Help me out here: Front Side Bus Upgrade, CPU upgrade, RAM

[ForceCalibur]

Heres the thing. I currently have a Dell 8250. Pentium 4 2.4 gig, 533 Front Side, Hyper-disabled (dammit). Also with PC1066 RDRAM.

Many people have told me to upgrade, to an Asus p4p800-Deluxe or something, sell of my RDRAM, and eventually have the option of upgrading to an 800 FSB processor.

The question is, whats the performance difference between a 800 FSB system w/ PC3200 DDRRAM, vs 533 FSB + Pc1066 RDRAM? Any performance leap if I upgraded to around 3 gigahertz?

The thing is, I only play games on this system, school work, nothing commercial or computer encoding/work related.

I know with games, 3Dmarks is highly sensitive to CPU, but I don't really care about that. Real world gaming isn't really bottlenecked at all by CPU is it? And if it was, probably very minimally.

 

[Markfw]

Sounds like a perfect to to go Athlon64(since all you do is games, they are better than a P4 for games). A 3000+ would make a decent upgrade to what you have while playing games. CPU+MB+memory a shade over $400 should do it.

 

[ForceCalibur]

Except I'm not going to spend 400 dollars for like 10 FPS increase in games.

 

[formulav8]

Your going to be spending a bit of money either way.

 

[bandana163]

Why is your current rig slow?

HyperThreading doesn't really affect games. It's handy at video encoding, compression and other applications, though.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur
Except I'm not going to spend 400 dollars for like 10 FPS increase in games.

Well if you want to get a huge, jaw-dropping boost expect to pay $4xx on a nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra alone. Not to mention another huge wad of dough to get a screaming top-of-the-line Athlon64 FX or P4EE to try and utilize it. And unfortunately since you have RDRAM you'll need a new motherboard and memory to go along with it.

 

[ForceCalibur]

Well, my current rig isn't slow! Thats just the point. I just want to know if I'm expected get significant results from an upgrade to my front side bus. For gaming its all about the GPU, and that I can always upgrade.

 

[Markfw]

OK, I have an XP2400 which is slightly better in games than a stock P4 2.4 and also have an Athlon64 3000+ at about 3300+ speed. I don't know what video card you have or which games, but I can definitely notice the difference (even with the same video card) on a 2400 to the 3300 in games like Far Cry, and C&C Generals.

Thus my comment about the Athlon64 3000+ If you game, and you want a substancial upgrade for CPU, the new motherboard and higher bus won't buy you squat except benchmarks. You would need to make the jump I suggested.

Otherwise, but the best video card you can afford if you play these types of games is your best choice.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur
Except I'm not going to spend 400 dollars for like 10 FPS increase in games.

at 1600x1200 high details or at 1280x1024 4AA/8AF a 2.4ghz p4 will give you an identical speed to a 3.4ghz p4 (when I say identical I mean a performance increase of < or = 10% at the most which is indiscernible by the human eye) and on top of that an A64 will add 1 frame to both of them 😀

If you have a good videocard and play at high quality settings, forget upgrading the CPU just yet.

And upgrading from your system to a "dead" socket 754 or socket 478 is a waste of money. If you want to upgrade simply opt for 939 or socket T when the time comes or when the games start to feel slow. Even if you play at 1024x768 do you really care if you score 100FPS or 200FPS? It only makes sense to upgrade the cpu when in 1 case it is sluggish and in the other case it will be smooth. But the fact of the matter is if all you do is game you should be in order to upgrade to a good videocard always and delay the cpu upgrade for as long as possible as you wont notice great increases unless in rare cases where CPU speed doubles and the game is bound by insane AI. And in cases where your rig is slow in games, the fastest cpu in the world will not help suggesting once again that the videocard is what causes the lag (ie read Halo and Far Cry)

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: PorBleemo

Originally posted by: ForceCalibur
Except I'm not going to spend 400 dollars for like 10 FPS increase in games.

Well if you want to get a huge, jaw-dropping boost expect to pay $4xx on a nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra alone. Not to mention another huge wad of dough to get a screaming top-of-the-line Athlon64 FX or P4EE to try and utilize it. And unfortunately since you have RDRAM you'll need a new motherboard and memory to go along with it.

So you dont think when a p4 3.2ghz makes 6800Ultra playable at 1600x1200 4AA/8AF in almost every game and giving you 60FPS at 1600x1200 in Halo and doubling or trippling the scores of any of the current top of the line cards is considered not utilizing the videocard well?