PC Upgrades

[Hanzii]

Do you have folks like Enron?

No we don't. And we don't really have extreme weather either - the biggest natural disaster to hit Denmark in hundreds of years was the tsunami. And the people it hit were all on vacation in Thailand - so apart from your evil power companies, I see a clear enviromental reason for taking more care where you are.

[Alkiera]

I live in upstate New York.  A friend of mine lives out on a farm about an hour from here, and has gone thru a truely insane number of modems, surge protectors, telephones, the occasional PC power supply, etc, all from lightning strikes.  He finally got a decent UPS with surge protection for his modem line, and managed to prevent any damage to his computer hardware recently, tho one of the home phones died.

When I lived in a really crappy on-campus apartment during school, the power quality was horrible, so I got a UPS.  It lasted thru school, and thru my later, better apt. when I got married, and finally died after I moved into my house here in the city.  The power quality, even in my old house, is so much better, and more steady, that I just picked up a cheap powerstrip with surge protection as a replacement. 

Alkiera

[Pococurante]

... so apart from your evil power companies, I see a clear enviromental reason for taking more care where you are.

Oh sure you are smug now but wait until global warming shuts off the Atlantic thermohaline branch - then you'll be wishing for some evil American power companies to warm your side of the planet.

[Hanzii]

Oh sure you are smug now but wait until global warming shuts off the Atlantic thermohaline branch - then you'll be wishing for some evil American power companies to warm your side of the planet.

No, I'll hope that I still have some friends in Norway and go live on a mountain.
These guys have so much money, that if they ever run out of oil or free electricity from water, then they could start burning money for heat...

[Yegolev]

And that's a real concern backed by statistics? I've never heard of anybody ever losing a harddrive to power failure.

I usually just have "weird shit" happen to my rig when it takes a hit.  I think it got hosed up once due to current flicker/surge but I'm not sure, and I'd rather dish out $30 than wait for a freak lightning strike to turn my machine into a boat anchor.  Everything other than my gaming rig is just on a power strip, though.

I don't know what the weather is like where you live, but in the southeast US the power grid is constantly under assault by lightning in the summer.  Then there are the trees.  I have had a couple hurricanes roll over me already this summer, and otherwise had some stormage once a week or two.

[Strazos]

Had a borderline-tornado roll through 2 weeks ago. Lightning split a 50ft tree in half up the street. The wind was so strong that the umbrella going through the table on our backyard deck got knocked over, which flexed and shattered the glass table top. My stepdad felt dumb for just closing the umbrella, and not removing it.

[OcellotJenkins]

The next version of Windows is also going to want a 256MB card to run the interface with all the bells and whistles.  That's 256MB just for the damn operating system.

Microsoft is recommending only 128 MB to run in "Aero Glass" mode (all the bells and whistles turned on) though some places are saying you'll need 256 MB if you want to run at resolutions of 1600 x 1200 or greater.

For what it's worth, I'm currently running the Longhorn beta on a laptop with a 64mb Geforce4 Go video card, 512mb system memory, 2.2ghz processor in 1024x768 and it runs slightly faster than WinXP Pro did on the same machine.  Anything could happen between now and release, but for a beta OS, it's performance is surprisingly good.

[ClydeJr]

I thinking about starting to upgrade my system but I can't do everything at once. I'm trying to decide whether to get a new CPU or a new video card first. Currently running:

CPU: AMD Althon 2400 XP
Video Card: Nvidia GeForce Ti 4600

I know if I upgrade the CPU, I'll probably have to upgrade the motherboard as well. Which do you think would be better to upgrade first?

[MrHat]

I know if I upgrade the CPU, I'll probably have to upgrade the motherboard as well. Which do you think would be better to upgrade first?

I'm in your exact situation. I want to upgrade badly, but everytime I look at it:

Need a new video card, PCIx probably. -->  Need a new mobo w/ PCIx on it -->  New processor to run in new mobo -->  Might as well throw some new RAM in there so I can keep my old computer somewhere else with an extra hard drive.

$800+ sucks.

[Polysorbate80]

Had a borderline-tornado roll through 2 weeks ago. Lightning split a 50ft tree in half up the street. The wind was so strong that the umbrella going through the table on our backyard deck got knocked over, which flexed and shattered the glass table top. My stepdad felt dumb for just closing the umbrella, and not removing it.

