Help me upgrade

[rayray2]

I have a K7S5A m/b, an AMD 2400+ cpu and a Radeon 9800 Pro. If I only have 200 bucks to spend, what would be the best upgrade I could make for games?

 

[hans030390]

Ram? 6800? nothing?

 

[rayray2]

I'd like to get a 6800 but don't you think my cpu would hold me back?

 

[nitromullet]

For $200, I'd get an Athlon 64 3000+ and an ECS nForce3A motherboard ($146 and $56). I know it's a tad bit over, but you could also go for the A64 2800+ if you had to come in at or less than $200. Your video card isn't outdated enough yet that you would see a sigificant improvement with a $200 video card. Get the new motherboard and cpu for your $200 now, and wait until the GeForce 6800GT hits $200, which will be at least 6 months from now.

 

[impemonk]

stay away from ECS... their support is awful and their mobo's are weaksauce.

 

[coomar]

you could look in the fs/ft forum, i've saw a 939 3000+ and a gigabyte board go for 195 last week I think

 

[RussianSensation]

I realize what everyone is saying here. A64 is the future and so on. It makes sense for you to upgrade to a future platform and then later a faster videocard. However, that is not a $200 upgrade path. That is $200 + $200+ for a new videocard just to improve performance. Getting A64 3000+ and keeping 9800Pro presents several problems for me:

1) You'd need to buy an AGP motherboard - this is bad since future high-end graphics cards after this generation will most likely be discountinued in AGP. Even now 7800GTX is not being released in AGP. Again you'd need to buy a used motherboard and the very cheapest good A64 overclocking board is Epox 9NPA+ at $110 or so. A64 3000+ puts you at another $150. That is if you decide to keep retail cooling.

2) Even if you take option 1, in terms of bang for the buck I think it is poor. Since most current games are graphics card limited, a cpu upgrade will only benefit you in some games. Sure it'll be better than no upgrade; but I think a $200 6800non-ultra is a much better bet. EVEN if you are cpu limited with it, 70% of 6800nu speed is still much faster than a64 3000+ and radeon 9800pro.

Add to the fact that you have an option of unlocking extra pipelines and vertex shaders in it to make it a sub-6800GT, and it really sweetens the deal for me.

At the very least you'll be able to crank settings higher with AA/AF since you'll want to be graphics card limited as much as you can with a slower cpu. AFter that, upgrade to a whole new setup with new A64 socket and PCIe graphics card in Q2 2006. Plus you can always try to overclock the 2400+ just a little bit.

6800nu vs. 9800Pro

 

[peleejosh]

save up another 200 dollars and get the a64 plus nforce 4 mobo, and a 6800gt. (Assuming that it will take you a couple of months to save up the extra 200) but you will likely have to buy a new power supply also.

 

[nitromullet]

1) You'd need to buy an AGP motherboard - this is bad since future high-end graphics cards after this generation will most likely be discountinued in AGP. Even now 7800GTX is not being released in AGP. Again you'd need to buy a used motherboard and the very cheapest good A64 overclocking board is Epox 9NPA+ at $110 or so. A64 3000+ puts you at another $150. That is if you decide to keep retail cooling.

You're talking about high end cards - the 7800GTX alone is 3x more than what he wants to spend. For the pricepoint the OP is looking at, AGP won't be dead that soon. If he goes with a 3000+/mobo upgrade now and gets a 6800GT later, by the time he needs to upgrade the GT it will also be time for a new mobo.

 

[Rage187]

I'd also go w/ the A64 3000 w/ a S939 mobo. The 9800 will do fine.


And stop saying AGP is almost dead. Its not. Mark my words, both ATI and Nv will be releasing mainstream cards in AGP form factor. What your witnessing now is Nv trying to get as many people to convert to their NF4 PCI-Express mobos as possible before ATI has any card to compete in AGP.

 

[RussianSensation]

I am not saying AGP is dead now...but it will be real real soon. Buying an AGP board now is not a wise move at all.

If the OP thinks he can save additional $200 or so for 6800GT (and assuming it will hit that price point in 2-3 months), then he should just wait to upgrade everything at once. Perhaps 6800GT in PCIe will get to that level. Besides AMD plans to lower their processor prices real soon. In that case it'd be worth to fully wait 2-3 months if he can save up for a new graphics card too and buy pcie mobo and pcie x800xl or something for $200. Upgrading to A64 3000+ with 9800Pro will give you like 20% performance if that since 9800Pro is just slow nowdays.

I remember when 9800Pro was top of the line and my 8500 was just 1 generation behind, I upgraded to P4 3.2ghz from 1600+. The performance improvement was minimal since 8500 became too slow by then. Today 9800Pro is almost 2 generations behind (7800GTX is here and ATI R520 will be here). It's simply too slow for A64 3000+. Most importantly sahder intensive games like Far Cry, Doom 3, Halo, BF2 do not respond to cpu speed whatsoever. So in those games the performance increase will be like 5%.

 

[Powermoloch]

I would like to suggest that getting a new mobo and a CPU is a best way of an upgrade IMO, your 9800 Pro can suffice with the games out right now for a while.