Could you guys give me any quick thoughts on my system overhaul?

[Demosthenes]

Alrighty, well I've decided my 1.4 gig Tbird / GF 3 500 just aint cuttin it, so I'm gonna do a full system overhaul here in a little bit.. and I'm thinking:

Asus A7V 333 mobo (I absolutely detest any and all motherboard issues. if anyone knows of a more stable, user-friendly mobo I'd love to hear about it)
~2400 Athlon XP or so
.5 gig of corsair 2700 ram
Geforce 4 Ti 4400

I'm gonna get the mobo/ram/proc all set up tested and configured at monarchcomputer.com.... I proved my computer-building manhood long ago, I'd much rather pay some one to deliver me a flawless system set up than put all the hours into doing it myself. My questions are: How will this baby run Doom 3? How about Milkdrop (winamp plugin) in desktop overlay mode in full resolution with all options tricked out? And I'll be playing a lot of Asheron's Call 2... I'm sure I'll be able to trick out those settings too. If anybody has any quick thoughts or comments on any component I'd love to hear em.

Thanks.

 

[DT4K]

I think everthing there makes sense except the video card.
You will definitely see an improvement moving to a DDR 333 platform with an XP 2400.

But I don't think the performance difference between the Ti500 and Ti 4400 is enough to justify the cost of upgrading that card. And the Ti4400 will probably still get bogged down if you try to turn on all the eye-candy in Doom 3.

I suggest several options which I think make more sense depending on how much you want to spend:

1. Buy a Radeon 9700 Pro

2. Buy a Radeon 9700 (non-Pro). if they are not available yet, they should be within the next couple of weeks. It is a slightly lower clocked version of the Pro, but exactly the same chip. It should be $50 - 100 less than the Pro and looks like a good bang-for-buck

3. Upgrade everything else but keep your Ti500 and use it until NV30 is available. At that point, either buy an NV30 for a small fortune, or buy a 9700 Pro or non-pro for a smaller price (assuming the NV30 performs better than the 9700 Pro which will force ATI to lower prices on the 9700 line to stay competitive)

 

[Demosthenes]

Thanks for the help.. I thought I might wait til the GF 5 and hold on to my 3 til then but.. my friends say a 5 will cost $400 then... I really try to not drop more then $250 on a video card.... so the non-pro radeon looks like about what I'm looking for. but good god.. I remember terrible times with my Radeon 32 meg back in the day, ATI never updated drivers, it didn't work with games all over.. is ATI better now? I might be willing to give them another shot.... might.

 

[everman]

If you're going to be playing Asheron's Call 2, you NEED lots and lots of power, lol. Radeon 9700 would be great. I beta tested AC2 Since beta1, graphics are simply amazing, the rest of the game isn't too bad either 😉

 

[DT4K]

I've never used an ATI card, but it seems like a lot of people have been saying their driver support has gotten a lot better.
As far as waiting, yeah, the NV30 will probably start at $400 but it should push down the prices of the other cards.

I don't know if you've read the reviews, but if you like running with AA or AF or both, that is where the 9700 series really blows the GF4's out of the water. And having a card that fully supports DX9 will help if you are someone who always wants to play the newest games.

Right now, the 9700 Pro is just over $300 and it seems to be dropping a little each week. The non-pro version has a msrp of $299, but with the Pro's almost down to that, I'm guessing the non-pro's will be available for under $250.

 

[Demosthenes]

thanks guys, I'll keep an eye on the prices.

Oh and I beta'd AC 2 and I could play it...... at 1024x768x16, hehe.. I can't wait to see it in high-res glory, I just pre-ordered it yesterday.

could anyone give me a link to some info about the 9700 non-pro? I can't find it mentioned on ATI's site, or pricegrabber..

 

[DT4K]

The launch announcement came October 18th for the 9700(non-pro), the 9500, and the 9500 pro. The stuff I read from that date said it would be available shortly after that. But as far as I know, you can't get one yet. PriceWatch had a couple of places that had 9500's available to preorder, but the ETA just said November. I thought the 9700 was supposed to be available at the same time as the other two but I'm not sure. I wouldn't recommend the 9500's though, because rather than just slightly lower clock speeds, there are some changes to the architecture that lower performance quite a bit.

Here is some info from anandtech.
It is titled Radeon 9500 Pro, but they have benchmarks for the following cards:

ATI Radeon 9700 Pro
ATI Radeon 9700
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4600
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400
ATI Radeon 9500 Pro
NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200

Notice the 9500 Pro generally lies between the Ti4200 and Ti4400.
And the 9700 is quite a bit higher than the Ti4600 on the charts.
They also do some benches with AA and AF turned on and that is where both the 9700 and 9700 Pro both really shine.