice or the +3700 San Diego.. Its only really £20 more for 200mhz and 1MB L2 Cache, which seems good seen as between +3700 and +3800, its £35 more for 100mhz and 512K cache! Also are there any differences between the San Diego and Venice versions? or is it just the name...

Anyway could anyone here offer any advice? mabye any better deals? or something been a little more expensive or cheaper but will make a massive difference (Don't worry, I'll still be shopping around, just a 2nd opinion, or a 3rd is always useful :D)

Also... if I do go with the upgrade... means I need to sell my old parts to sanction it... so I've got a -

XFX 6800NU fitted with a big ass Arctic Cooling nVidia 5 fan (perfect for overclocking :D)
Asus K8V Deluxe Motherboard (Yes I know its VIA... not the best selling point!)
AMD 64 +3200 754 chip

Name your price for them if you want them! Ideally I'd like to make £150 back off them, which is damn good seen as that XFX 6800NU with stock fan is worth £100 brand new


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

Go for the 3700SD. The extra speed will be a slight help but the 1Mb L2 cache is the winner. The 3800 isn't worth the extra £35 for half the L2 cache compared to the 3700.

The San Diego has SSE3 instruction support whereas the Venice's don't, I believe. Not sure exactly what SSE3 does but I'm sure a quick Google will help there.

The San Diego is the latest AMD core to be released so is the best bet I think.

How much would you want for the 6800? Is is 128Mb or 256Mb? I ask because my little brother's gfx card broke a few months ago and he is using a mate's really old card but the display is still a bit crap and the card isn't fast enough to play any games.

He had a Ti4600, I suppose the 6800 would be faster than this? I'll speak to my brother and ask him if he is interested. I know he plans to save up so that when he finally has enough money he can get a top-of-the-range x64 PC so I don't know if he'd want to spend money on a graphics card now.

its a AGP gfx card, 128MB, yeah the 6800 would be ALOT faster than the Ti4600

Hmm seems like the San Diego is the right way to go then, may as well pay the extra £20! ta!


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

CPUCity have been offering 939 Opterons (the 144 and 146 are good value), which are basically FX57s clocked downwards.

If you're happy overclocking them, you'll be able to reach almost 3ghz on air cooling, apparently, which is ALOT for an Athlon.

I'm heading down that route later next year.

The stock 3700 is great though, if you want performance out of the box - they'll not overclock much though.

Can't fault the ASUS motherboard - make sure you get the 2nd revision, which has a heatpipe from the chipset to the mosfets - the 1st revision had a slightly tempermental, and not exactly quiet fan.

If you want pure FPS in games, grab the nV, no doubt about it. If you're an image quality junkie, get the ATI X1800XL. ATI are better at AA and AF. We're not exactly talking huge differences of either speed or quality though - I'd be going down the nV route atm myself. Both cards drivers suck at the moment though. ATIs would be fine if they didn't use that stupid Catalyst Control Centre, which sometimes just refuses to run (uses MS .NET framework, so hopefully the 2nd version of this will fix it).

The 3700 is great. I'm with gav though, the opteron 144 for under 100 quid looks to be a real bargain - finally a a64 version of the xp2500 M in terms of overclocking. 2ghz at stock, with 1mb cache, as gav said, you ight even get 3ghz, but 2.7 in almost garanteed!

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She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

personally, i'm waiting until early next year when AMD are supposedly releasing the socket M2 cpu's, which will have ddr2 support. Not sure when they'll be moving to the 65nm process, but that should help clocking. I'm also hearing rumours that nvidia will have sli support for more than 2 cards if i save up (a lot) i might splash out then and get new mobo, ram, cpu, gfx cards etc. It should be worth the wait :D

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SKEL

You can accuse a person of just about anything and get away with it, as long as you don't call them a lousy lover or bad driver. -Jackie Stewart



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2005 03:56PM by skel.

I've not read up on the M2s, but I assume all it will be is an updated memory controller. If that's the case, they'll not be any faster. They'll have more memory bandwidth of course, but 64s don't really feed off bandwidth, they feed off low latencies.

And that's where DDR2 really sucks at the moment.

While DDR1 can manage 2-2-2-5 (some modules even stretching to 1.5-2-2-5), DDR2 can only manage 3-2-2-8 (looking at the top Corsair RAM on Overclockers as a guide).

Unless the way the chip works will change, or DDR2 significantly reduces their latencies in the coming months, it'll be a while before the M2 will be a viable choice in my opinion.

