Extra money and doing some thinking... Spend my money for me!

[Jeff7181]

I'll be gettin a $500 check soon, and don't need it to pay any existing bills, so I'm thinking I'll spend it all on my computer this fall. The way I see it, I have 3 options...

Option #1
Buy the low end Athlon-64 and a motherboard... that should be about $500, or 600, which would be fine cause I'm sure I can get $100 for my XP2500 and A7N8X Deluxe.

Option #2
Buy a FX5900 Ultra, or 9800 Pro this fall.

Option #3
Buy a 9700 Pro and a Raptor hard drive this fall.

Which would you choose and why? Check out my main rig to see exactly what I'm using now if that would influence your decision.

Or if you can think of any better options, please share

 

[Jeff7181]

Nobody wants to spend someone else's money? Maybe you're all still sleeping =)

 

[themanwithapc]

Personally, I would go for the new radeon 9800 pro or fx 5900 ultra. You already have a rather well rounded pc at the moment, and by adding that new top of the range card, you can stay up to date for a while.

The 1st option is not really suitable for you, since your pc is already quite good as it is.

However, what do you use your pc for? If you download a lot of stuff of the internet (broadband), you might consider getting the 3rd option. Try a radeon 9800 non-pro with the hard drive.

 

[Jeff7181]

I play games quite a bit... and will continue to. Gaming performance with my Ti4600 (oc'd Ti4200) is starting to degrade with newer games, especially with AA and AF. It ran Unreal 2 at about 40 fps on average with no AA and no AF.

The hard drive I would enjoy because faster load times for games never hurt =) I do some divx encoding, but I don't think my hard drive is slowing that down much if at all.

I guess I'm basically looking for some pro's and con's for options 2 and 3. I'm a little weary of ATI still cause I like to play CS, and I know ATI has some issues... but maybe that doesn't apply to the 9800 and the newest drivers? Unfortunately, nVidia doesn't have any direct competition for the 9700 Pro or 9800 non-Pro... they basically have the FX5900 and the Ultra... which are over priced due to them being so new.

*EDIT* I also read in another thread, something about the 256 MB cards... something like, why nVidia cards benefit from the extra RAM more than ATI cards... anyone know anything about that? Or know where I can read about it?

 

[Jeff7181]

Wow... I thought this thread would get more attention than this...

 

[pelikan]

#3.
I also like the idea of a 9800 np and raptor. Or go all out and get the 9800 pro and a raptor.

 

[JBT]

As for ATI I have a 9500 pro and all my problems were fixed with cat 3.6's menu's are way faster and escape works fine as well. I wouldn't be to nervouse about that they are comming with newer driver releases every month now so by the time u buy this fall they will have plenty of advances. BTW as u may have read if u plan on playing HL2 don't get an Nvidia 5900 FX, AA and AF are trashed.

If I were you I would get a 9800 np or pro depending on how much they are priced and a raptor. I plan on getting a raptor for my next sytem upgrade.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: JBTele
As for ATI I have a 9500 pro and all my problems were fixed with cat 3.6's menu's are way faster and escape works fine as well. I wouldn't be to nervouse about that they are comming with newer driver releases every month now so by the time u buy this fall they will have plenty of advances. BTW as u may have read if u plan on playing HL2 don't get an Nvidia 5900 FX, AA and AF are trashed.

If I were you I would get a 9800 np or pro depending on how much they are priced and a raptor. I plan on getting a raptor for my next sytem upgrade.

Yeah, I wanna do both at the same time so I can do a clean install of Windows for the video card so I don't have to mess with cleaning my nVidia drivers off.

 

[Corporate Thug]

#3, 9700 pro/ 9800 np are not to far behind the 9800 pro. i would sacrafice that little bit of performance for a nice raptor

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: shady06
#3, 9700 pro/ 9800 np are not to far behind the 9800 pro. i would sacrafice that little bit of performance for a nice raptor

You know of any benchmarks that directly compare the 9700 Pro and 9800 Non-Pro?

