Need to Upgrade to play FEAR/SS2 etc. yada yada

[TheNewGuy8]

Hey guys. Long time reader first time poster as that story goes, here with a question about upgrades, surprise surprise.

Here's the story - I've been out of the country for the past 6 months or so, and thus haven't been gaming. Well lucky me, in my absence some truly awsome games have come out that I really want to play (FEAR, COD2, SS2, etc.). Plus, I know I'll be looking forward to playing titles coming out in the future.

So - my system is really old at this point. It was pretty high end when I built it, but that was about...oh...2.5 years ago. Let's see if I can remember the setup:

P4 3.06ghz 533fsb HT
dont remember MB
Radeon 9700pro
1gb Corsair PC2700 or 3200, not sure.

So in order to play games like F.E.A.R. I know I'll need alot of upgrades. I don't want to go crazy (no $700 vid. card) but I'm thinking of spending around $600-$700. Think it can be done?

From the research I've done it seems the NVidia 7800 or 6800 are the best choices for graphics.

As for MoBo and CPU? I'm totally lost - I imagine an AMD is the way to go right now. But single core or dual core? speeds? I'm afraid I'd always looked at Intel's before this, so I really dont know much about the AMD lingo.

And as for memory..well I'm also a bit lost there.

I'd love any help I can get. Man, I'm away for 6 months and things change SO much!

 

[Malladine]

Yes it can be done easily. You're looking at 3 pieces as you know:

Motherboard, CPU and Video Card

$570 total

There ya go

Keep yer ram, nothing has changed there worth mentioning.

 

[ronach]

Not necessary, I have just about the same sys as you, but I know my ram is 3200. All you need is a 6800 series card with 256mb on it, not a cheapy tho, mine is a 6800gt O/Ced to ultra, been running it for over a year now. I play all the latest games except Battlefield 2, that one just doesn't turn me on. Quake 4, runs excellent since the 105 patch that enhances HT CPU's, but ran just fine before, Fear no problem at all, SS2 your gonna love it, half life 2...hey...what can I say, Doom 3 samo. There you have it. You have the ball now.

When you done with it, sell the whole sys to someone else.

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: Malladine
Yes it can be done easily. You're looking at 3 pieces as you know:

Motherboard, CPU and Video Card

$570 total

There ya go

Keep yer ram, nothing has changed there worth mentioning.

I agree with Malladine.
If your going for a processor upgrade, AMD is deffinitly the way to go. Those specs are fine. Hell save some money and go for the 3000+. It'll overclock the same. You'll probably hit 2.5ish on air with the 3000+ with a good HS.
As for the video card, the 7800GT is the way to go. They seem to get cheaper everyday, hell, there proablaby less than the 6800GT's since they probably stopped making them.
Take your 1gig of Corsair stuff and put it in your new rig, and then get another gig to make it 2 gigs. If you have 2x512 now, i guess it's ok, but don't put 4x512 in an AMD rig, it will make the command rate 2T which will lower performance.
It all depends on your budget. if you want to upgrade for the future, then just get a 2gb value kit from any of the major memory brands. Does anyone else agree with me?

 

[Malladine]

2gb ram is cheap as hell these days. Under $200 for a 2gb "dual channel" kit - though if you are sitting on 2x512 a complete ram swap like that in addition to the other parts would put you over your budget newguy8

 

[Goi]

Actually, your current system is still pretty fast, except for the video card. If you're looking for a cheap upgrade that would last you another 1-2 years, I would suggest a 6800GT or higher AGP, or an X800/X850 variant. In particular, the X850XT AGP 256MB can be purchased now for $250 AR, which makes it an excellent cheap upgrade for you.

If you're looking for a complete system upgrade, $600-700 won't buy you much. On the processor side you'd get a slightly faster AMD chip that could possibly be a lateral move from your current P4. If you have PC3200 memory there's no urgent need to upgrade, but if you have PC2700 you might wanna pick up some faster modules.

