Tech Stuff: Time for an Upgrade?

[Venkman]

While my two year old Alienware Aurora still does pretty well, that's mostly without Anti Aliasing and Anistropic Filtering. So I'm thinking of upgrades, and decided to post here because it's a gaming rig.

Current Stats

[*]Asus A7N266C DDR mobo (Socket A nForce 415-D)
[*]Athlon 1.73gHz processor.
[*]1gb RAM
[*]GeForce Ti4600 128mb.
[*]80gb ATA/100 7200rpm HD.
[*]SoundBlaster Audigy[/list:u]
I keep the above maintained very well, defragging RAM, drive and registry as well as gutting useless crap, ending all unneeded processes when I launch a game, etc. The bios was tweaked for gaming as well.

I asked awhile back at WT.o, but this time I actually have some money :) However, I don't want to spent another $3k on a full computer.

What do you guys think? Should I get a RAID 10,000rpm drive? Is there a video card upgrade that alone would significantly enhance my gaming, or is my processor speed going to be a bottleneck? Should I go to 1.5gb RAM?

[Lanei]

IMO you could get away with just a video card upgrade probably for another year or two of decent gaming on that rig.  Currently your video card is the largest bottleneck in that system.  Probably the second largest is the CPU speed, but I don't think that will really be a factor for a while to come.

If you have the money for an upgrade, a newer ATX motherboard and socket A CPU will allow you to keep the rest of your hardware, and your case.  I don't have any specific recommendations, but a newer Asus Nforce2 motherboard can't be a particularly bad bet.  This upgrade path may force you to need to replace your RAM too, though, and that will drive the upgrade cost up still further.
It may be possible to run a faster Athlon XP in that board than you have in it now.  The upgrade may or may not be worthwhile.

A super high RPM hard drive is not going to do anything but make your system louder and warmer.  10,000 RPM drives are LOUD, and you'd really need to benchmark to see the performance difference.  Not worth the money.

1GB of RAM is plenty on a gaming box.  Going from 1 to 1.5 GB made little to no difference in games for me, except in my ability to multitask with games running, but I also have a dual processor rig, which lessens the CPU bottleneck on doing that.

Summary:
1. Video Card.  Radeon 9600 or 9800,  Pro or XT depending on budget.  Barring any religious objections to ATI, naturally.  DO NOT get an SE model.  
2.  If money permits and you really want to:  CPU and mobo.  Others will no doubt have opinions on this for you.

[Hanzii]

It's always time for an upgrade.
I upgrade a <random> part of my rig every month... a neverending process.

In your case, I'd by a highend video card - 9800 pro or XT - and then save up for the full upgrade in a year or two. At that time you can keep the video card and upgrade everything else.

And the arguments above are sound.

[Morfiend]

Like the others here, I would say go for a Video Card upgrade.

With the new nvidia cards right around the corner, you should see a drop in prices some time next month.

My friend just bought a nvidia FX 5700 Ultra, and put it in a 800mhz 500ram computer, and he can run all the current games at 1080 rez, the only thing is because of the low proccessor, it take the levels forever to load.

I would highly reccomend that card. right now it runsa around $200+, but will probably drop to the $170 range (Hope) in the next month with the FX6800 ultra comming out.

Also, with in the next two years, the whole ATX setup is going away, and moving to BTX, which will obsolet a whole bunch of stuff. This being the case, I would ether buy a whole new system soon, and plan on getting a new one in 2 years, or just upgrade your current system untill the time comes when you are ready to get a full btx 64 setup.

A really great tech website here http://www.anandtech.com

Enjoy.

[Jon Carver]

Not a particularly good time to buy a vidcard.  The new crop hasn't started forcing the old crop prices down.  Besides, at this point in time you probably want to start planing for a pci-express vidcard.  If you buy another agp card right now, in a few months time  you may be kicking yourself.

If I were in your shoes, I'd be investigating a mobo upgrade that would allow you to upgrade to pci-express video in a few months.

[Venkman]

Thanks.

Thing I love about upgrading: it's always time to upgrade and it's always better to wait for a few months. I have no luck in timing ;)

What's PCI-Express? I assume that'll be even faster than AGP, but is it a standard PCI slot? As in, when they become the standard, can we get dual monitors without having to buy a dual-monitor-support card? I imagine it'll be some time before that becomes a standard though.

