New PC

[pip]

I have bought a new PC every couple of years for the last 10 years or so. I usually manage to double the performance of the old machine in all respects. It is now time to upgrade again but the performance gains do not appear to be there this time.

My PC is an Athlon 2800+, with 512mb ram and a Radion 9800 graphics card. New games seem to run OK at 1280*1024.

I have installed a couple of Athlon 64 3000 based PCs for family and friends and haven't been that impressed.

The performance charts I've seen indicate that I would need to go for somehting like an FX55 with an X800ultra card to really notice the improvement - which is a much bigger investment than I would normally have to make.

Can anyone advise whether or not a total machine upgrade is sensible at this point?; or, would a high level graphics card give much better results compared to the 9800 if I kept my current 2800 machine?

Cheers for any help you can give.

~Pip~

 

[connchri]

Well, to be quite honest, I would hold onto your current rig, perhaps even till the end of this year. This is because of a few things-

1) Your rig ain't that bad, and should be able to play all games currently out no problem on 1024x768. If a new game does come out that taxes your setup, just lower any Anti-Analysing and Astropic Filtering.

2) The maximum notacible gain in speed you could probably get from an upgrade is about 30% depending on what you spend.

3) Dual cores CPU's on the Intel and AMD camps are just about to be released, This will have two effects - current top-of-the-range hardware will plumet in price, and at the end of the day, better hardware will be availible that will prove to provide a far better boost in performance.

4) I reckon ATI will be releasing a new series of GFX cards soon, to support an equivelent of nVidias SLI. nVidia will probably release something better to counter act this as well.

I seriously would wait till the end of the year, the rig you got is fine. I sold up most of my garbage and my main system to biuld a new rig, but now because of the above, I'm finding it hard to part with my money the now. This is even more so with your rig because it's half decent.

Well, i'm quite happy with my wee lappy the now (check sig). Makes me concentrate on studies more than games anyway, so i might not put a "games" graphics card in my new rig.

 

[Kage]

Upgrading the system's CPU wouldn't help much in games, and the RAM wouldn't either. It'd just help for multitasking programs and allowing for faster processing, but not FPS in games.

The best thing you can do if you want to have more settings in computer games is to buy a new graphics card.
The graphics card alone can boost performance speeds dramatically, and graphics cards are called GPU's because they are rather like CPU's but work in pipes to get faster processing than a CPU ever could.

To get better performance in todays games go for a Geforce 6600GT. This will increase frames per second (fps) alot and will allow you to shoot settings up farther. It should also run new games for a while. About £150-170 depending on the make.

Trust me, this is the best thing you can do at the moment You definetly don't need to upgrade that rig to get better performance!

 

[ASSEMBLER]

anyone can keep upgrading including myself but if your happy with what "you" have got then leave it be but it is easy to think i want the latest mobos and cpu's but it allways costs and we will always be upgrading
i have just upgraded from the AMD 2200+ to the 3000+barton and i think for the time being it is qiuck enough.but yes i fancy a new mobo and a 64bit cpu.but im happy for the time being and at the end of the day its a hobby so it will always be there.

 

[DarkBlade1]

I have bought a new PC every couple of years for the last 10 years or so. I usually manage to double the performance of the old machine in all respects. It is now time to upgrade again but the performance gains do not appear to be there this time.

My PC is an Athlon 2800+, with 512mb ram and a Radion 9800 graphics card. New games seem to run OK at 1280*1024.

I have installed a couple of Athlon 64 3000 based PCs for family and friends and haven't been that impressed.

The performance charts I've seen indicate that I would need to go for somehting like an FX55 with an X800ultra card to really notice the improvement - which is a much bigger investment than I would normally have to make.

Can anyone advise whether or not a total machine upgrade is sensible at this point?; or, would a high level graphics card give much better results compared to the 9800 if I kept my current 2800 machine?

Cheers for any help you can give.

~Pip~

To be honest, wait a while longer for the AMD Dual Core CPUs to drop in price with the release of their second series, then get one of those with some good EXTRA LOW LATENCY RAM DDR400 PC3200 and then either a dual core 6800Ultra or two dual core 6800Ultras using nVidia SLi, or go for the similar AMR from ATi when it debuts. You system is fine for now though, trust us there.