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my rig is almost two years old...and yet its still considered fast

M

Maverick

Diamond Member
It feels like Moore's law doesn't apply anymore. Its been well over 18 months since I built my computer and I've got the crazy upgrade bug.

I built this rig in August of 2002. Here are the main specs:

Pentium 4 2.53 ghz with 533 mhz bus
512 MB Corsair XMS 3200 DDR 400
Radeon 9700 pro 128 MB

When I built the rig, I was upgrading from a 1.2 ghz Athlon T-bird...it was easy to justify the upgrade since there was a processor available that was "twice as fast."

Is there anything out yet that will give me as big a performance boost as my previous upgrade did? Last time I waited this long before a major upgrade I was running a 486 DX2 and I upgraded to a Pentium 133.
 
Yeah, my 2.4GHz P4 is still a decent machine, and it's getting close to two years old. I've been wanting to upgrade, but just can't justify it. Hardware advances do seem to be coming slower recently.
 
Probably not... you could get an A64 system, or a P4c and OC it, and you might get a fair bit more performance. But your system is still close enough to curent that you won't get spectacular gains... even ram timings haven't improved much since you built your box. Try to force yourself to wait until the 64-bit thing sorts itself out, and get a fast system with mature 64-bit hardware and OS, and probably 2nd gen PCI-E, etc...
 
In the last 18 months CPU clocks speeds on pentium 4's have only increased by 11%.............


moore's law not holding true ? well its still is...transistor count has grown by quite alot. The latest precott and athlon 64 have between 110 - 130 million transistors........thats quite abit more then the northwood's 55 million..


What this really situation really show is that the limits of superscalar Processor architecture (RISC) is being reached... ...Almost every CPU manfacturer is now going to Dual Core designs now.....designs like IBM's POWER4 and POWER5, HP's PA8800 , SUN's Ultrasparc 4......all dual core designs............
 
I definitely notice slowdowns in some games (far cry) and my loading times are pretty long in others...but if I go out and look at reviews for the latest hardware, nothing really jumps off the page as being a lot faster.
Part of me wants to just throw in another stick of ram and see where that takes me...but I'd rather upgrade memory, CPU, and mobo all at once.

*sigh* decisions decisions...

Its nice to know that others are in the same boat. One of my buddies got all excited the other day because he got a 9800 Pro...I was thinking "man I've had a card almost as good as that for like two years". Made me feel like some sort of upgrade snob 🙂
 
maybe you should buy the ram... if you're lucky, the best system for you in 6-12 months will be an AMD, and you'll still be able to use the ram (probably will hav eto buy ddr2 if the best system turns out to be intel!)
 
yeah...also maybe this is a good time to finally pony up the dough for an LCD monitor...I keep putting that off due to wanting to upgrade the actual box.
 
I have over a year old comp w. Asus P4G8X deluxe (dual channel/ Agp 8x...) and P4 3,06Ghz (@3,4Ghz) and Nvidia 5900Ultra 256Mb, and no... I am not thinking of an upgrade.
 
I would recommend 1 gig ram, and an X800pro video card, and maybe a raptor. That should fix your game loading problems. CPU is OK for now.
 
Looking at your system specs, you have an IBM 75GXP as your system drive. If you want to upgrade something... yeah. 😉 15000rpm SCSI? Could you live with an 18GB boot drive? 😀 But that extra 512MB of RAM is still a good idea too. You can always sell it off when you're done with it, maybe even for a profit if RAM prices go up some more 😛
 
haha yeah that 75 GXP definitely needs to go...I keep putting off changing it because of wanting serial ATA.

Not thinking of doing an X800 video card because of the whole PCI-E vs AGP argument. Looks like the ram upgrade is my best option.
 
i'm in your situation down to the 75gxp, 512 memory, and 9700pro. Just bought ut2004 and it runs smooth as silk at 1024 and 16X AF (no AA). i guess I'm pleased, but i miss the fun too in what seemed to be decent upgrade every 4-6 months.

I'll see what my machine does in D3 and HL2 and then see if any hardware on the market can solve any issues.
 
UT2004 runs for me but there are occassional hiccups here and there...I'm guessing thats due to the ram. Definitely going to upgrade that.
 
I needed to read this. I've been going back and forth for a month now wheather I need to upgrade my P4 533fsb 2.4b oc to 2.57 to a athlon 64 system or not. I can tell you this, puting another 512 stick of 2700 and going to 1 gig of ram did help with loading games and has made the computer "feel" a hair quicker. I am going to upgrade the harddrive but I'm not convinced that anything else would make that much more difference at this point. Ut and Painkiller both run just fine for me. When the video cards start to level out in price, then I'll think of upgrading my 9800 np.
 