Sounds like a video card upgrade could let me eke out another year of gaming on this thing until next tax-return time when it's easier to splurge.

Oh, and how easy is it to migrate from nVidia to ATI? Is it simply a matter of uninstalling drivers, turning off, replacing card and restarting?

[Jon Carver]

What's PCI-Express? I assume that'll be even faster than AGP, but is it a standard PCI slot? As in, when they become the standard, can we get dual monitors without having to buy a dual-monitor-support card? I imagine it'll be some time before that becomes a standard though.

" Development is already underway on a PCI-Express based replacement for the AGP8X video card interface. Currently dubbed the 'PCI-Express X16 slot,' video cards such as the upcoming nVidia NV36X, NV40 and ATI RV380 will use this interface when they hit markets in the first and second quarters of 2004. This implementation of the technology looks to have the potential to make current PCs obsolete even faster by completely supplanting AGP as the platform of choice for graphics card manufacturers.

The 164-pin X16 slot is expected to provide a total usable bandwidth of around 4GB/s, double the 2.1GB/s bandwidth that the 8x AGP spec boasts. Otherwise, the X16 specification is pretty similar to AGP in terms of connector card size, though entire non-compatible.

One fairly exciting possibility for this upcoming technology is the potential for multiple graphics cards using the same high-speed connection. Currently it is possible to use more than one video card in a given system by combining an AGP card with a 32-bit PCI card. There is no apparent reason why the X16 spec could not be extended to include support for more than one slot, allowing multiple high-speed PCI-Express graphics cards... though at the moment, such a feature does not exist as far as we know."

From here.

PCI-Express is what all the new vidcards are being designed toward.  Mobos exist for them and the cards are what all next gen cards are being made for.  In terms of speed, it'll be like AGP x16,  so twice as fast as current graphics card buss speeds.  We're also not talking far future.

Interestingly, ATI and NVidia are both taking different approaches to this.  NVidia is using a bridge chip to bridge what is basically an AGP card to a PCI-X interface.  ATI is designing their cards to interface directly with PCI-X.

[Venkman]

Hmm ok. Looks like a mobo, potentially RAM and a video card upgrade down the road. Like a year or so, for me. New-to-market prices are way beyond what I want to spend on a gaming rig. Besides, I'd rather let them get to rev 25 on the drivers first. In PC hardware, I have no problem letting others blaze the trail a year ahead of me. *pains of RDRAMs past*

In the next year or two, do you think there'll be a huge difference with the current crop of games in queue? The most system-heavy game I'm interested in seems to be Half Life 2. The rest are MMOGs, which necessitate a bit lower common denominator (unless you're SOE and therefore seem to be paid not to care :) ).

[Venkman]

1. Video Card. Radeon 9600 or 9800, Pro or XT depending on budget. Barring any religious objections to ATI, naturally. DO NOT get an SE model.

Ok. I took a look at some of Anandtech's Q12004 Benchmarks. Since I'm interested in Anti Aliasing and Anistropic Filtering, two things ever beyond my reach, I've focused on those.

In this regard, it appears that the GeForce stuff really outclasses ATI. However, these are charts on a page, so I don't know how "real world" that is.

I'm eyeing either the Radeon 9800XT (256mb) or the GeForce FX 5950 (256). But as per Carver's comments, I don't really want to spend $400 on something that can't be migrated over to a new mobo with PCI-Express. I'd consider the Radeon 9600 XT 256 or the GeForce FX 5900 256 if the speeds were considerably faster the GeForce Ti4600 because they're much cheaper.

Thoughts?

[Morfiend]

Thoughts?

Go for a high midrange. Thats my opinion. Like the FX5600 ($120-140) or FX57oo Ultra ($200).

Thats way your getting great performance now. But not paying so much you cant upgrade again in a year or year and 1/2 when PCI express becomes more main stream.

[Secundo]

I agree that upgrading your vidcard is the cheapest way to extend the life of your current rig. Don't buy top of the line though.. I have a Radeon 9700Pro and even my Barton 2500 isnt quite enough to feed this card.

But.. a Radeon 9700pro or just below should be nicely priced atm so they would be a nice buy anyway since they are excellent cards.
Nvidia cards are cool too but I dont know what would be the equivalent to 95-9700pro's.