Overall, I'd say go for the cheap video card upgrade and save some money for later. THe X850XT is still a very worthy card. I'd get one if I didn't already have a 6800GT AGP.

 

[TheNewGuy8]

A feq questions:

Goi - you really think my current rig with just that video card upgrade could handle games like FEAR at good settings? I have a Dell LCD that is beautiful but only displays at 1600x1200. So there's that.

wizboy111 - can you explain that 4x512 = bad thing? I'm not familiar with RAM. would 2x512 + 1 1gb be ok? And if the mem. does turn out to be 2700 should I just toss it all and get 2gb new?

Also - I need to get a new harddrive, and I've read that getting anything but a SATA2 at this point doesn't make sense - but to use SATA2 I'd need a new Mobo.

Another q - can anyone draw a comparison between my Pr 3.06 HT and an AMD chip? I can't get the different speed measurments straight in my head.

Thanks again

 

[Goi]

Well considering it's running at 3GHz, yeah I would say it's an acceptable rig to play F.E.A.R. This is a very GPU dependent game, and is rather CPU independent as long as you have a decent one, and your P4 is definitely decent. If you go over to xbitlabs they have 2 articles that basically show that CPU isn't all that important in modern games, and F.E.A.R. is one of the games that show almost no difference among various CPUS. I'm not saying that you'd be able to run it at the highest settings, but something like 1024x768 with 2xAA would be possible while maintaining playable framerates. You wouldn't be able to do much more than that unless you have a current generation CPU like an nvidia 7800 series or ATI X1800 series card.

As a comparison, I have a S754 A64 2.5GHz with a 6800GT and 1GB PC4000 memory and I run F.E.A.R. at 1024x768, 2xAA. A friend of mine has an S754 A64 3000+ with an X850XT and 1GB PC2100(recycled) memory and he plays it at 1024x768 except w/o AA. His framerates are higher than mine though(avg 60+FPS, 0% below 25FPS, 80+% above 40FPS), so he can definitely bump up the AA and/or resolution.

Your CPU would probably be comparable to a A64 or Sempron 2800+ or something similar. I'm not entirely sure but that's what I'm guessing.

 

[TheNewGuy8]

Goi - I dont think I can play at 1024x768 - my LCD has a native res. of 1600x1200.

Another question - How long should I wait to buy this stuff? Theres a deal in the "hot deals" forum right now for a 7800GT with Quake4 for $285. Seems awsome, but in a month everything could change, right?

Any other opinions on things? If I want to play SS2, FEAR, etc - can I get away with JUST upgrading the vid. card to the 6800GT (agp?) Or should I just plunk down the money and go for a middle Athlon64 and the 7800GT with a new MOBO?

 

[alimoalem]

go with the video card upgrade for now. keep the system for a year then sell it and spend the rest of your money on a new rig. agp won't last you much longer. u can wait for the 7800gt if u want but you do realize that in a month u may be asking once more "will the price drop in a month?" if you do get the 7800, get a 3200+ (3700 if you don't mind spending a little extra) or a 3000+ if u truly are on a budget. then get a decent mobo and you'll still be just under $600.

 

[TheNewGuy8]

As for the month comment - I didn't mean that just in terms of possible price drop. I'm not going to be back in the states until the very end of January, so I won't be able to even start the upgrade until basically February. I heard a new set of Vid. Cards was coming out, so I thought that may change things.

Ronach - your sig system is pretty much what mine would be if I just up'd the Vid. card. What specs do you play FEAR at? I'm not a fan of playing with hugely dummed down graphics - obviously you can almost never play stuff at the top settings, but I dont want firefights to turn into 15 FPS or have my textures look so toned down they don't take advantage of what the game can accomplish. Also, as I said, I'll be playing at 1600x1200 by necessity. I just want to make sure that if I pop the $200 on the card it will actually be able to run these games at good settings, and not be a super compromise. And again, I wont even be doing this for a month or so.

