How will an X800XT help my rig?

[NokiaDude]

Right now I've got $400 to spend on either 1GB of Corsair XMS DDR400 "CMX512-3200XL" RAM or a used but in new condition X800XT from the forums. Currently I play FarCry and UT2004 and some Halo PC. Right now I get decent performance in FarCry (50FPS) but I stutter during the first fast movement or long viewing distances. UT2004 runs great and Halo is alright (90FPS) with shadows and something else turned off. Which will help me better? The RAM or the X800? Maybe I should get the RAM first and buy the X800 later when I upgrade to an A64+ system?

System Rig:
Windows XP Professional SP1a
ABIT AT7-MAX 2
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton
512mb Kingston HyperX DDR333 RAM
80gb WD SE ATA100 HDD
120gb WD SE ATA100 HDD
ATI Radeon 9800Pro AGP8X
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
TDK 24/10/40x CD-RW
Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM
Samsung Floppy Drive
300w Antec PSU
ThermalTake Silent Boost
Enlight EN-7230 Case

 

[NokiaDude]

BTW, is my current rig choking my 9800Pro?

 

[GeneralGrievous]

The XTPE is THE fastest card you can buy, bar none. Right now, you can take any game, run it at 1600x1200 4x aa/16x af, and the XT will eat it alive. Every game besides Farcry is pretty much playable at 6x AA even. Mine is approaching 15000 3dmarks.

You can sell the 9800 Pro and get yourself some memory as well.

 

[Acanthus]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous
The XTPE is THE fastest card you can buy, bar none. Right now, you can take any game, run it at 1600x1200 4x aa/16x af, and the XT will eat it alive. Every game besides Farcry is pretty much playable at 6x AA even. Mine is approaching 15000 3dmarks.

You can sell the 9800 Pro and get yourself some memory as well.

Far Cry and Painkiller are not always smooth at 4x8x even on the 6800UE or X800XT-PE

 

[imported_SpitFire]

Gen is just talking about his own experiences since he's lucky enough to have one Lucky guy.

Anwways onto your post. The x800XT is even held back bya 2.8Ghz p4 and 512 ram + x800xt will stop give you choppy results. I would buy another stick ram, such as just a stanrd kingston hyperx pc2700 to match your ram and hold out until you actually need to upgrade. Save your money then when you feel its nessesary later on upgrade your system. By the way, since your ram is hyperx so it has tight timings. I bet you could get close to 3200 speeds by losening up the timings. You could also sell your processor, order a mobile 2500+ and overclock it to 2.5 Ghz, buy the x800 xt, sell your 9800pro, and get another stick of ram and be ready to go for HalfLife 2 / doom3.

 

[imported_SpitFire]

double post! Load next time

 

[Marsumane]

Buy a 6800GT and another stick of the same ram that u already have with the remaining cash. That would be the best possible combination.

 

[caz67]

Get the 6800GT, and more memory. The difference in speed is really neglible IMO. Nvidia offer better drivers, and the cards will get faster. Nvidia also offer IMO, a better overall package.

 

[Johnbear007]

I think the 6800 gt is the smart buy as well, however I think it is laughable that people still say that nvidia has better drivers. That simply is not true.

You should be able to get 3200+ out of that 2500

I have mine at 2300mhz with absolutley no effort using 1GB of hyperX I played thrgough farcry no problem with system with a 9800 pro There is no reason to get the XMS, it isn't worth the price over hyper X

 

[NokiaDude]

Right now, I'm all for ATI and I stay sway from nVidia. I just have one more question; If I do upgrade to an A64+ 939 system, and keep my 9800Pro, will I see at least 60FPS constant in FarCry? I think my 9800Pro is worth keeping for at least a year.

 

[jiffylube1024]

Between those two - an X800XT or going from 512MB to 1GB of DDR - go for the video card all the way!!

It will still give you a huge boost in your FPS, and then you can sell the 9800 Pro for ~150 or so in FS/FT and either pocket it or put it towards another stick of DDR333 (to match your current one).

The RAM will give you a 0-5% boost in games; the video card should be a massive upgrade, especially at high resolutions.

A 2500+ isn't a top of the line CPU, but it's still adequate for seeing a very nice speed boost with a new GPU.

