Can I upgrade the CPU and vid card on this old rig to play HL2?

[zagood]

That one looks good, also check out this one, heard good things about it:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817101513

-z

 

[Quick1]

Man...28 amps on the 12 rail, what a brute!

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Some1ne
A cheap sempron combo is faster than a P4 for games? Since when? As much as I like AMD, the P4 is better than the sempron...although the sempron is much better than Intel's celeron.

The Socket 754 semprons often keep up with a P4 Prescott of the same rating or are right behind it, they blow away a Pentium 4 with the slower 533mhz fsb. (a 2.8ghz 800fsb P4 is faster than a 3.06ghz 533fsb P4)

Don't believe me? Check this out, the Sempron 3100+ beats a 3ghz prescott and a 3.2ghz northwood.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7

 

[stevty2889]

If you don't want to buy a new CPU, the 1.8ghz northwoods were excelent overclockers, and you should be able to reach 2.4ghz with it pretty easily, then get a decent video card like a 6600GT, and go to 1gb of ram, and you should be good to go.

 

[Quick1]

Alright, today I ordered the ePower power supply, 1Gb of Geil PC3200 memory, Zalman 7000b-cu and a large tube of Arctic Silver V. Next month I'll order the 6800 and WinXP. I removed the Vantec AeroFlow and completely cleaned it and the cpu. Reapplied ASIII and I'm now running the 1.8 at 2.4. But, it's not completely stable and I'm already up to 1.625v. But, it may be the memory or the power supply. Power supply is a modest Sparkle 300w. I'm going to try and isolate the O/C-ing or power issues first before I add a power hungry vid card to the mix.

 

[stormfall]

Hi,
Was googling for someone with an 8IEXP (which is my mobo) and is using a 6800GT and found this thread. I have (prior to my recent upgrade 2 days ago) exactly the same specs as your rig, including win98se

This is mine:
P4 1.8 400/FSB 478 N-wood
GigaByte GA-8IEXP vers 2.0
512 ram PC2700
GeForce FX5900 Gainward Golden Sample 128mb AGP
WD 80Gb/8mb 7200 (On Raid 2+0)
SB Live
450W PSU
Win98SE

My PSU (Chieftec UK) died on me which prompted an upgrade of both PSU to an Antec Truepower 480W (+12V of 19A) and the CPU to a 2.8 Northwood 533Mhz. Couple of pointers I should warn you about, from my various searching around. Like you, I intend to stick to my historically badass mobo until I really need to get a new rig...

1. Win98SE abhors anything above 512mb ram. I tried with 768mb ram and it gave me lots of grief (crashes, freezes etc). Removing the 256 stick and reverting back to 512mb solved that problem. I'm curious to see how you fare with your 1gig ram on your win98se I also thought our 8IEXP can't run anything above a PC2700 (333mhz) ram? (officially it can only take 266mhz I think).
2. I don't think the mobo can take Prescott CPUs. The highest it can take is P4-Northwood 3.06G (HT) 533mhz according to www.gigabyte.com.tw. I have upgraded to a 2.8ghz northwood cpu but seems to be getting some Bios hiccups over the vcore (set at 1.525 which is what the intel box said it should be). Not sure what's wrong *shrug* Seems to be running stably though.
3. IF upping to a HT cpu, make sure your bios is updated to F9.
4. There's been a lot of complaints about the 6600GT especially the demands on the PSU. Check this thread out over at the nvidia forum...

http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?s=ef...bcdb369cc54d04c8b9894b278&showforum=26

Looks like a 20Amp is what some pple recommend but the thread seems to indicate others running the 6600GT without any problems with PSUs of < 500W (most 20Amp PSUs are 500+W). You might want to check the nvidia forum for other users with the 6800 card to see what PSU problems they've had. I have a gainward 6600GT AGP card sitting in a corner, waiting for the new PSU and CPU to break in before I do the third change.

And yes, I'm still running win98se

Would love to hear your experience using a 1gig ram on win98se and when you get your 6800

Good luck And be nice to the 8iexp Brought me many years (well, okay 3) of happy gaming when I first got it

 

[Steve]

Windows 95, 98, and ME can't use more that 512MB of RAM by design, however you can modify vcache (I believe) to allow it up to a gig. There's an MSKB article on it, and plenty on Google.

Also, even if the board can't run RAM at PC2700 FSB speed, it should be able to run it at PC2100 as well as enjoy the timings that PC2700 brings (if all the RAM is DDR333).