[Jon Carver]

I'd consider the Radeon 9600 XT 256 or the GeForce FX 5900 256 if the speeds were considerably faster the GeForce Ti4600 because they're much cheaper.

Thoughts?

I have an 9600XT, 128meg.  It's a great card that can be had now for under $200.  Display quality is excellect, dvd playback quality is outstanding. My Athlon 2000+ isn't processor enough to make the card sweat.  The processor is my current rig's bottleneck.

Oh and the drivers, at least in my experience, are rock solid.  They put out a new update every month and they get better every update.  Last "cool" thing they added to the drivers was display rotation.  So if you want to stand your monitor on its side you can.  

Also, the 9600XT supports dual monitors, no other card needed.

[HRose]

From my experience the video card doesn't matter how you'd expect.

In particular with mmorpg the memory bandwidth and the raw CPU power are still a huge bottleneck. The result is that every damn part of your pc has an important role in the performance. The videocard is always pointed as the main part but I've moved from a geforce 3 ti500 to a radeon 9800pro and a geforce 5900 without noticing great changes. I move more smoothly but where I lagged before I lag now.

My idea is that the technology is still. Even the new Geforce card is great on the paper but it doesn't do anything outstanding in the practice. There's still the problem of the cpu and memory. And the test system was an athlon 64 3.2Ghz with super fast ddr memory.

You read great things on the paper but the result isn't noticeable. It's the same with the HD udma 100 and 133, the agp and the pci-express, the 128Mb ram and the 256. At the end they are just features you show on the box but just fluff. You pay for the steam.

A good system right now is based on a nforce2 mb, good dual channel memory at 2ns (512Mbx2) and a radeon 9800pro. I wouldn't buy anything less than that.

The roof is the new nforce3 mb in combo with a new power supply and the new Nvidia monster. But you are wasting a lot of money.

[Secundo]

In reply to HRose:

Yeah when it comes to mmorpgs the performance issue is hard to answer at best..(from a players viewpoint) My own latest experience is with SWG and the single thing that seemed to affect performance the most there was the amount of RAM available. (more is better. type of mem matters less). Latency and bandwidth was #2  performance issue imho.

Still.. what the original author asked for wasnt about mmorpg's. It was about his rig's performance in general and how to extend it in the most efficient way.

[Morfiend]

In reply to HRose:

Yeah when it comes to mmorpgs the performance issue is hard to answer at best..(from a players viewpoint) My own latest experience is with SWG and the single thing that seemed to affect performance the most there was the amount of RAM available. (more is better. type of mem matters less). Latency and bandwidth was #2  performance issue imho.

Still.. what the original author asked for wasnt about mmorpg's. It was about his rig's performance in general and how to extend it in the most efficient way.

For large MMOGs, one thing you could do to really get better performance is to go with a RAID setup. This way your HD wont get bogged down while loading lost of other characters or mob models.

[Venkman]

Wow, great info. Thanks again!

But I'm being enticed by this one:

Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb. Good? Bad? Ugly? :)

[Morfiend]

Wow, great info. Thanks again!

But I'm being enticed by this one:

Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb. Good? Bad? Ugly? :)

Thats a good card. I personally am an Nvidia fan. From what I have seen these are also great cards, for a lot less cash.

[Hanzii]

That's a very good card. And in regards to changing from nVidia to ATI. Yes, it really is as easy as you ask. Remove driver, get new driver, change cards, install new driver. Good to go.

One thing though, I've yet to see any compelling arguments to choose a 256mb high end card over a 128mb unless your a pro 3d artist or something - the little extra ooomph you get isn't worth it. Not compared to what going XT over Pro would give.

[Venkman]

I actually haven't seen a 9800XT with only 128mb of memory. I could save $70+ if I went with a Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb though, if the extra memory doesn't make a huge difference anyway. Does that "not make a huge difference" apply to the latest round of large-outdoor-environment games like Far Cry and Half Life 2?

It's now basically Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 256mb versus Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb. Title fight. Pay-per-view only.

Only thing on the 128mb version though, I don't see an onboard fan. That gonna be a problem, or does the card just run that good?

Oh, and is there any reason I'd want an All-in-Wonder version?

