What's really faster for gaming?

[rogue1979]

Of course, I think most people will agree a faster video card is always important, provided you have enough cpu power to drive it.

My questions are:

Is there a big performance boost going from 1500MHz Athlon up to 1800MHz Athlon or 2.5GHz P4 (1.6a)?

Is there a difference in going from 333Hz DDR to 400MHz speeds?

My next video upgrade is already decided, the Radeon 8500LE with 3.3ns Ram. I plan to do the resistor voltage mod and run a modest 300/300 for under $100. I know the Geforce 4 Ti 4200 is faster, but the 8500 is still a better bang for the buck.

I absolutely do not care about my Sandra 2002 memory benchmarks or a 3DMark 2001 score, only if there is a significant boost in frame rates.
In regular apps my computer is more than fast enough to satisfy me, could I just upgrade my video card and still see most of the benefits or is a processor and motherboard upgrade justified?

Any opinions or discussions welcome, thanks.

 

[CrawlingEye]

Do you plan to OC? If so, the 1.6a's your guy.

 

[minendo]

Originally posted by: CrawlingEye
Do you plan to OC? If so, the 1.6a's your guy.

So have you done comparison testing or are you just spitting out the fact that you can easily overclock the P4?

 

[gunf1ghter]

The 1.6a probably is pretty easy to overlock to the levels of a XP1800 or XP1900 AMD processor. You definitely should NOT count on being able to hit 2.5 gig with any of the northwood processors, even if your RAM and motherboard can do it.

If you really want something that can bitch-slap an AMD processor look at the new 133mhz quad pumped bus Intel chips. The least expensive ones are slightly over $200.

One more thing... if you want to see how the processors (both stock and overclocked) really compare; look at Toms Hardware big shootout of an overclocked 2100+ AMD chip against the new 2.53 gig P4.

 

[CrawlingEye]

Originally posted by: minendo

Originally posted by: CrawlingEye
Do you plan to OC? If so, the 1.6a's your guy.

So have you done comparison testing or are you just spitting out the fact that you can easily overclock the P4?

Comparison testing. I'm only a few hundred points below an OC'd AXP (it's running something like 1.7ghz) with a GEF4 ti4200.
I'm not nearly done with my OC either. I don't even have all the hardware to finish yet.

Expect higher in a few weeks.

 

[CubicZirconia]

Is it me or did crawling eye not answer the original questions at all? As for my response to the first question, I can only comment on the athlons. I've found in certain games (morrowind) my XP 1800+ is significantly faster than a tbird 1.4. So, if you happen to be going from a tbird to an XP I would say its worth it. I can't comment on the ram but I would say the difference won't really be all that noticable. No, I don't have facts or comparisons to back that up.

 

[CrawlingEye]

Comparison?

Click here

That's with the same vid card, so the only thing being tested is the cpu, RAM, and chipset.

 

[SteelCityFan]

With the 2.4Ghz P4 on the 400Mhz system bus, Intel pulled out ahead of AMD on virtually every benchmark (many sites had the P4 winning them all). The 533 System bus will add 5-15% to Intel's performance (or so I have heard).

If you overclocked a 1.6A to 2.4Ghz it would be faster than even the 2.4Ghz 533Mhz chip (it would take a 600Mhz FSB to reach 2.4Ghz). So, this would obviously have no problem outperforming anything AMD has to offer at the moment.

It is not guarenteed, but 2.1Ghz has a very high success rate.. you would be running on a 533FSB there, so I would guess it would be roughly on par with a 2100+.. maybe a tad slower... but cheaper.

 

[jaybee]

There's an AMD vs Intel comparison here: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q2/020506/p4b-06.html
(how do you insert links?)

Anyway, according to the above a P4 1.8@2.4 is about 25% faster than an XP1800+ in Quake3. Then again, Quake3 tends to favor the P4. The newer games seem to favor the P4 too tho (Comanche sticks out in my mind, SS2 is an exception). If you keep your ram, you're looking at a ~$250 upgrade to a 1.6A. Also, from what I've seen, DDR333 at CAS2 is about as fast as DDR400 CAS2.5 -- of course depending on the specific app/game.

Overclocking is never guaranteed, but from what I hear 2.4GHz is reasonable to hope for, if not expect, from a 1.6A. I expect I'll have one in my next box.

jaybee

 

[Tom]

rogue1979,
Looking at your current system it looks pretty sweet! In your original question you said an 1800mhz Athlon, do you mean an 1800XP or a real 1.8gig Athlon ? I don't think an 1800xp is going to do much, but an Athlon at 1.8g would probably be noticeably faster. Although your current system is running at 167FSB which I think would make comparisons difficult unless you could run the newer processor at that FSB too.

I have more experience with Northwoods and while I think a P4 1.6a overclocked to 2.4 is a very nice system and it would be faster then your current setup, I don't honestly think it would be anything world-shaking. If you were starting from scratch it would be a better choice perhaps.
I'd say the same thing about DDR400 vs DDR333, it's faster, but by itself I doubt it's going to make a big difference.

With a nice system like yours I would think the video card is going to give you the most bang for your buck. Also at least with a few games, Morrowind being one, you probably would be better off with an additional 256megs of memory.