No tornados here, but we get some decent winds (and every couple years a windstorm with gusts ~100mph).  Or the occasional giant ice storm.  Or drunk drivers plowing down the power poles.  Or transformers randomly exploding (that one cost me an FBSS back in my EQ days, but my hardware all lived).

[Trippy]

I know if I upgrade the CPU, I'll probably have to upgrade the motherboard as well. Which do you think would be better to upgrade first?

I'm in your exact situation. I want to upgrade badly, but everytime I look at it:

Need a new video card, PCIx probably. -->  Need a new mobo w/ PCIx on it -->  New processor to run in new mobo -->  Might as well throw some new RAM in there so I can keep my old computer somewhere else with an extra hard drive.

$800+ sucks.

Yup it's a problem. If you can't afford to swap out the CPU and motherboard and video card all at once you can get a motherboard that has an AGP slot, which might limit your future video card upgrade options, or you can wait for a motherboard that uses the ULi M1695 chipset that supports both AGP and PCI-e video card slots with no AGP performance compromise.

[Murgos]

I don't think modern video cards are capable of saturating the AGP bus so theoretically you can get an AGP MB and be happy for a few years yet.  However, modern video crad manufacturers are not going to sell thier high end cards with an AGP option (early obsolecence) so if you want any upgrade path at all you need to get a PCIwhatever MB.

[Sairon]

... so apart from your evil power companies, I see a clear enviromental reason for taking more care where you are.

Oh sure you are smug now but wait until global warming shuts off the Atlantic thermohaline branch - then you'll be wishing for some evil American power companies to warm your side of the planet.

Yea but soon afterwards we will be back to the climate where we used to be because of the global warming, and then it's you guys who has to pay us or canada for some ice  :-D

[Big Gulp]

Yea but soon afterwards we will be back to the climate where we used to be because of the global warming, and then it's you guys who has to pay us or canada for some ice  :-D

Ice.  How quaint.

No thanks, we have freon and can cool this bitch down in no time flat.

[Yegolev]

[Shockeye]

Urich has really let himself go.

[Trippy]

Yup it's a problem. If you can't afford to swap out the CPU and motherboard and video card all at once you can get a motherboard that has an AGP slot, which might limit your future video card upgrade options, or you can wait for a motherboard that uses the ULi M1695 chipset that supports both AGP and PCI-e video card slots with no AGP performance compromise.

And here's a (sort of) shipping board with the above chipset, the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 which www.newegg.com is selling for $72.00 (out of stock till 9/14).

[Alkiera]

Yup it's a problem. If you can't afford to swap out the CPU and motherboard and video card all at once you can get a motherboard that has an AGP slot, which might limit your future video card upgrade options, or you can wait for a motherboard that uses the ULi M1695 chipset that supports both AGP and PCI-e video card slots with no AGP performance compromise.

And here's a (sort of) shipping board with the above chipset, the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 which www.newegg.com is selling for $72.00 (out of stock till 9/14).

Yeah, I managed to get one before they went out of stock... UPS has it in their local package distrobution place, waiting to be delivered.  Unfortunately, my trial copy of WinXP Pro x64 is still not here yet, so it's not like I can really try it out yet, anyway.  The board supposedly has some problems cold-booting, or something... but I almost never shut down my machine completely, so I don't think it'll really be an issue for me.

Alkiera

[Ironwood]

Yea but soon afterwards we will be back to the climate where we used to be because of the global warming, and then it's you guys who has to pay us or canada for some ice  :-D

Ice.  How quaint.

No thanks, we have freon and can cool this bitch down in no time flat.

Heh.  The consumer attitude in a nutshell.

Babycakes, by Neil Gaiman

[MrHat]

Alright, games are running slow and I can't afford 700 bucks right now, so I'm going with a 6600GT AGP card, the question is, what's a good one to get?

[Alkiera]

Got my system set up running WinXP Pro x64, and dual booting to my previous OS, Win2000.

Decided to do some benchmarking after a friend mentioned possible performance differences between 64 and 32 bit operating system.

