Is at the moment a good time to upgrade?

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
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OK, here's my situation. I wanna upgrade the listed rig:

AMD Athlon XP 2400+ @ 2000MHz
Asus A7N8X Deluxe (Nforce 2)
1024 MB of Kingston ValueRAM
Nvidia Gigabyte GeForce 6600GT AGP
Western Digital WD1200JB 120.0 GB @ 7200 RPMS

The games I currently play are WoW and from time to time some FPS and Sports games. Now, it's not very urgent to upgrade my rig because the games I play run quite well. What I find annoying, is that when I log into my machine, it takes kinda "long" before the machine is ready and when I wanna start a program, it also takes it's time.
Now, I know msconfig and I disabled alot of programs in the startup. The only things I have in my startup are the most necessary things I need(which is not alot). My girlfriend got a new Dell computer about a year ago and I have to say it's blazing fast. It's nothing fancy, 1GB RAM, 3GHz P4, Serial ATA harddisk etc. So I'm a little bit "pi$$ed" off that her computer is really so much faster than mine :D
Could it only be the harddisk that makes her computer feel so much snapier? In general, I can wait for about 3 months to upgrade because I've heard that the Socket M2 will come out so I'm waiting for that moment and then definitely upgrade. I know, there will be more and more product announcements every day, but I think that's the "biggest" one that comes up in the next couple months and that's why I'm waiting this last time.
Another reason is, that I got my GeForce 6600GT not too long ago, and I would also have to upgrade the video card because I wanna/have to go the PCI Express route(I think it's a pity to upgrade the video card in less than a year so ;)).

Any input is appreciated :)
 

Bobthelost

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 2005
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I doubt M2 will be all that big a step up, there's enough life left in 939 to make it worth buying.

However if you want to wait and you can wait then yeah, by all means, if you wait for M2 then you'll have the option of the new Nvida cores too, but then there'll be the new P4s round the corner and DX 10 graphics cards just a little longer away...

What you could do is lay out the money to get a raptor 150 now and laugh cruelly at your old HD as you smash it to bits with a hammer.
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
1
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Originally posted by: Bobthelost
I doubt M2 will be all that big a step up, there's enough life left in 939 to make it worth buying.

However if you want to wait and you can wait then yeah, by all means, if you wait for M2 then you'll have the option of the new Nvida cores too, but then there'll be the new P4s round the corner and DX 10 graphics cards just a little longer away...

What you could do is lay out the money to get a raptor 150 now and laugh cruelly at your old HD as you smash it to bits with a hammer.

Is the Raptor that much faster than my current HD?
 

Malladine

Diamond Member
Mar 31, 2003
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What OS? XP feels snapier than 2k. SATA could make a difference, but if your OS are the same it's most likely her fresh windows install vs your bloated windows install :)
Sounds like you just need more stuff too.

IMO that rig is decent and will last a while longer. My rig is almost identical and I won't be touching it for a few months, if not longer.

If you were to upgrade to a 939 rig you'd need at least $400. $500+ to see serious improvement over your current machine, in WoW anwyay.

Don't bother waiting til M2.

Is Raptor that much faster...
Find BFG's very recent thread detailing raptor speeds in load times, gaming mainly but other apps will obviously benefit.

EDIT: found it for you
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
1
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Originally posted by: Malladine
What OS? XP feels snapier than 2k. SATA could make a difference, but if your OS are the same it's most likely her fresh windows install vs your bloated windows install :)
Sounds like you just need more stuff too.

IMO that rig is decent and will last a while longer. My rig is almost identical and I won't be touching it for a few months, if not longer.

If you were to upgrade to a 939 rig you'd need at least $400. $500+ to see serious improvement over your current machine, in WoW anwyay.

Don't bother waiting til M2.

Is Raptor that much faster...
Find BFG's very recent thread detailing raptor speeds in load times, gaming mainly but other apps will obviously benefit.

EDIT: found it for you


Thanks alot for finding that thread :) We both have Windows XP and I just freshly installed my machine a couple weeks ago.

Yep that's true, money is also a problem because I could spend $400 at the moment but when I get a new video card, I want at least a 7800GT(quite expensive here in Switzerland) :)


Gonna check if my motherboard supports SATA II.
 

