Opinions on upgrading my sons rig for his birthday

[GuitarDaddy]

His current rig

Epox 9NPA ultra
939 A64 3200+
1 gb ddr-400
x800gto2 unlocked to 16 pipes
Enermax 480 watt PS
Samsung 17" 1024x768 LCD monitor

Heres the options I'm considering, but will also consider other options.

Option 1
EVGA 8800gtx 320mb $270AR


Option 2
939 X2 4200 $80
add 1gb(2gb total) ddr-400 ram $60
7900gs $120
Total $260

Option 2 seems the better bang for the buck upgrade, but I'm hesitant to sink more money in the 939/DDR platform. If I went with option one he would obviously have a better GPU, and it would leave the door open to upgrade to a new platform but I'm afraid the 3200 and 1gb ram would be a serious bottleneck😕

 

[MarcVenice]

Rough, how long would he have to use the s939 rig? The 8800gts 320mb can always be transfered later on. You could buy a 1950pro though and dump the remaining money into dualcore and 1gb of ram. I basicaly did what you want to do, but I also bought a 8800gts 320mb. Serving me well right now, but right now I'd prolly wait a little while longer and go with whatever amd/intel has to offer in 2-3 months. Later on I actually figured had I not went for dualcore and 1gb more ram I could have had a nice 3ghz c2d right now 😛

 

[Rockinacoustic]

At the resolution of that monitor he's mostly CPU limited, soooo option 2 :thumbsup:

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Marc - It will probably be at least a year before I can afford to upgrade him again, he will probably get my C2D/DDR2 components when I upgrade to penryn or more likely nethlam some time later next year. I may try and budget the extra bucks and just get him the 8800+ram+4200, then I would just have to convince him that he wants a bigger monitor for his Christmas present:light:

Rockin-That's what I figured also, if he's not down with the idea of getting a new monitor for Christmas I will likely just do option 2. The only thing I'm not sure of is how multi-threaded Bioshock is? Anybody seen any benches comparing single core to dual core in Bioshock?

 

[MarcVenice]

Or get him a 1950pro instead or whatever is on sale somewhere. Not long ago the 7900gs was on sale at fry's for 99.99$. Hell of a deal. If you get something like that paired with the ram/cpu, he should be fine.

 

[Aikouka]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy
The only thing I'm not sure of is how multi-threaded Bioshock is? Anybody seen any benches comparing single core to dual core in Bioshock?

Personally, I never based the idea of switching from single core to dual core (I went from an Athlon 64 3200+ to an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2 or so years ago) on benchmarks themselves. The idea that computer operating systems are designed to multi-task and using multiple cores can provide a smoother computing experience. I can say that I could never go back to a single core CPU especially from my current quad core.

 

[LightningRider]

As was said his CPU will bottleneck the 8800GTS, I'd get something a little cheaper and then just keep the money for your future upgrade then you can give him whatever you got now.

Also BioShock does offer a noticeable performance boost from using dual and even quad core, though you won't notice the difference between dual and quad but BioShock does make use of the quad core.