As to nVidia vs ATI in general, I've been a GeForce man since the GeForce GTS. I figure I'll see what the other side has to show me for now, and when it comes time to dive into PCI-Express, I'll go with the one I prefer.

[Alluvian]

The main reason I am still with nvidia is I still like to do some 3d stereoscopic gaming from time to time.  ATI has no support for this (Ediminsional has made some ATI 3d drivers but the pretty much suck).

The other reason is that I still trust the driver team at Nvidia more than ATI.  I still hear about more games having ATI problems than Nvidia problems.  That is not the hardware, but some bad driver development.  Latest game with some ATI problems was CoH.  Maybe it had some Nvidia problems on some drivers too, but I didn't hear about it if it did, and I have never had any driver problems on any of my Nvidia cards.  I upgrade only when I have to and have never had to downgrade for normal play.

3D is another animal.  That is more voodoo than science.

All that said, I think ATI in the 9800 line has Nvidia beaten for hardware.  Can't judge the next generation till we see what ATI has and some head to head contests in actual gaming environments.  But of course that will only tell you how they run with old games, not the ones still coming out.

[Sky]

If you consider pixel shader 2.0 performance (Far Cry, UT2k4, Half Life2, DOOM, etc), then nvidia is pretty much out for this generation. Rumor has it the next gen will kick butt, and the tech specs look quite impressive...but I haven't seen the new ati specs, either.

Drivers. Traditionally nvidia's strong point, before that shifted to motherboards :) Both companies stumbled recently imo, but that's because of widescreen support more than anything, and doesn't affect most users (as widescreen 16:9 is still pretty rare, unfortunately). The newest ATI drivers are solid and really gave a decent performance boost in Far Cry (like 20% over Cat4.2!)

All-in-Wonder. Unless you want to feed your cable tv or antenna into the pc, you don't need it.

Total disclosure as I can remember it (I don't remember the memory sizes of most I had), going back to my first 3d 'accelerator (the first two were abysmal):

Diamond Stealth 3d
Creative 3d Blaster
3dfx Voodoo 1
3dfx Voodoo 3
Nvidia TNT Ultra
Nvidia Geforce 2 Ultra
Nvidia Geforce 4 ti4400
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro

[HRose]

Listen, when those 256Mb of ram will be used the card won't be able to move then anymore. And the CPU won't be able to transfer them effectively.

The only advantage is that, in general, the 256MB version has heat sinks on the ram.

[Venkman]

As usual, the advent of new technology has Darniaq buying into the old :)

I just got my Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb. CDs, cables, everything looks good. Surprisingly, this one did include an onboard fan. Last I read, it didn't.

In any case, anyone have any specific advice before I head home tonight and install? I've already downloaded the latest Catalyst drivers, not having any faith that those included on the CD are the newest versions. The last thing I want is a night off of CoH, but at least I'm not so obsessed with it that I'll get the shakes :) As far as I know, it's as simple as:
[list=1][*]Uninstall nVidia drivers
[*]Power off
[*]Remove card
[*]Put in new card (plug in monitors :) ).
[*]Power on
[*]WinXP will automatically pop up the Plug n Play interface I'm sure. [/list:o]
Am I missing anything?

[Glamdring]

Hey, instead of using the Catalysts you might want to consider trying out the Omega drivers.  They're basically the Cat's but tweaked more for performance than stability.

[Slayerik]

Listen, when those 256Mb of ram will be used the card won't be able to move then anymore. And the CPU won't be able to transfer them effectively.

The only advantage is that, in general, the 256MB version has heat sinks on the ram.

I'd have to disagree here, the only reason for the heatsinks is that it is running on DDR2...which is runs much hotter than DDR1.

I ordered a 9800 Pro 128mb version from ebay a while back for $250. They sent me the 256mb version. I didn't complain :) My only problem with it is that the 256mb model doesn't handle memory overclocking well due to the DDR2 heat issues.

Also, after you upgrade your Vid card I personally would overclock your proc to relieve the bottleneck some. That also depends on your current RAM. All in all, your rig should be fine with a Vid upgrade.

[Venkman]

Installation was a breeze. I was prepared for some ability to slightly up the graphics settings in CoH, but went for broke and tried 6xAA and 4xAF right away. Wow. What a freakin' difference!. I was able to pump character models to 200% and world to 175% in CoH with no performance hit at all.