Bobthelost

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 2005
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It's all cross compatible, you might not be able to use NCQ, but that's a good thing. Don't worry about it.
 

Malladine

Diamond Member
Mar 31, 2003
4,618
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71
Originally posted by: Bobthelost
It's all cross compatible, you might not be able to use NCQ, but that's a good thing. Don't worry about it.
sataII is compatible with ata100? That mb doesn't support sata directly ndee, i'm running it in my rig.

Given that you have XP ndee, it's her faster cpu and sata and any fewer startup processes she has that make hers speedier outside of games.
 

Bobthelost

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 2005
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Originally posted by: Malladine
Originally posted by: Bobthelost
It's all cross compatible, you might not be able to use NCQ, but that's a good thing. Don't worry about it.
sataII is compatible with ata100? That mb doesn't support sata directly ndee, i'm running it in my rig.


Grr, SATA and SATAII

*waves fist*
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
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Originally posted by: Malladine
Originally posted by: Bobthelost
It's all cross compatible, you might not be able to use NCQ, but that's a good thing. Don't worry about it.
sataII is compatible with ata100? That mb doesn't support sata directly ndee, i'm running it in my rig.

Given that you have XP ndee, it's her faster cpu and sata and any fewer startup processes she has that make hers speedier outside of games.


You sure? http://www.asus.de/products4.aspx?l1=3&l2=13&l3=56&model=216&modelmenu=1

says that the Motherboard has SATA. I gonna check my BIOS real quick.

Boblost: Ok, thanks for the info :)
 

Bobthelost

Diamond Member
Dec 1, 2005
4,360
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Yeah that confused me too, i've got SATA ports on my A7N8X deluxe :D

Yes, the raptor 150 is a SATA drive, which has been marketed as a SATA II drive by some idiot companies on websites, it's not a SATA II drive. It just isn't. Not to start on the issues with SATA II being marketing bull for everything but the server market.

If you check the raptor website then you'd see it's a SATA drive.

BUT IT'S PROBABLY A BAD IDEA FOR YOU TO BUY IT!

If you want a fast HD with lots and lots of room look at a WD4000KD.
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
1
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Malladine: Oh ok :) Whoa, finally putting that SATA Port to use :D Gonna get me the drive tomorrow :D Will tell you guys if the computer "feels" faster :) I can just clone my boot partition and copy it to the new harddisk, correct? Or does Windows need those stupid SATA drivers or else, it can't boot?(that's what I think, I think I also gonna make a slipstream windows installation CD with the SATA drivers incoporated because my floppy drive isn't working anymore :))
 

Madwand1

Diamond Member
Jan 23, 2006
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Originally posted by: Malladine
IMO that rig is decent and will last a while longer. My rig is almost identical and I won't be touching it for a few months, if not longer.

If you were to upgrade to a 939 rig you'd need at least $400. $500+ to see serious improvement over your current machine, in WoW anwyay.

I think this is not true, based on my experience benchmarking a 2600+ Athlon XP (1.9x GHz, single-channel DDR-333) vs. a 3800+ Athlon 64 x2 (2.0 GHz, single core enabled, single and dual-channel DDR-400). The differences were large enough there for me to think that you could get an improvement just going to any 939 CPU and MB. You could keep the graphics card; my benchmarks were done using a 6800 GT AGP on an Asus A7V8X vs. a MSI K8N Neo-2 F (AGP).

WoW is CPU and graphics hungry, and you're likely to be CPU/system limited in some cases. One way to test this is to drop your video resolution -- if you don't get a significant FPS improvement, then it's likely that you're system limited, and need to upgrade the CPU/system in order to get a performance improvement.

OTOH, if you're WoW performance is "fine", then it's fine -- no need to upgrade.

Besides, you're main complaint seems to be boot-time performance, and this will be dominated by your HD layout / speed, OS, and startup programs, and not limited much by your CPU.
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
1
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Originally posted by: Madwand1
I think this is not true, based on my experience benchmarking a 2600+ Athlon XP (1.9x GHz, single-channel DDR-333) vs. a 3800+ Athlon 64 x2 (2.0 GHz, single core enabled, single and dual-channel DDR-400). The differences were large enough there for me to think that you could get an improvement just going to any 939 CPU and MB. You could keep the graphics card; my benchmarks were done using a 6800 GT AGP on an Asus A7V8X vs. a MSI K8N Neo-2 F (AGP).