Ian, you might consider looking at one of the X2s. I know you do a bit of music/sound conversions, rendering and the rest of it, so an X2 might look a bit attractive to you... it'll let you do stuff while half your CPU does the rest :P



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2005 04:05PM by gav.

gav - I was going to ask if the Opteron's were dual-core. Didn't think there were any dual-core versions, checked Overclockers and I'm right! I think.

Anyway I've specced a 3700 for my next system but with new games more likely to utilise dual-cores and me looking to get a digital SLR camera I'm thinking of switching to a 4400 which the the dual-core equivalent of the 3700.

With the M2s will DDR sticks still run OK or will M2s only run DDR2?

Opterons aren't dual-core, no.

Bare in mind, there are some games (apparently) that have some small issues with dual-core. I don't know what. Have a search on google. It's probably been fixed now.

Yeah I'd heard about X2 and games problems on the Overclockers forums. I think it is fixed now. AMD updated their X2 driver and MS released some sort of patch for XP. It's all on Overclockers somewhere for when I get my new PC.

Anyway, if I got an X2 4400 and played a game not optimised for dual-cores I think someone on OcUK found this program that allows you to set which core the game uses, in effect making the game play as if on a single core.

yup, that's a way to get aroud it for sure. I'd either go opteron or x2, nothing else at the mo really, for a significant upgrade from a 3200 754.

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She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

I'm on a 3200 Barton atm. Have been eyeing up the 3700 for a few months now but the recent price cuts on the X2's have bought them into contention.

Ian, you might consider looking at one of the X2s. I know you do a bit of music/sound conversions, rendering and the rest of it, so an X2 might look a bit attractive to you... it'll let you do stuff while half your CPU does the rest :P

I'd love to! but dear god the cheapest processor which utilises 1MB L2 Cache, its £300! :| thats double the price

Does dual core have to have a specific motherboard? or can it just run on a normal 939 board. Cause if so then I'll probably get the San Diego +3700 now, and maybe look into upgrading to a Dual Core later... Thats why I'm getting a SLi board now, so I can put another 7800 in there maybe in about 3 or 4 months time... sure when I buy the 3700, I can sell it off and probably make back at least %75 of the brand new price...

Just atm, with Xbox 360 and new TV too... and christmas round the corner! I need to keep my spending down until at least March....


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

-qwerty- Wrote:
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> yup, that's a way to get aroud it for sure. I'd
> either go opteron or x2, nothing else at the mo
> really, for a significant upgrade from a 3200 754.
>
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
>
>

Hmmmm, how much is this Opteron then? cause I may just buy one of those for the time being instead then upgrade to a dual core later...



PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

The 2ghz one is around 111 inc vat, the 2.2 is 176inc vat. Add 200mhz onto each for the 1mb cache (vs your 3200) and its a nippy thing. Also of course these things hit 2.8ghz on air, stock cooler.

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She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal

[www.overclockers.co.uk] The 144's and 146's get good reviews from the OcUK forums.

All 939 boards can take X2's. Some might need a bios update to recognise the X2, some are now X2 compliant out-of-the-box. Simply put means any motherboard that doesn't have a bios making X2's work, the motherboard will only "see" one core of the X2 until you flash the bios to a bios adding X2 support.

Most reputable motherboard firms should now have out of the box compliant boards. They've had enough time. For example Overclockers ran out of Epox 939 boards whilst Epox concentrated on getting their boards X2 ready.

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ATIs would be fine if they didn't use that stupid Catalyst Control Centre

You probably know this already, but you dont have to use that, there is a driver only option somewhere I agree though, CCC is dreadful and so pointless. The idea is there, but the implementation leaves a lot to be desired.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2005 05:23PM by markko.

Yeah, but the Control Panel is being phased out. There's a point in the future (I don't know what) when they've already said they'd stop releasing that.

Plus you can't create profiles with it.

Ian - of course the X2s are double the price... they're two processors effectively!

I'm pretty sure the point when they originally said they were gonna stop including the control panel has already passed, but they obviously changed their mind, dunno if they're still trying to phase it out in the future.

matthewp Wrote:
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> I'm pretty sure the point when they originally
> said they were gonna stop including the control
> panel has already passed, but they obviously
> changed their mind, dunno if they're still trying
> to phase it out in the future.
>
>
>

I heard the same. I wasn't expecting the October Catalyst release to be available in the traditional way. When they do phase it out and leave us with the CCC I'll have to do what Markko says and download the drivers only and use that tool for ATI cards I've heard mentioned.