I installed fraps and CoH under both OS's (okay, so I exported the registry entries for CoH, and imported into both, and copied the shortcuts.)
Logged into the game as my scrapper, went to Striga Isle, and starting fraps benchmarking mode.  Then I leapt all over the zone, mostly keeping to the large council base near the volcano, and the forest just in front of it, where I had a lot of dropped frames before the upgrade.  Benchmarks in both cases were at least 3 minutes long.

Fraps gave me an average FPS number for the 3 minutes of wild leaping about:
WinXP Pro x64:    41.67 frames/sec
Win 2000 Pro:     46.9 frames/sec

This would seem to indicate that the 32->64 bit emulation layer in x64 is not quite up to snuff, loses me 5 fps, or about 13% performance.  In both cases, the game was much smoother than it had been before.  I'm guessing have more, faster RAM, and a far superior CPU is the difference.  And as a bonus, even under load it makes less heat than my old CPU did at idle.

Alkiera

PS: For the record... Video card is a PowerColor Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB, 8xAGP.  Older processor was a 1.4 Ghz Athlon(Thunderbird) on an FIC AD11 with 768MB of DDR SDRAM.   New machine is a Athlon64 (Venice) 3200+,

[Pococurante]

Exactly.  Throughput >>> CPU

[Bunk]

Alright, games are running slow and I can't afford 700 bucks right now, so I'm going with a 6600GT AGP card, the question is, what's a good one to get?

For what they cost, I wouldn't bother with a high end name. I'm using an eVGA 6600GT and I'm very happy with it.

[Yegolev]

I don't feel any pressure to run a 64-bit OS without any apps that are going to take advantage of the bitness.  Perf stats are not something I am interested in, either, due to the timing.  I think that I might have an excuse to upgrade when Vista arrives, at which point I am looking at upgrading each major part anyway.  Sucky, but I have gotten more confortable being behind the leading edge and I would like to think that I will have plenty of options if I can just keep my current machine operational.  It would be a plus if I could use my existing power supply, but if not I plan to cut the case and just add a PSU for the mobo, letting the existing one power various devices such as tape, DVD and CD-RW.  I can make fantasy plans because this will be some time from now.

[MrHat]

Alright, games are running slow and I can't afford 700 bucks right now, so I'm going with a 6600GT AGP card, the question is, what's a good one to get?

For what they cost, I wouldn't bother with a high end name. I'm using an eVGA 6600GT and I'm very happy with it.

The real question is X700 Pro AGP or 6600GT AGP, since I can get the X700 from work for like 160.

[Trippy]

The real question is X700 Pro AGP or 6600GT AGP, since I can get the X700 from work for like 160.

The X700 Pro isn't as good as the 6600GT unless you happen to be an UT2004 addict:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2297&p=2

[Trippy]

Fraps gave me an average FPS number for the 3 minutes of wild leaping about:
WinXP Pro x64:    41.67 frames/sec
Win 2000 Pro:     46.9 frames/sec

This would seem to indicate that the 32->64 bit emulation layer in x64 is not quite up to snuff, loses me 5 fps, or about 13% performance.  In both cases, the game was much smoother than it had been before.  I'm guessing have more, faster RAM, and a far superior CPU is the difference.  And as a bonus, even under load it makes less heat than my old CPU did at idle.

That difference is probably more attributable to the ATI driver or slight differences in the paths you took than it is to the emulation layer. Benchmarks with NVIDIA cards and drivers show a much smaller difference -- often on the order of a fraction of one percent.

[Alkiera]

Fraps gave me an average FPS number for the 3 minutes of wild leaping about:
WinXP Pro x64: 41.67 frames/sec
Win 2000 Pro: 46.9 frames/sec

This would seem to indicate that the 32->64 bit emulation layer in x64 is not quite up to snuff, loses me 5 fps, or about 13% performance. In both cases, the game was much smoother than it had been before. I'm guessing have more, faster RAM, and a far superior CPU is the difference. And as a bonus, even under load it makes less heat than my old CPU did at idle.

That difference is probably more attributable to the ATI driver or slight differences in the paths you took than it is to the emulation layer. Benchmarks with NVIDIA cards and drivers show a much smaller difference -- often on the order of a fraction of one percent.

You may be right.  I ran 3DMark 2003, and got the same value for the 3DMark under both OS's.... 4089.  Perhaps I should recrod a demofile in CoH and use that for the trial, that way it'll be certain to be the same, or nearly enough, for both trials.

Alkiera