 

[high]

another 512 would also help

 

[DarkKnight]

You really need 1 gig of ram for Farcry and newer games to run best, upgrading to 1gig really helped my system. The stuttering you get in Far cry is because you have too little ram.

 

[GeneralGrievous]

Far Cry and Painkiller are not always smooth at 4x8x even on the 6800UE or X800XT-PE

It is whenever I've played it. Though, my card is overclocked. Painkiller isn't that high in GPU requirements, so I don't know where you got that from.

Get the 6800GT, and more memory. The difference in speed is really neglible IMO.

I wouldn't say negligible. The speed difference between the GT and the Ultra (not to mention the UE and XTPE), is ~10% under load, which is quite noticable at lower framerates. It's not worth the higher cost of the Ultra, but the difference is there.

 

[PhoenixOrion]

Your first inclination is correct. Go for more ram.

If you compare your current rig to the official recommendations for D3 and HL2, you'll see the need for additional ram and your gfx card will be just fine.

You answered it yourself, x800xt pe is sooo fast that you really need p4 4ghz or a64 2.6ghz for optimal/balanced system performance.

I read 3 good articles on latest cpu to gpu scaling at guru3d.com, firingsquad.com and hardocp.com

 

[newb54]

I would get another stick of 512mb Kingston HyperX DDR333, and save up to buy a new system in about a year.

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: jiffylube1024
Between those two - an X800XT or going from 512MB to 1GB of DDR - go for the video card all the way!!

It will still give you a huge boost in your FPS, and then you can sell the 9800 Pro for ~150 or so in FS/FT and either pocket it or put it towards another stick of DDR333 (to match your current one).

The RAM will give you a 0-5% boost in games; the video card should be a massive upgrade, especially at high resolutions.

A 2500+ isn't a top of the line CPU, but it's still adequate for seeing a very nice speed boost with a new GPU.

You are going to be CPU limited with your 2500 and a X800XT

In real-world gaming situations with a slower CPU such as an AthlonXP 2500+ or a Pentium4 2.4GHz, the video performance becomes extremely bottlenecked by the CPU. We were forced to reduce resolution, AA and AF settings, as well as in-game quality settings in the case of FarCry just to get playable performance. The results between each card remained close with these slow CPUs, but there was always one card that was able to run with at least a higher resolution or AA/AF setting, and that was the X800XT-PE.

 

[CRXican]

Does this whole 2500+ businees apply to a Mobile 2500 OCd to 2200Mhz speeds? Should I be keeping the XP 3200+ that I'm currently trying to sell?

 

[GeneralGrievous]

Does this whole 2500+ businees apply to a Mobile 2500 OCd to 2200Mhz speeds? Should I be keeping the XP 3200+ that I'm currently trying to sell?

It does somewhat. My rig is a barton 2500+ overclocked to 2200 mhz. Currently I put my XTPE in my dad's athlon 64 rig, which does better in painkiller and ut2k4.

I was under the impression that resolution and AA/AF were solely dependent on the GPU and not the CPU.

 

[CRXican]

Originally posted by: GeneralGrievous

Does this whole 2500+ businees apply to a Mobile 2500 OCd to 2200Mhz speeds? Should I be keeping the XP 3200+ that I'm currently trying to sell?

It does somewhat. My rig is a barton 2500+ overclocked to 2200 mhz. Currently I put my XTPE in my dad's athlon 64 rig, which does better in painkiller and ut2k4.

I was under the impression that resolution and AA/AF were solely dependent on the GPU and not the CPU.

Oh well, about to sell the 3200+ non 64 of course. I'll deal with the mobile.

 

[jason11279]

Ok my turn

I'm thikning about making a gigantic upgrade to a full-fledged Radeon x800 XT PE(256mb), from my old OLD 64mb GeForce 3. I'm sure even a monkey could tell me ill see drastic improvement, but my real question is about the limiting factors on my comp, which is:

P4 - 2.0 GHz
512mb PC800 RDRAM
64mb GeForce 3
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card
5.1 Altec Lansing speaker set

This faithful rig has actually been VERY good to me for 2.5 years now, beating the ever living crap out of games such as Half Life, Quake 3, Call of Duty, Max Payne 2, Warcraft 3; hell even Far Cry runs admirably with medium-high settings; but i cant deny this next wave of games will murder my graphical capabilities. Im willing to beleive this new card will be limited by my processor, memory, or both. Given that, should i choose to upgrade either my processor speed (which i fear, since i havent fiddled with that before and dont know anything about picking the proper speed, compatabilities, having to buy a new motherboard also, stuff like that), or perhaps just doubling my memory (no experience there also tho it sounds alot easier: "pull out 2 memory sticks, snap 2 new ones in, done"). I also know nothing about different types of RAM, perhaps a switch is in order, not just an increase?