You know what feels really weird? I wanted to do a small upgrade to my PC and ended up going back 2 YEARS in reviews on Anandtech just to find some decent reviews. I've never gone back 2 years for a review of hardware I plan to buy. And even weirder is the fact that this 2 year old hardware is still good stuff!
 
My Rig I made in Novembar 2002, India, costed me a lot at that time, but still running as nothing beats it even now, a few things have upgraded


Pentium 4 3.06 GHz with 533 FSB & HT
2X256 MB Kingston DDR400 RAM running in dual channel DDR333 (Previously had 1X256 MB DDR333)
Intel 865GBF motherboard with Gigabit LAN (Previously had Intel 845GEBV2)
Soundblaster Audigy with Logitech Z-340 Speakers (Was using onboard audio)
Antec True power 430 W PSU
Samsung 80 GB HDD with 2 MB Buffer (Was using a 20 Samsung 20 GB HDD)
Samsung SM-352B combo drive with 52/24/52/16X (CD-ROM)
iSound i860MV headphones (Never had these, baught last year in novembar)
Logitech Elite keyboard
Logitech MX 300 optical mouse (Was using Logitech Optical Mouse)
Quantam Chassis
Zalman CNPS AlCu-7000 HSF (Was using stock cooler)
 
Originally posted by: Maverick
yeah...also maybe this is a good time to finally pony up the dough for an LCD monitor...I keep putting that off due to wanting to upgrade the actual box.
Click to expand...

yea man, i just got an lcd myself. i think it's the biggest upgrade you can get especially wehn compared to a typical crt. i bought a samsung 170n. very thin bezels, super crisp display.

i was using a viewsonic v70f crt and now i have them both hooked up to my 9800pro and the crt doesn't even compare to the lcd. the lcd is so nice that i want to get another one. (no problems with ghosting for me either).
 
Originally posted by: wkwong
Originally posted by: Maverick
yeah...also maybe this is a good time to finally pony up the dough for an LCD monitor...I keep putting that off due to wanting to upgrade the actual box.
Click to expand...

yea man, i just got an lcd myself. i think it's the biggest upgrade you can get especially wehn compared to a typical crt. i bought a samsung 170n. very thin bezels, super crisp display.

i was using a viewsonic v70f crt and now i have them both hooked up to my 9800pro and the crt doesn't even compare to the lcd. the lcd is so nice that i want to get another one. (no problems with ghosting for me either).
Click to expand...

i keep putting it off for lower response times... but will it ever get less than 12?
 
When you spend the extra money and build a great system, it will last the extra year. Many people buy the lowest priced parts, and build budget systems. That's fine if you don't have a lot of money, but those who pay more are buying time.
LCD monitor is a good choice for now.
Wait for HL2/D3 to come out later this summer. That's when the hardware buying will really take off.
939 and the Nvidia 6800 will be readily available in stores by then.
 
I'd replace the GXP for reliability as well as speed. AT's newest HDD article shows that the current generation of 7200RPM drives are a bit faster than the fastest older gen driver (GXP/D740X).

LCD monitors are always nice and 25ms is acceptable to me. My Samsung 173T using DVI shows very little ghosting and is only apparent when you really look for it. If 25ms is this good already, 16ms should be very decent.
 
Originally posted by: Maverick
It feels like Moore's law doesn't apply anymore. Its been well over 18 months since I built my computer and I've got the crazy upgrade bug.

I built this rig in August of 2002. Here are the main specs:

Pentium 4 2.53 ghz with 533 mhz bus
512 MB Corsair XMS 3200 DDR 400
Radeon 9700 pro 128 MB

When I built the rig, I was upgrading from a 1.2 ghz Athlon T-bird...it was easy to justify the upgrade since there was a processor available that was "twice as fast."

Is there anything out yet that will give me as big a performance boost as my previous upgrade did? Last time I waited this long before a major upgrade I was running a 486 DX2 and I upgraded to a Pentium 133.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't change a think, you know your're not really using your Corsair to its full potential.... Personally, I'd be competely satsified.
 
It all depends on what your doing with your rig, if your word processing the best setup won't feel any faster but if your playing the newest games you can't have a cpu/gpu that's fast enough.

I play NR2003 this sim is 16 months old and I have a P IV 3.4ghz and a 9800pro and I could still use more power.

Upgrade to a A64 3800+, X800XT PE and a Raptor and you should feel a nice little boost.


Tom
 
Seems like there's a lot of us out there who are in the 2.4 ghz+ northwood crowd that are fighting our upgrade instincts! Just feels weird having a two year old computer that can still hang with the best of them. Last time I had a two year old rig I couldn't even play Quake3!

Hopefully there'll be reason to upgrade soon.
 
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