 

[Skott]

The 6800U arent cheap. You'd think they would be by now but they ain't. As mentioned right now the weakest part is the video card. So, you have to ask yourself this question, and only you can really decide this. Do you want to try and get a 6800U and live with it for another year or so or do you want to build/upgrade to a newer system now?

I'm in something of a similar situation like yourself. Current rig is like yours but I have a 9800Pro 256 vid card. I looked at the 6800U and they want $500 for them. If I'm gonna pay $500 for a vid card I want a PCIe setup. So what I decided was to build a new system. The current one I'll pass down to my daughter since she is due for something better but doesnt do heavy gaming. I decided to build now instead of waiting another year. But thats just me. I have the financial ability to do so.

 

[0roo0roo]

u don't need to spend much, all you need is something better than a 6600gt, ...about 200 dollars of video card.. or 300 if u wish. my 100 dollar gt plays fear ok at medium so bump it up a hundred or two and u got some sweet gameplay. your cpu/ram is just fine, use the money for the video card. theres absolutely no need for you to upgrade your cpu yet.

 

[Mogadon]

I think this article from anandtech maybe useful to you.

You only have the option of running at a resolution of 1600*1200 otherwise I would say the 6800Ultra upgrade would defintely do it as it is I am not so sure.

I can run FEAR at medium detail fine on the system in my sig at 1024*768.

 

[0roo0roo]

yea if you only have the option of running at 1600x1200 def sink ur entire upgrade budget into the vid card.

 

[Mogadon]

which in turn requires a mobo, cpu and video card upgrade as he's running AGP at the moment and the 7800s are PCIE.

Should be fine keeping the RAM though and there's been some good recommendations as to the exact components earlier in the thread.

You may want to check out this Epox mobo.

 

[Spike]

I'm not sure what all this talk about only running the game in 1600x1200. You have a Dell LCD that does 1600x1200, that means a 2001fp (at least that is the only 1600x1200 dell LCD I know) and the 2001fp scale VERY well. I have played games randing from 640x480 to the full 1600x1200 on a 2001 and it looked decent at all resolutions but was especially nice at 1024x768, 1280x960, and, of course, 1600x1200. I would not let the res of the monitor change your opinion of the uprade.

My personal advice would be to get a nice AGP vid card like a X850 XT or something in the high end ATI range and live with that for another year. Then you can look at the 7800GTX 512mb and a new core system as the prices will be better then. Just a suggestion

-spike

 

[TheNewGuy8]

And the debate rages on!

Its tempting to just get away with a smaller vid. card upgrade for a year or so, thats for sure.

Would it make more sense to just sell the system I have now, though? What do you think that could reasonably fetch? ITs in a nice Lanboy case, CPU has a 120xp hs/f on it, 9700pro has a nice aftermarket hs/f on it as well. 80 or 120gb drive, cant remember (damn being in spain right now and away from my rig).

Then again - since in a year and a half I graduate college, and who knows whats going to happen at that point, it may make more sense to do the smaller upgrade so I dont spend $700 now and then in a year realize I'm just going to go travelling around for a few years and not use the system.

Damn you variables!

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Spike
I'm not sure what all this talk about only running the game in 1600x1200. You have a Dell LCD that does 1600x1200, that means a 2001fp (at least that is the only 1600x1200 dell LCD I know) and the 2001fp scale VERY well. I have played games randing from 640x480 to the full 1600x1200 on a 2001 and it looked decent at all resolutions but was especially nice at 1024x768, 1280x960, and, of course, 1600x1200. I would not let the res of the monitor change your opinion of the uprade.

