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New Processor or Videocard ?

E

Entarus

Junior Member
Hello ,

I plan to be upgrading my system. Right now I have an :

-Athlon 2500+
-Asus A7N8-X
-512 Twinmos PC3200
-Ati Radeon 9800 (non-pro)


Now I have a maxium of about 900 Euro/dollar to spent. I am looking to push mainly gaming preformance.

I have considered the following two options :

----------
-Geforce 6800 Ultra
-Extra 512 MB
-470 W power supply

Price : About 750 Euro/Dollar

Problems : I am afraid that if I get this card my processor will seriously hold it back , not warranting the price I pay for the video card.
--------------------
-AMD Athlon 64 3800+
-Extra 512MB
-Socket 939 miotherboard

Price : About 900 Euro/dollar.

Problems , I am wondering if this option will really increase my preformance a lot , in general and in gaming , I'm having trouble seeing how I will exactly in real life stuff benifit from this upgrade.
-------------------

Its impossible to get both ,and I cannot decide , first I tought the 3800+ is going to serious improve my preformance then I read that isn't really true for gaming , then I was looking at the 6800 Ultra , seeing as how it really did better , but then I saw this HardOCP article saying that your CPU can seriously hold back your video card. ( http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjMy ) , I really don't feel like wasting 4 weeks of work (summer job).

Thanks for any advice you can give.
 
What's your current powersupply right now, and do you approve of overclocking a bit?
If you do, you could save some serious money. I'm not sure where in Europe you are, or if the price drops on A64 processors have occured in your area yet. If not, wait until Monday. That's supposed to be the official day of the price drop, although even then I'm not sure if that applies to everywhere or just here in the US. I would say you're probably going to want to go the CPU upgrade route, since your current video card is pretty decent as it is. Here's what I suggest.

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ for $400
512mb of RAM for ~$90 (guesstimate)
Abit AV8 Pro socket 939 motherboard for $120

Total: $610...I think in Euros, that would be a bit less, correct?
Well, the motherboard suggestion is up for grabs, but that's just one decent board I could think of that wasn't too expensive and was in stock in my area. Right now the 3800+ is showing up as nearly $700 over here, and if that's anywhere close to what it would cost you, I'd say it's not worth it. Save the extra money by getting the 3500+ and upgrade something else in your system instead.
 
I really don't think you'll find HUGE difference for the price your paying. IMO, I would get another 512MB of RAM which should help your gaming somewhat and oc that 2500+ to around 3200+ speeds. The Asus nForce2 board should do well on that front. In addition to this I would consider the 6800GT.

You've probably picked this up, but I'm finding it hard justifiying the upgrades you've chosen. However, it seems the former option more closely matches what I would do.
 
Thanks for all your tips and let me share some more info , I currently have a 350W AOpen PSU , my CPU is using stock HSF and I have tried some basic OC in the past but it never worked out and I always got tons of errors and boot problems etc... so I'm not too happy to buy a new HSF and then to find out that it does not work. Getting the extra 512MB is a no brainer I will be getting that for sure , now indeed chilled you have made me wonder if I should really do this upgrade ... , I have however now tried to OC my 9800 to Pro speeds and that seemed to have worked quite well , I've run 3Dmark 03 a few times and found no problems , my system now gets 5536 3D marks with the OC Radeon... .

Other than that if I WOULD consider the CPU upgrade I'm afraid the 3500+ is still at 500$ here for some time to come so i'm looking at arround 720$ for an upgrade to the 3500+

Entarus,
 
I'd try a mobile barton with a good aftermarket cooler and oc it to 2.4/2.5 (120$), another 512mb ram (120$), and a X800 Pro or 6800GT (400$). I don't think you'll have problems with that psu but if you do, there's enough money left over for a 400+ watt namebrand psu.

Of course, the A64's just dropped in price. You could grab a 2.4ghz 512k cache for 288 I think it is, mobo plus another 512 ram for 220, and then oc the 9800 Pro until the next gen cards are released around christmas and grab one of the current gen cards for cheap.
 
With the recent AMD pricedrops (not sure how fast they will take place in Europe) you could compromise and go with socket 754 Chaintech VNF3-250 board, A64 2800+ or A64 3000+ and 6800GT
Keep in mind that A64 2800+ is no slouch by itself as it beats AXP 3200+ at gaming. So obviously the more you move up in the A64 line the faster your cpu will get. Often A64 3200+ is 10-20% ahead of the P4 3.2 ghz. At the same time P4 3.2 ghz is also faster than AXP. So if was you, I would definately not touch any XP processor no matter the speed.

now all that is left is to overclock the GT to ultra speeds, and A64 (with the nforce 3 board which has agp/pci lock) to about 2.2-2.4ghz (that will give you very fast cpu) and you should have an amazing comp
See what this works out to....512 ram is decent and going to 1 gig wont give you a lot more boost in comparison to a new cpu and gpu. The advantage of a 6800GT is the lower PSU requirement as well (350 watts) so you will save $$$ on the psu as well.
 
Originally posted by: Dman877
next gen cards are released around christmas and grab one of the current gen cards for cheap.
Click to expand...

Good advice. Just wanted to point out though that there will be no next generation cards coming out this christmas. There will be updates (R480 and NV48(?)) with faster clock speeds. But that is like going from 9800pro to 9800xt. The next generation of cards will arrive within 1 year or so (with ati introducing the new gpu for xbox2 and so on); that is when they will most likely release ps3.0 support and R500, maybe even later.

But you do have a good point, that even if the refresh cards are not the next generation of cards, the top end card will force the 6800ultra/gt and ati's derivatives to drop in price to accomodate for the next fastest card.
 
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