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Is it worth upgrading?

D

deadlock

Member
Hi folks,

I've had my current right for about 18 months now, and I've been bitten by the upgrade bug. I don't exactly *need* to upgrade for any particular reason, but if the performance will take a boost then I'm game.

At the moment I'm running an Athlon XP Barton 2500+ on a MSI-K7N2. I've got two 512MB sticks of Crucial PC2700 RAM in there along with a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro. Hard drive wise there are two IDE 160GB Seagate 7200/8s.

I've been eyeing up a nice system revamp, specifically a Winchester Athlon 64 3500+ on a Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939. Some questions:

1) I haven't been in the scene for a while, so would appreciate some brief pointers. Will my general performance levels increase with the upgrade to the 3500+? Will I notice much of a difference in general computing, some gaming etc.? I'm trying to determine whether there's enough of a significant real-world speed increase over my current rig to justify an upgrade.

2) I think the board supports PC4000 RAM. Will I notice a difference by upgrading to a gig of PC4000 as opposed to sticking with my PC2700? Is there any worth in upgrading to 2GBs? And finally, is there anything special about these fancy multi-coloured RAM packages (e.g. Crucial Ballistix) as opposed to run-of-the-mill memory from the same company, assuming the same clock speed?

3) How much quicker is S-ATA over IDE? I'm quite tempted to shell out for a 200GB Seagate IDE drive, but again only if it's actually worth it. Is S-ATA actually quicker than IDE and would I notice it?

Thanks a lot for any advice guys!

D
 
The tough part is upgrading and not going to pci-x, your saving money(using the 9800) but your upgrade path is limited. I don't think you will notice the difference between sata and ide.


Stick with what you have for another 6months.


Tom
 
Wait till the summer, for prices to go down & for more selection of 939 mobo's.

Regards,
Jose
 
The 3500+ winnies are HORRENDOUSLY overpriced right now. Cool your heels for a few weeks, until the OEMs are around 280, where they belong.
 
1. You'll notice some improvement by going to the 3500+. You'll definitely get a few more FPS in games. Whether it's enough to justify the cost is up to you.
2. The expensive RAM like Crucial Ballistix is designed to run at tighter timings at faster speeds. I'd suggest you go with 1 GB instead of 2. You will not get any performance gains by running 2GB IMO (unless you're into intense graphics rendering or video editing). Also, if you run 4 512MB DIMMS they will be forced down to DDR333 instead of DDR400 speeds.
3. SATA offers no performance increase over IDE.
 
Originally posted by: Budmantom
The tough part is upgrading and not going to pci-x, your saving money(using the 9800) but your upgrade path is limited. I don't think you will notice the difference between sata and ide.


Stick with what you have for another 6months.


Tom
Click to expand...

agree almost 100%, other than you WILL NOTICE NO differnece in SATA over IDE, because the HDD spindle is the limiter not the bus. If you want a faster HDD you have to go to the Raptor or the 16mb cache HDD to see any difference, and even then it is really small.

I know what the bug feels like and the thought of not scratching for 6 months sucks, so if you are interested in upgrading on the cheap you may want to look at getting a nf3 motherboard (~125) and a 3000+ Winchester (158) and a GB of pc-4000 RAM (~180) . OC to 250 FSB (2.25 GHz) and keep your 9800pro. So for under 500 you have a nice fast system, and with a video card upgrade next summer/fall (maybe a 6800GT for hopefully $250) it will last you another year. But by then Dual core CPUs will be in force, PCIe, and DDR2 more than likely, so the next upgrade is going to cost some cash, so you may want to go easy on this one.

kd
 
Originally posted by: Budmantom
The tough part is upgrading and not going to pci-x, your saving money(using the 9800) but your upgrade path is limited. I don't think you will notice the difference between sata and ide.


Stick with what you have for another 6months.


Tom
Click to expand...

Why the heck would someone buy into a moribund technology like PCI-X?????
 
Originally posted by: deadlock
Hi folks,

I've had my current right for about 18 months now, and I've been bitten by the upgrade bug. I don't exactly *need* to upgrade for any particular reason, but if the performance will take a boost then I'm game.