*EDIT* One thing I didn't think of... I may have to upgrade my PSU... Raptor drive, WD800JB, DVD, CDRW, 9700 Pro or 9800 non-pro, Athlon XP3200, 1 GB of RAM, and 7 fans will probably be a little too much for my Antec 350 watt to handle.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
Wow... I thought this thread would get more attention than this...

battle fatigue -- this is upgrade thread number 2,457 for the week

#2, since in-game performance is more important than load times. If you get the 9800 Pro (recommended for Half-Life 2) you also have $100 left to spend since 256 MB is useless for the 9800.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: shady06
#3, 9700 pro/ 9800 np are not to far behind the 9800 pro. i would sacrafice that little bit of performance for a nice raptor

I'm with Shady on this. The benefits of a fast HDD will be noticable in many areas outside of gaming and the 9800np or 9700pro are going to run HL2 well enough to be enjoyable. I don't think the A64 combo will do that much for gaming combined with your old vid card. The one x-factor is that the price of certain makes of the 9800pro may be low enough by fall to buy it and the raptor after selling your old ti4200 and HDD.

 

[Jeff7181]

since 256 MB is useless for the 9800.

I've been hearing this a lot, and haven't seen any reason why yet... can you point me to some info?

 

[mechBgon]

Where's the 15000-rpm SCSI option? Fujitsu MAS-series is starting to grow on my brain, personally... check out the STR graph of the 73Gb model at StorageReview.com against anything else, including the Raptor. Pretty intense! :Q

Newegg just reduced their price on 'em too Now you can get an 18Gb MAS3184NP, an LSI Logic U160 controller, a rounded SCSI cable and an active terminator for... lessee here... $277 shipped. And the Fujitsu MAS-series have fluid bearings, a consideration when buying a drive that's built to run 5+ years 24/7.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

since 256 MB is useless for the 9800.

I've been hearing this a lot, and haven't seen any reason why yet... can you point me to some info?

Here is the TomsHardware review link but the cliff's notes:
- the extra memory only helps slightly at 1600x1200 res with 4x FSAA, not at all for lower resolutions or 1600x1200 without 4x.
- by the time the extra memory might help with textures (a few years away) the card will be too slow in general, and you'll be able to buy something much faster for $150.

 

[TheInvincibleMustard]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
I'll be gettin a $500 check soon, and don't need it to pay any existing bills, so I'm thinking I'll spend it all on my computer this fall. The way I see it, I have 3 options...

Or if you can think of any better options, please share

Since you're waiting until fall anyway, why don't you see what the "9900" has going for it? Or wait until some benchmarks for the video cards come out with regards to HL2 and/or Doom3 before deciding now. It's really hard to say right now what those games WILL look like/play like since they're not finished yet. If you can make it until Christmas, the next-gen cards might be out, allowing you to get a "boring" 9800 and TWO Raptors, with the price drops, perhaps.

 

[Jeff7181]

Originally posted by: DaveSimmons

Originally posted by: Jeff7181

since 256 MB is useless for the 9800.

I've been hearing this a lot, and haven't seen any reason why yet... can you point me to some info?

Here is the TomsHardware review link but the cliff's notes:
- the extra memory only helps slightly at 1600x1200 res with 4x FSAA, not at all for lower resolutions or 1600x1200 without 4x.
- by the time the extra memory might help with textures (a few years away) the card will be too slow in general, and you'll be able to buy something much faster for $150.

I'm wondering why it's being said that the extra memory helps the 5900 Ultra, but the 9800 Pro doesn't need it.

 

[Jeff7181]

Just had a thought... maybe I should go with a 9600 Pro now, and that should hold me over till the 2nd or 3rd revisions of nVidia's and ATI's new cores come out. It also uses less power, so I wouldn't need to upgrade my PSU just yet. And then maybe I could even get 2 Raptors and use em in RAID 0 like people have suggested. OOOOO! =) Lots of options, lol.

 

[pelikan]

After talking about all this great hardware the 9600 pro sounds kind of like a turnip. I wouldn't bother with anything less than a 9700np.

 

[Jeff7181]

Wonder what the resale value of the 9600 Pro would be in 6 months?

*EDIT* BTW... only way I'd get rid of my current hard drive is if I got 2 Raptors... I need more than 36 GB... but I'm not very close to filling my 80 yet.

 

[bradruth]

Either do #2 or #3, depending on if you need more HD space or not.

 

[borgmang]

Originally posted by: shady06
#3, 9700 pro/ 9800 np are not to far behind the 9800 pro. i would sacrafice that little bit of performance for a nice raptor