WoW is CPU and graphics hungry, and you're likely to be CPU/system limited in some cases. One way to test this is to drop your video resolution -- if you don't get a significant FPS improvement, then it's likely that you're system limited, and need to upgrade the CPU/system in order to get a performance improvement.

OTOH, if you're WoW performance is "fine", then it's fine -- no need to upgrade.

Besides, you're main complaint seems to be boot-time performance, and this will be dominated by your HD layout / speed, OS, and startup programs, and not limited much by your CPU.

My main complaint is not really boot-time performance, I actually just want a real snappy workstation. When I click on Dreamweaver, it should just pop up and not take about 10-15 seconds. Or when I Alt-Tab out of a game, it shouldn't be a problem, everything should just be quick :)

BTW, WoW runs at 1680x1050 with about 35fps and it's pretty fine. As said, my main complaint is "Windows Performance".
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
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Originally posted by: ndee
My main complaint is not really boot-time performance, I actually just want a real snappy workstation. When I click on Dreamweaver, it should just pop up and not take about 10-15 seconds.

When you switch applications, or when you open the app for the first time? It's never going to be "instant" unless you leave it running all the time.

Or when I Alt-Tab out of a game, it shouldn't be a problem, everything should just be quick :)

Step up to 2GB of RAM -- or more, if you want to leave a lot of crap open in the background. No OS can help you if you open more apps than you have physical memory for.
 

Madwand1

Diamond Member
Jan 23, 2006
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My main complaint is not really boot-time performance, I actually just want a real snappy workstation. When I click on Dreamweaver, it should just pop up and not take about 10-15 seconds. Or when I Alt-Tab out of a game, it shouldn't be a problem, everything should just be quick :)

This performance is going to be dominated by your HD (speed, configuration, layout) and RAM (availability, usage), except when you're leaving applications working -- there a dual-core CPU would help too.

Check that your IDE driver hasn't degenerated to PIO by chance; defrag your drive if you haven't already done so; check how much memory you're using from time to time via Task Manager. Look at peak memory and virtual memory usage by process. A newer bigger HD is likely to give you a performance improvement here, as could the addition of another drive, and separating your main file access drive from your swap / temp drive.

There are also a couple of tweaks that you can do -- e.g. turning off 8.3 name creation (assuming your apps don't need this) and last-accessed time-stamping. You can search Microsoft for more on this.
 

ndee

Lifer
Jul 18, 2000
12,680
1
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Matthias99: When I start Dreamweaver, it just takes a little bit too long for my taste and I can hear how the harddisk "works" in the background.

Madwand1: Thanks for the tips, I gonna check some of them out :)

BTW, if I get the Raptor 150, the best thing would be to have two of them: One for the system and one for games/applications, correct? Will there be a big difference if I have my system on the same drive as my games/applications?
 

Matthias99

Diamond Member
Oct 7, 2003
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Originally posted by: ndee
Matthias99: When I start Dreamweaver, it just takes a little bit too long for my taste and I can hear how the harddisk "works" in the background.

A faster hard drive (like the aforementioned Raptor 150GB) will help, but personally I'd invest the cash elsewhere and live with waiting a couple seconds when you start up Dreamweaver. It's a lot of money for very little real-world gain.

BTW, if I get the Raptor 150, the best thing would be to have two of them: One for the system and one for games/applications, correct? Will there be a big difference if I have my system on the same drive as my games/applications?

I doubt you'd notice much of a difference.
 

SoundTheSurrender

Diamond Member
Mar 13, 2005
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I don't think it is and do. I think the 7800GT is a weak card though, and I honestly think Nvidia is doing it for a reason. The reviews seem to rave them but the numbers aren't to impressive.

Thats if your looking for a new videocard :)
 

fire400

Diamond Member
Nov 21, 2005
5,204
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anytime would be good to upgrade, if you got cash, then you have an upgrade option. otherwise, don't count on it, pay your rent