 

[Hacp]

I would suggest a regular 6600. Or maybe a x700. You don'tneed the best in order to play HL2.

 

[stormfall]

Just an update. My new psu and cpu are fine and last week I upgraded my gainward fx5900 golden sample to a gainward 6600gt 128mb ddr3 8xagp card and encountered massive problems with the card. It's not cos of the psu issue but after trying numerous permutations of possible solutions, I suspect it all boils down to windows 98se being the problem. I had stuttering when running directx games, dxdiag's directdraw and direct3d tests were extremely slow (5 fps ish), but no issues when using windows normally. 3dmark01 and 3dmark05 crashed within 5 seconds except when running 71.84 drivers (it lasted 1 minute before it hanged). Changed drivers and noticed improvements with older drivers but because i'm running windows 98se, the newer drivers are not possible for my OS.

I'll be curious to hear from you (or anyone) who were able to run a 6600gt on a mobo like the 8iexp on win98se without any hiccups. (agp fastwrite was disabled etc etc. I followed the massive thread on 6600gt problems in the nvidia forums to no avail)

good luck

 

[Quick1]

stormfall: Sorry, but I've finally come to realize it's not financially practical to upgrade this rig. Members on this forum tried to tell me that. I submit!

I've started a new thread for recommendations for a new budget/moderate gaming rig.

 

[bigpow]

FYI: CPU & GPU price make most of the price of a new computer.
Might as well go with all new platform (add-in new mobo & RAM), and you'll be a lot happier in the long run.
That 300W PSU should be able to hold (if it's a good generic), you can upgrade it later on when you go with 7800GT/GTX caliber GPUs.

 

[Quick1]

bigpow: Agreed! Actually, my first stage of the upgrade includes this:

ePower 450XP P2B p/s 450w
WinXP Pro SP2 OEM
AMD 64 3000+ ATHLON 64 939P RT - Retail
(already have a Zalman CNPS7700-CU)

In a few weeks hope to get m/b, then vid card next month.

For a m/b I'm leaning towards: EPoX EP-9NPA+ SLi Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16813123246

Here's what I'm looking at for a vid card:
XFX Geforce 6800GS PVT42GUAD7 256mb Video Card - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...N82E16814150118

 

[imported_Phil]

Originally posted by: Some1ne

WinXP has a little thing built into it where it takes a snapshot of your hardware. When you change too many pieces of hardware it actually won't load

Only XP Home does that. If you use XP Pro that won't happen, which is good because I've upgraded just about every peice of hardware in my PC at least once without ever having to touch the Win XP install.

Incorrect. Only Volume Licensing Key versions of XP have WPA disabled.

 

[thecoolnessrune]

In the end it would be better to get a 2800+ Sempron MOBO combo for $80 instead of buting a new proc and most likely going to need a new MOBO.

 

[Quick1]

thecoolnessrune: Agreed! But this upgrade has gotten out of hand is beyond that point now. It will take me a little longer to complete it, but I'm past the "Budget" stage now. It happened after a friend let me play BF2, COD2 and HL2 on his rig.

Yeah I know...some friend huh!

 

[vailr]

Whenever you buy a new CPU, you'll want to be able to (very shortly) have it up and running, in case of any hardware problems. Vendors only allow warranty returns for a short time period after purchase, especially for "OEM" CPU's.
So: don't just buy a new CPU, and then wait several weeks until buying the motherboard to go with it.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
From the technical profile of your motherboard, it looks like it does support 533Mhz FSB cpus as well as PC2100 memory.

My recommendation would be to purchase a Pentium 4 3.06Ghz w/HT for your cpu. This would not only give you a dramatic increase in processing power, but it would also give you HT, which is basically the only real reason to own an Intel cpu at this point in time. A quick look on pricewatch shows this cpu running for under $220.

Might as well get A64 3200+ and $80 motherboard. Then I'd just get $120 6600GT PCIe.
Windows 98? Time to switch to windows XP. Considering you can get it for free, there should be 0 reason to stay with 98.

EDIT: instead of getting SLI get regular EPoX EP-9NPA+ , save $20 and then get $280 7800GT instead of 6800GS. $50 extra in this case will give you 30-40% gains in games.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Some1ne
A cheap sempron combo is faster than a P4 for games? Since when? As much as I like AMD, the P4 is better than the sempron...although the sempron is much better than Intel's celeron.

It certainly is, once you overclock