My personal advice would be to get a nice AGP vid card like a X850 XT or something in the high end ATI range and live with that for another year. Then you can look at the 7800GTX 512mb and a new core system as the prices will be better then. Just a suggestion

-spike

yea pretty much, if he's gotta make the jump to pcie he should do it when his system gets a little older. i've heard there are x800 gto^2 that can be easily flashed into x850? could be an option. still rather not use scaling though, not optimal, but unless he's loaded..save money by waiting for now

 

[Mitul89]

 

[Mitul89]

Actually your computer is still decent. P4 at 3.0ghz is good enough to handle those games. Your going to need upgrade in the vid card to Nvidia either 6800 or 7800. Your ram i think its fine. I mean i have 512MB, Radeon 9600 xt, and Athlon 2400 and Halo runs really smooth wtih hight settings, even Doom 3 runs smooth. So you wont need a big upgrade,i'd say upgrade the vid card.

 

[Malak]

Well 2 options:

You could just upgrade the video card for now, but since you are on AGP you have a limit. Everything else with your machine is just fine, so a 6800U would work.

Or you could upgrade it all, move up to PCI-E, and be ready for the next gen in the next year. The 6800U would be worthless then, so if you do option 1 you'd be out a video card that is fairly new.

 

[TheNewGuy8]

Malak hit the nail on the head I think. If I get the 6800 then I´m out $200 and in a year need to send another $1k or so to completely upgrade again. While if I just do the full upgrade now I can get away with...oh...$700 or so and be good for about 2.5 years or so, give or take a vid. card.

Gah. you know it probably all balances out in the end.

Just to make sure - the 6800 will really be ok with these games at 16x12 (i know it can scale, but im sensitive to the distortion problems)?

thanks for all the advice, by the way.

 

[RussianSensation]

Originally posted by: Spike

My personal advice would be to get a nice AGP vid card like a X850 XT or something in the high end ATI range and live with that for another year. Then you can look at the 7800GTX 512mb and a new core system as the prices will be better then. Just a suggestion

-spike

I totally agree for several reasons:

1) getting new ram, new A64 single core, new motherboard and 7800GT isnt going to give you 2x the performance increase over simply buying $250 x850xt at microcenter. The above setup will cost you about $600-700. Not worth the price/performance.

2) getting a new A64 single core cpu is a wash imo. If i was going to upgrade, I'd probably go dual-core at this point. Problem is, not many games optimize for dual-core and S939 is moving to AM2 with DDR2. But dual-core still gives you snappiness everywhere else besides gaming. So it'll probably be better to upgrade everything in 1 year. Instead, you'll be stuck with obsolete DDR1, S939 that no one wants and 7800GT which by then wont be much faster than x850xt as games become even more dependent on GPU. That's when you'll need R600 and G80.

 

[TheNewGuy8]

Originally posted by: RussianSensation

Originally posted by: Spike

My personal advice would be to get a nice AGP vid card like a X850 XT or something in the high end ATI range and live with that for another year. Then you can look at the 7800GTX 512mb and a new core system as the prices will be better then. Just a suggestion

-spike

I totally agree for several reasons:

1) getting new ram, new A64 single core, new motherboard and 7800GT isnt going to give you 2x the performance increase over simply buying $250 x850xt at microcenter. The above setup will cost you about $600-700. Not worth the price/performance.

2) getting a new A64 single core cpu is a wash imo. If i was going to upgrade, I'd probably go dual-core at this point. Problem is, not many games optimize for dual-core and S939 is moving to AM2 with DDR2. But dual-core still gives you snappiness everywhere else besides gaming. So it'll probably be better to upgrade everything in 1 year. Instead, you'll be stuck with obsolete DDR1, S939 that no one wants and 7800GT which by then wont be much faster than x850xt as games become even more dependent on GPU. That's when you'll need R600 and G80.

Very well put - thank you. Now I´m hearing different cards being thrown around, the x850xt, and the 6800. Which would be better?

I think you´re right though, I´m going to wait until the dual cores become more mainstream and hobble along on what I have for now.

so - what video card to get? Reminder, I have a P4 3.06 533fsb (NOT overclocked, though at this point, since its old, im more than willing to try. I have an XP120 HSF on it). Radeon 9700pro, which will go bye bye, and a P4P800 series mobo (just remembered).