9700, 9800, or 5900? Which to buy?

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: CraigRT

Originally posted by: Guspaz


A new mobo and ram would set me back 262$ for an MSI nForce 2 board and 768MB DDR333, however, then a new CPU becomes a possible upgrade (My board doesn't even support AthlonXP even though I have one , and 12x is the max multiplier), which adds more to the price

You can get the Soltek NForce2 and 512MB of spec-tek DDR333 from NCIX for just around $200 CAD..


linky

Or I could get the MSI nForce 2 and a stick of 512MB DDR333 from the local store for 210$ CAD without buying from the internet... which is hard without a credit card.

man, that's a pretty good price for a local store... i got the Soltek board to my door including shipping, taxes, everything for $154 on the dot. they don't even charge PST which is totally awesome... very good deal.

ask them if they can get the sapphire card there... save some moula.

 

[Budmantom]

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: Budmantom
I think you should upgrade your mb and ram 1st.

Upgrade them FIRST?

OK, so I get a 5-10% performance increase going from PC133 to DDR333, another 5-10% increase from the new chipset... Let's be generous and say a 30% speed increase. Now, the Radeon 9700 will give me a much bigger speed boost than 30%!

If that gave you a 30% boost, it would come at half the price of a 9700 pro. That will hopefully buy you 2months and in 2 months the 9700 will be 20% cheaper (fingers crossed).

Now the performance will increase to about 50%... wait another 2 months now you have the xp2700+ for a 40% savings. Now your performance is at about 60% from original config.

Edit: everything in above statement is pure speculation (but it could happen).

 

[Guspaz]

Originally posted by: Budmantom

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: Budmantom
I think you should upgrade your mb and ram 1st.

Upgrade them FIRST?

OK, so I get a 5-10% performance increase going from PC133 to DDR333, another 5-10% increase from the new chipset... Let's be generous and say a 30% speed increase. Now, the Radeon 9700 will give me a much bigger speed boost than 30%!

If that gave you a 30% boost, it would come at half the price of a 9700 pro. That will hopefully buy you 2months and in 2 months the 9700 will be 20% cheaper (fingers crossed).

Now the performance will increase to about 50%... wait another 2 months now you have the xp2700+ for a 40% savings. Now your performance is at about 60% from original config.

Edit: everything in above statement is pure speculation (but it could happen).

I think you're confusing savings and performance boost.

The Radeon 9700 Pro will give a LOT more than a 20% performance increase over the GeForce 2. More like 100%, 150%, heck maybe 200%?

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: Budmantom

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: Budmantom
I think you should upgrade your mb and ram 1st.

Upgrade them FIRST?

OK, so I get a 5-10% performance increase going from PC133 to DDR333, another 5-10% increase from the new chipset... Let's be generous and say a 30% speed increase. Now, the Radeon 9700 will give me a much bigger speed boost than 30%!

If that gave you a 30% boost, it would come at half the price of a 9700 pro. That will hopefully buy you 2months and in 2 months the 9700 will be 20% cheaper (fingers crossed).

Now the performance will increase to about 50%... wait another 2 months now you have the xp2700+ for a 40% savings. Now your performance is at about 60% from original config.

Edit: everything in above statement is pure speculation (but it could happen).

I think you're confusing savings and performance boost.

The Radeon 9700 Pro will give a LOT more than a 20% performance increase over the GeForce 2. More like 100%, 150%, heck maybe 200%?

maybe more!

 

[Budmantom]

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: Budmantom

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: Budmantom
I think you should upgrade your mb and ram 1st.

Upgrade them FIRST?

OK, so I get a 5-10% performance increase going from PC133 to DDR333, another 5-10% increase from the new chipset... Let's be generous and say a 30% speed increase. Now, the Radeon 9700 will give me a much bigger speed boost than 30%!

If that gave you a 30% boost, it would come at half the price of a 9700 pro. That will hopefully buy you 2months and in 2 months the 9700 will be 20% cheaper (fingers crossed).

Now the performance will increase to about 50%... wait another 2 months now you have the xp2700+ for a 40% savings. Now your performance is at about 60% from original config.

Edit: everything in above statement is pure speculation (but it could happen).

I think you're confusing savings and performance boost.

The Radeon 9700 Pro will give a LOT more than a 20% performance increase over the GeForce 2. More like 100%, 150%, heck maybe 200%?