Not the uberest of uber, but I knew I wasn't buying that anyway.

So thanks everyone for the awesome advice! I got exactly what I wanted when two weeks I didn't know what that was :)

[Sky]

The thing that threw me was that CoH is OpenGL. I cranked all my D3D settings and still had aliasing! Then I maxed out the sliders in OpenGL to some silly level and CoH looks a lot nicer imo. All settings in all games maxed since I went to the 9800 Pro. (except a few with buggy FSAA like BF:V).

Now go buy Far Cry and max that out for some visual candy :P That's my current 'show&tell' game when people want to see the setup in action.

[Venkman]

Far Cry is one reason I bought the card (Half-Life 2 being the other) :) I'm gonna see if I can download a demo somewhere though, since I'm in a spending freeze. MMOGs are supposed to be a cheap hobby ;)

[Morfiend]

I am working on my new system rigth now. (Why I have been out of COH for a few days).

I got a 3.2 Northwood core (did some research, and northwood is better for gaming).
1 gig of DDR400 PC3200 RAM.
Gigabyte i875p motherboard.
A RAIDMAX case that has a 430w Power supply and 4 Fans.
GeForce 5700 Ultra
80 gig hard drive with a 6.8 seek time.
16x DVD-ROM.
48xCD-Burner.

This is my first time building a system from scratch, and its pretty fun. I got confused a few times, but I have a major techie friend on voice chat to help me.

The entire system cost about $820 from Newegg before tax. Oh yeah I buaght a OEM version of Win XP for $130 also. So total system price is like $950, but since I live in CA, I have to pay tax on newegg. What a bitch.

My case arrived broken. The front pannel was busted off, with no hope of repair. Called newegg, they are sending me a new one, that should arrive today, and I can finish. With any luck, I should have it up and running tonight.

[Rasix]

My case arrived broken. The front pannel was busted off, with no hope of repair. Called newegg, they are sending me a new one, that should arrive today, and I can finish. With any luck, I should have it up and running tonight.

That seems to be a common theme with them (or maybe with new cases in general). My Antec case came in with cracked part on the front panel.  Being that I dislike hassles I'll just live with a case that doesn't fit correctly.

I've heard of this happening alot, especially with the front of the cases.  Didn't help that the box looked like someone beat it up with a crowbar.

[Sky]

I've ordered something like 10 cases so far this year through newegg, and haven't had one come damaged yet *knocks on wood* One thing I do is get my shipments sent to where I work, so I can inspect the boxes, I don't sign off on obviously damaged goods, I make the shipping company deal with it. If you sign for it, they tend to screw you, as your signature is an acknowledgement of successful delivery.

Newegg rocks imo, great to deal with, so be sure to let us know if anything negative happens with the replacement. Not all companies are so cool about replacements, which is the reason for the above paragraph. Many companies won't replace something damaged in shipping, they'll bounce you to the shipping carrier.

/end of the day ramble...is it 5pm yet?

[Morfiend]

I was supprised at just how damaged the case was, because the box was not damaged looking hardly at all. I must say I was irate at first, because they wanted $15 shipping for me to return it. Im glad they had the front piece. I will be picking it up after work, so I can let you all know how it goes.

Installation is going good, the motherboard is a bit scary at first, but with my friends help, should be no problem.

[MrHat]

I figure this is the right place to post this.

I for one am extremely excited to be living in times of transistion.  PCI Express just turns me on.

http://www.hothardware.com/viewarticle.cfm?articleid=524&cid=2

nVidia just unvieled a PCI Express slot designed to work w/ PCIX notebooks.  This brings us one step closer to bridging the gap between laptop gaming and desktop gaming.  My ideal would be a laptop that can game properly and a nice docking station.  I never thought that would be possible till I installed FarCry on a medium-line Toshiba Centrino w/ 32MB vidcard and it ran fine and looked good too.  It seems that laptops are more optimized than PC's, streamlined even.

Just posting cuz I"m bored at work.  So ungodly bored.  Funny too, because I'm in sales and could make my own destiny.

[Sky]

Dell's been doing a lot of work to bridge the gap between mobile and desktop hardware. We have a bunch of mini Dells running our circulation software (I work at a library), most of the gear in them is mobile hardware, in a mini-desktop case (far smaller than mini-ATX). Great machines if you had the right hardware in them.