Upgrade advice: Want to double my 3dmark score

[Mister T]

I went to the casino yesterday and won 500 bucks in 1/2 hour playing blackjack ---> upgrade time

Current setup:

Athlon 1ghz T-bird
Epox mobo
Geforce 3 w/ DVI
384mb PC133 ram
15gb IBM hardrive
Big Antac 1030 case with 300w power supply

3dmark score is 5,500 approx.

I have no particular allegiance to Intel vs. AMD.... I care about performace/$
Upgrade would be for gaming purposes thats why I figured doubling the 3dmark score would be a good bench.

Oh, and can anyone recommend a good case to make my new system into a more friendly lan party box?
How would you guys spend the 500?

 

[Mister T]

How about this:

2.53 ghz P4 ------------------------------------------------- $243
Gigabyte 845E mobo w/Lan/Sound/Raid -------------- $140
512mb PC3200 (DDR400) Corsair ---------------------- $164

Total is $547

comments/suggestions?

Edit: prices from googlegear.com

 

[Frosty3799]

You may want to look into a video card upgrade, cause that is quite a big contributor to 3DMark scores too

Maybe a Radeon 8500 or so? Not too expensive, and with those other components you listed, I would bet your score would be 1000+ easy.

 

[mchammer187]

radeon 9700

 

[RSMemphis]

Your current system is rather well balanced...

Neither going all into a P4 solution, nor getting an ATI 9700 will really benefit you....
Your GeForce 3 will not go much higher than 9000 in 3dMark. Even with a powerful P4 behind.

Try getting a cheaper P4 CPU, or go the AMD path, and add a 4200 to it. Overclock / lather / rinse / repeat.

Intel Pentium 4A 1.8GHz 256K Socket 478 Processor 400MHz Processor Bus retail - $157
Gigabyte mobo - $130
512 MB RAM (your price seems ok)
GAINWARD/CARDEXPERT GeForce 4 Ti 4200, 3.5ns, $133

$560 total - but you will also need a power supply.

This will probably do the best for your 3dMark score (especially since NVidia just released 3dMark tweaked Detonators)

Edit: Whoops, listed the wrong P4. Non-northwood = bad!!!
Also, don't get DDR400 (PC3200) RAM... It won't help all that much. DDR333 (PC2700) should do easily, and shave a couple of $$$$ off.

 

[Markfw]

I don't know all the prices, and don't want to look them up right now, but this is close. And this is for "bang for the buck". To actually hit 11,000 you probably need a Radeon 9700, and that is about $350 with shipping. BUT, you can probably hit 9200-9500 with the following (since thats what I have, and thats about what I get.)

AMD XP 2100 retail $150 (maybe less)
Abit KX333 $87
ATI 8500 128 meg ($117-$157 LE or retail)
512 meg PC2700 $133

Total $487 + shipping (if you can't get it local)

 

[Syborg1211]

I think you could get a shitload of points with a faster athlon in the same motherboard, XP1800+ or so and a radeon 9700. If you do that though, your ram will be a bottleneck. So later on you would need a ddr mobo with some ddr ram...

 

[Lvis]

A more modern harddrive would be where the first thing I would get. The newer ones should make a noticeable increase in performance.

 

[kingbob]

How is a hard drive going to benefit his 3DMark score...he wants to increase it, and it heavily depends on CPU/Vid Card/RAM...not hard drive

 

[Imported]

He gets 5500 now.. a Ti4200 will boost it up to 11000 or so.. You don't need a 9700 to do that..

Providing you get a better CPU of course..

 

[Lvis]

How is a hard drive going to benefit his 3DMark score...he wants to increase it, and it heavily depends on CPU/Vid Card/RAM...not hard drive

It won't.

Just seemed silly to leave a 3-4 year old hd in much newer machine.

 

[Mister T]

hard drive is relatively new..... ibm 75gxp 7200 rpm... and I have another 40gb from Dell which is unopened since like March

You guys got me thinking about the ti4200 upgrade

 

[anthrax]

I would say your best bet is the upgrade your CPU RAM Mobo.....
A 1.1 GHz CPU can't really push any video card to the max......
with the plain GF3...
1.1 AMD= 5500 (PC 133)
1.4 AMD= 6800 (DDR266)
2.26 P4= 7600 (This is with DDR 266)goin to test with 333 soon.

 

[John]

XP2200+
GF4 Ti4400

 

[anthrax]

hmmm...just tested my GF3....hmm...managed to get it to 8833 3D marks....
may be it is possible to get a GF3 to 10K+ 3dmarks.....