Where did the GeForce 2 come in, your first statement says Geforce 3.

 

[Guspaz]

Originally posted by: Budmantom

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: Budmantom

Originally posted by: Guspaz

Originally posted by: Budmantom
I think you should upgrade your mb and ram 1st.

Upgrade them FIRST?

OK, so I get a 5-10% performance increase going from PC133 to DDR333, another 5-10% increase from the new chipset... Let's be generous and say a 30% speed increase. Now, the Radeon 9700 will give me a much bigger speed boost than 30%!

If that gave you a 30% boost, it would come at half the price of a 9700 pro. That will hopefully buy you 2months and in 2 months the 9700 will be 20% cheaper (fingers crossed).

Now the performance will increase to about 50%... wait another 2 months now you have the xp2700+ for a 40% savings. Now your performance is at about 60% from original config.

Edit: everything in above statement is pure speculation (but it could happen).

I think you're confusing savings and performance boost.

The Radeon 9700 Pro will give a LOT more than a 20% performance increase over the GeForce 2. More like 100%, 150%, heck maybe 200%?

Where did the GeForce 2 come in, your first statement says Geforce 3.

Sorry. Typo. That should have read:

The Radeon 9700 Pro will give a LOT more than a 20% performance increase over the GeForce 3. More like 100%, 150%, heck maybe 200%?

 

[Painman]

Originally posted by: butch84
I would go for the 9700pro. I dont think the small performance increase of the 9800pro is worth its price premium. I wouldnt wait un the fx5900ultra, just cause it prolly wont be avail for a few months. Take the money you will save, and get some ddr system memory and a mobo that supports it. That pc133 is gonna really hold you back with a new graphics card.

peace,
butch

IMO the 1st response in this thread (quoted here) is the best one. A balanced system is the best option (which this allows, in time) but if I had to choose one bottleneck over the other, I'd choose the CPU bottleneck. This gives the GPU more time between data cycles to chew on extra features, to a point anyway.

Originally posted by: Rollo
SBLive has terrible cpu utilization

Maybe I'm behind the times on sound cards, but since when is the Live's CPU overhead terrible? Last I heard it was around 6%, that doesn't sound so terrible to me... spending another ~$100US to just to gain whatever tiny utilization advantage an Audigy may offer doesn't sound very sensible considering the gains available via different upgrades.

 

[Guspaz]

Since always, but it's during 3D use that it's horrible. Anandtech did benchmarks way back when, took up something like 60% CPU on a TBird 1.4, IIRC? Or was it 40%?

Either way, high.

 

[Budmantom]

Going from gf3 to a gf4 was a nice increase in fps and 3dmark3001se score, but going from a gf4 to a 9700tx my 3dmark2001se score went up but my fps went down by about 30%. The iq is great fps are good (not great).

I am not saying that I did a whole bunch of benchmarks and I play a bunch of games. But I am sharing my own experience, actually I went from a xp2100+ w/512mb ddr2100 to a p4 2.66 640mb ddr 2700 my 3dmark score went up and my fps went down.

I can say that I am happy with my purchase, I will also say that the gf3 isn't dead yet.

 

[Guspaz]

Thanks for the advice everyone!

I've purchased a PowerColor Radeon 9700 Pro (460$ CDN). I know, I wanted official ATI, but I have a LAN party this weekend, and this was the ONLY 9700Pro in stock. Luckily the PCB is identical.

I don't do much overclocking, though I did try to run it at 9800 Pro speeds; black artifacts showed up after 30 seconds, so I ramped it back down again. Maybe with RAM sinks and a new heatsink or something.

Anyhow, once again, thanks for your advice on this purchase.

If anyone is curious, 3dmark2001 went from 7xxx to 98xx (X indicates I don't remember the exact number), and that's with AA+AF off. Increase in speed is way more with it on. I guess my next upgrade will be a nice new motherboard/RAM/CPU to bring that up to 15000

 

[Budmantom]

When I went from my gf4Ti4400 to a 9700tx it wasn't the 3dmark score that impressed me it was the iq.

It takes a little while before you appreciate the visual differences, I play Nascar Racing 2003 my fps went down by about 20% but it is very smooth and it looks great.

So enjoy that new card.

Tom