At the moment I'm running an Athlon XP Barton 2500+ on a MSI-K7N2. I've got two 512MB sticks of Crucial PC2700 RAM in there along with a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro. Hard drive wise there are two IDE 160GB Seagate 7200/8s.

I've been eyeing up a nice system revamp, specifically a Winchester Athlon 64 3500+ on a Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939. Some questions:

1) I haven't been in the scene for a while, so would appreciate some brief pointers. Will my general performance levels increase with the upgrade to the 3500+? Will I notice much of a difference in general computing, some gaming etc.? I'm trying to determine whether there's enough of a significant real-world speed increase over my current rig to justify an upgrade.

2) I think the board supports PC4000 RAM. Will I notice a difference by upgrading to a gig of PC4000 as opposed to sticking with my PC2700? Is there any worth in upgrading to 2GBs? And finally, is there anything special about these fancy multi-coloured RAM packages (e.g. Crucial Ballistix) as opposed to run-of-the-mill memory from the same company, assuming the same clock speed?

3) How much quicker is S-ATA over IDE? I'm quite tempted to shell out for a 200GB Seagate IDE drive, but again only if it's actually worth it. Is S-ATA actually quicker than IDE and would I notice it?

Thanks a lot for any advice guys!

D
Click to expand...

Well, Depends. if your current system is adequate for your normal daily usage, then there is no need to upgrade.

 
Originally posted by: deadlock
Hi folks,

I've had my current right for about 18 months now, and I've been bitten by the upgrade bug. I don't exactly *need* to upgrade for any particular reason, but if the performance will take a boost then I'm game.

At the moment I'm running an Athlon XP Barton 2500+ on a MSI-K7N2. I've got two 512MB sticks of Crucial PC2700 RAM in there along with a 128MB Radeon 9800 Pro. Hard drive wise there are two IDE 160GB Seagate 7200/8s.

I've been eyeing up a nice system revamp, specifically a Winchester Athlon 64 3500+ on a Gigabyte GA-K8NS Ultra-939. Some questions:

1) I haven't been in the scene for a while, so would appreciate some brief pointers. Will my general performance levels increase with the upgrade to the 3500+? Will I notice much of a difference in general computing, some gaming etc.? I'm trying to determine whether there's enough of a significant real-world speed increase over my current rig to justify an upgrade.

2) I think the board supports PC4000 RAM. Will I notice a difference by upgrading to a gig of PC4000 as opposed to sticking with my PC2700? Is there any worth in upgrading to 2GBs? And finally, is there anything special about these fancy multi-coloured RAM packages (e.g. Crucial Ballistix) as opposed to run-of-the-mill memory from the same company, assuming the same clock speed?

3) How much quicker is S-ATA over IDE? I'm quite tempted to shell out for a 200GB Seagate IDE drive, but again only if it's actually worth it. Is S-ATA actually quicker than IDE and would I notice it?

Thanks a lot for any advice guys!

D
Click to expand...


I can address some of your questions.

I'd wait on a RAM upgrade as long as possible; chances are some processors will be released in the next year or two from AMD that will take advantage of better RAM (and different types too) than what's available now. There's no worth in your situation in adding another gig of memory, unless you're currently running applications that exhaust what you have now (causing paging and excessive slowness).

I'd wait on a hard-drive purchase, unless you really need one right now. You wouldn't notice a difference between SATA and IDE, honestly.

I'd take Budmantom's advice and wait a while. You'll get better stuff for your money.
 
I have a similiar setup only running a 5900XT and 512mb of PC3200 memory. The CPU is OCed.

I am forcing myself to avoid any sort of upgrade until Q3 2005. I am holding out for Dual Cores, for PCI-E to become more prominent etc...

Yes you will notice a difference betweent the CPU's a fairly large difference at that, but IMO if you wait longer everything will settle.

Also to clarify some things, no Motherboard supports PC4000. THe current JEDEC standard is PC3200 (3.2 Gig of bandwidth). Anything above that YMMV (Your Mileage may vary).

As for IDE over SATA differences are about 1-2% due to manf boosting performance to make it seem worth it. What you really want to wait for is SATAII with NCQ, which offers boosts up to 15% at times.

-Kevin
 
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