I'm under the impression that in a month or two i can get that card for somewhere in the area of $400 even if i have to hunt for it on obscure, lesser-known retail sites or look for promotional deals, whatever, and im not sure id want to spend more than an additional $200 upgrading the other stuff to help bring out as much of the Radeon's power as possible.
Any suggestions as to how badly that card would be crippled by my current system, and what the most cost effective way would be to minimize that penalty?

 

[Selso2109]

i get well over 100 FPS in PAinkiller with the settings maxed on my XT PE... then again i have the card paired with an AMD FX-53

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: jason11279
Any suggestions as to how badly that card would be crippled by my current system, and what the most cost effective way would be to minimize that penalty?

You'll certainly be limited by both CPU and 512MB in upcoming games, but that shouldn't stop you from getting a good graphics card IMHO. Maybe drop down to a Pro or GT instead of an XT or Ultra and save a bit on the side from the inevitable complete re-hash you need.

Your system has several problems with simply upgrading that I'm sure you are aware of, not the least of which is the RDRAM. Buying more RDRAM at this point in time is a losing proposition. Keep an eye on the Hot deals forum, and you'll be able to find an A64 + MB for $200-250 range, and then you'll want a gig of RAM, which will be another $200. There's really no getting around the need in upcoming games for more memory, and it's definitely better in the long run to look towards DDR instead of more RDRAM.

As much as I hate to tell you, I really don't think there is much getting around the fact that you need a full replacement to keep up. However, I wouldn't let that stop you from milking what you can out of it. The graphics card will still be a GIGANTIC leap in quality/speed. You'll be able to run very high res and AA/AF settings with no problems and at least get what you can out of your CPU. Then upgrade your CPU/MB/memory when you can afford it.

 

[jasonja]

Your "rig" will feel better, look younger, and all the lady rigs will take notice. No longer will the other "rigs" make fun of it, it's now a manly rig worthy of attention and respect.

 

[jason11279]

Originally posted by: Concillian
There's really no getting around the need in upcoming games for more memory, and it's definitely better in the long run to look towards DDR instead of more RDRAM.

As much as I hate to tell you, I really don't think there is much getting around the fact that you need a full replacement to keep up. However, I wouldn't let that stop you from milking what you can out of it. The graphics card will still be a GIGANTIC leap in quality/speed. You'll be able to run very high res and AA/AF settings with no problems and at least get what you can out of your CPU. Then upgrade your CPU/MB/memory when you can afford it.

Well, i can see a gig of DDR ram costing around $200 on ebay, and an X800 Pro would run me about $400. Thats about my limit right there for the time being, but since my new comps tend to be *almost* top of the line, maybe 80-90% of the way there (this one cost me $2500 brand new, and its the third one ove bought), id say those 2 upgrades should get me what i want, then say 6 months down the line i can spring for a new processor and motherboard, and just pray i can figure out how to install them (tho personally i just have this "thing" about sticking with Intel).

I also noticed on the PC Gamer reviews, the x800 XT PE mentions youll need to run a connection directly to your power supply, but the x800 PRO review makes no mention of a power supply whatsoever. I hope this means i can just replace my GeForce 3 with it and do nothing else, cuz it looked like id need a new power supply for the x800 XT PE anyhow (300-350 watt). Does that sound right, or will i STILL need a new power supply (i seem to have a 250-watt right now) for the x800 Pro as well? If not i think i may have found the 2 immediate upgrades that are right for me. Hell after the processor upgrade later on as well, im willing to bet i can get another 2 years out of this former "beast" thats past its prime.

Sadly now that i live on my own theres about $450/month that i can no longer use to save up for a full replacement. But i look forward to the huge improvements im likely to see since ive waited so long to do this.