 

[dszd0g]

The people mentioning CPU scaling are right. Just replacing the graphics card won't put him past about 8500 at 1024x768 32-bit 85Hz.
What resolution are you guys talking about and that makes a huge difference?

ATi Radeon 9700 and Ti 4600 CPU scaling.

It's possible that by going with a P4 2.53GHz, DDR333 (DDR400 only if you think you will be able to overclock that much), and a new 845E motherboard you will be able to get to 9000.

If you go the AMD route as Markfw900 shows, 3d Mark 1024x768 32-bit 85Hz:
Tom's VGA Charts .
Note that these benchmarks were done with 256MB of DDR 266 CL2, and I am suggesting 512MB of DDR 333 CL2.

With a Athlon XP 2000+
and a Radeon 8500 LE 128MB: 8177
and a Radeon 8500 64MB: 8414
and a GeForce 4 Ti 4200: 8882
and a GeForce 4 Ti 4400: 9486
and a GeForce 4 Ti 4600: 9889

I am not sure where you guys are finding the prices you are talking about on name brand memory. You can get generic for those prices and cheaper.

So I propose the following:

(All prices given are from Newegg)
AMD XP 2200+ $152
Epox 8K5A2 $100
CORSAIR MEMORY XMS Extreme Memory Speed Series CMX512-2700C2 PC2700 DDR RAM 333MHz w/ Heat Spreader - OEM $164
Chaintech GeForce4 Ti 4200 $130

Total: $546 and no new power supply needed.

I believe the 2200+ should scale the Ti 4200 over 10000.
You could swap down to the 2000+ and upgrade to the Ti 4400 and that would put you over 9500 (same price -- I would guess ~9600), but
I think the 2200+ and the Ti 4200 will put you slightly higher.

You can always drop down to PC2100 memory or generic memory to drop the cost.

 

[ndee]

Originally posted by: Imported
He gets 5500 now.. a Ti4200 will boost it up to 11000 or so.. You don't need a 9700 to do that..

Providing you get a better CPU of course..

Don't know if you were being sarcastic but a Ti4200 won't let him hit it that high. I got 5000 points with an Athlon T-Bird 700 and a Gainward Ti-4200.

 

[Insane3D]

Epox 8K5A2 $100

Newegg's prices suck on Epox boards lately. Mwave has the 8K5A2 for $86 and the 8K5A2+ for $101. So you could basically get the nicer 8K5A2+ for the same price Newegg charges for the regular 8K5A2. If you buy a bundle, it's even cheaper...

 

[LarryJoe]

I have a regular GF3 as well with a P4@2.67 and I get 9200 on 3DMark with the new 40 dets. This is not quite double your score, but close enough. If your goal is to double your score, then getting into the mid 2ghz range should do the trick.

 

[murphy55d]

My system below hit almost 11,000. Not quite a Radeon 9700.

I think John has the right idea.

 

[Sevenhunt]

Ehm, what`s the 3dmark score?
And how do I know what`s mine????

P4 2.53 ghz
epox ga4a+
Geforce 4 ti4600
512 mb ddr 333(pc2700)
80 gb seagate barracuda IV ATA100
350 w enermax power supply.

 

[mchammer187]

I can hit 10K

on

P4 1.8A @ 2.4
Radeon 8500
512 MB PC800 RDRAM

yes a Ti4200 will hit 10K on my setup but for he would have to get new motherboard CPU RAM and Ti4200

thats why I said Radeon 9700 he only has to replace 1 thing and he can keep the $150

Replacing the overall system P4 1.8, MB, 512 MB DDR or Rambus will cost > $500 for sure though it would be a better idea
he wanted to double his score i offered the easiest solution to double his score

 

[dszd0g]

Originally posted by: mchammer187
I can hit 10K
thats why I said Radeon 9700 he only has to replace 1 thing and he can keep the $150

But if you look at the CPU scaling of the Radeon 9700 on a Thunderbird 1GHz, he won't go past 8500 at 1024x768 32-bit 85Hz.

You guys posting really high scores on systems that won't hit that high at 1024x768 32-bit 85Hz need to specify what resolution, bits, and frequency you are benchmarking. The numbers you guys are posting are meaningless without that information.

 

[mithrandir2001]

Heh, heh. 3DM2K* must be underwritten by hardware manufacturers. They've managed to get people to upgrade primarily to improve their scores rather than making games more playable.

If your Epox is a 8K7A, you can throw in a XP 2200+ CPU. Save you some mobo replacement aggravation.