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upgrade time

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:35 pm
by losCHUNK
what you guys think ? and what power supply should i be looking at ?

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Venice 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail
Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200XL Platinum TwinX (2x512MB) CAS2

£367.07

Leadtek WinFast GeForce 6800 GT 256MB DDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

£174.95

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:42 pm
by Cory
not top of the line but should run quake4 really well at medium settings

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:47 pm
by losCHUNK
sorted, not looking to spend shitloads on a comp, esp with crimbo round the corner

but hoping that ill get a good punch out of that

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:52 pm
by Kills On Site
Only thing I would change is try for a San Diego core instead of the Venice, IIRC San Diego is Venice with better memory handling.

It should run Q4 at high settings, unless Q4 is different from D3, I have the same thing almost except a Athlon XP, but aronud the same speed, a BFG Tech 6800 GT overclocked past Ultra and that RAM and D3 runs great on high settings at 1152x864. 6800GTs right now are the best you can get for their price as they still kick ass and are now cheap

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:02 pm
by losCHUNK
nice stuff, ill have a look about the core but the ram, mobo and processor are part of a bundle. ill have and look and price them up individually but cheers for the advice :]

im wondering wether to go with the 3700, its like an extra 40 quid though

and the 7800 is an extra 40 quid but think im gunna stick with the 6800 :)

**itches head

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:30 pm
by SoM
40 extra for the 7800, go for it slag

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 8:32 pm
by Grudge
go for the 7800, £40 is nothing

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:04 pm
by Foo
SLI-enabled motherboard and SLi-capable card if you want a real simple upgrade path.

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:18 pm
by bitWISE
I would go with a 3700 San Diego and an MSI Neo4 but the asus shouldn't be a bad board either.
Kills On Site wrote:Only thing I would change is try for a San Diego core instead of the Venice, IIRC San Diego is Venice with better memory handling.

It should run Q4 at high settings, unless Q4 is different from D3, I have the same thing almost except a Athlon XP, but aronud the same speed, a BFG Tech 6800 GT overclocked past Ultra and that RAM and D3 runs great on high settings at 1152x864. 6800GTs right now are the best you can get for their price as they still kick ass and are now cheap
No San Diego is the same core as Venice it just has twice the cache.

Posted: Thu Oct 20, 2005 10:20 pm
by Pooinyourmouth
Cory wrote:not top of the line but should run quake4 really well at medium settings

I have a 64bit 3200 with 1.5 gigs of DDR400 and a 6800 GT 256meg AGP. It runs Doom 3 with everything maxed in 1600x1024 with no slow downs at all. I doubt he'd have to run Q4 at medium to run it "well".

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 12:41 am
by losCHUNK
aye i was jus gunna point that out

jus got back from memphs and hes running it on a 64bit 3000, 512 ram and a 6600GT on high settings (load times are a bitch though)

the set up i posted should mince it on high settings

and im gunna do some more price hunting for the san diego core and perhaps the 7800, cheers for the advice :D

also, powersupply ? what am i looking at, never had to buy one of these things before :ninja:

edit: been using overclockers.co.uk and scan.co.uk, neither has the 3500 san diego >:E

whered you guys shop from ?

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 1:23 am
by Kills On Site
We are newegg shoppers.

Good call bitWISE, i knew it had something to do with memory. Yea, the Venice has 512kb of L2 cache and the San Diego core as 1MB of L2 cache. Definately helps.

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 2:54 am
by bitWISE
losCHUNK wrote:aye i was jus gunna point that out

jus got back from memphs and hes running it on a 64bit 3000, 512 ram and a 6600GT on high settings (load times are a bitch though)

the set up i posted should mince it on high settings

and im gunna do some more price hunting for the san diego core and perhaps the 7800, cheers for the advice :D

also, powersupply ? what am i looking at, never had to buy one of these things before :ninja:

edit: been using overclockers.co.uk and scan.co.uk, neither has the 3500 san diego >:E

whered you guys shop from ?
newegg.

The load times are pretty insane. Enough to make my raptors cry.

I would try to get a 500+ watt atx version 2. It looks like motherboards are moving up to a 24 pin design so if you get a good PSU now (they come with a 20 pin adapter) you wont have to worry. However, if you don't go with a v2 be careful that your motherboard doesn't need a 24 (I know the MSI Neo4 does).

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:01 am
by Psyche911
I wouldn't spend the extra money on San Diego, I'd put that towards the 7800GT instead. I guarantee you'll see a much better performance improvement with that. It's debatable whether you'd see any performance benefit from San Diego.

And the 3500+ is a 2.2GHz 512KB cache core.
The 3700+ is the 2.2GHz 1MB cache core. Same product otherwise.

Quake 4 load times have been good for me (much quicker than Doom 3) in MP, haven't tried SP yet. Maybe it's because I'm on medium settings, not high?

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:32 am
by Hr.O
I'm getting a bit sick of these threads, look a bit back and see what went on when Q3 came out.
We all bought tnt2(ultras) and were still hitting the Q3 GFX ceiling (reducing bling for extra fps). Then about a few (6 or so) months later, NVidia came out with it's all brand new GForce- one generation GPUs.

To make a long story short: buy anything up to parr, but spare a bit of dosh, and be one of the first to be able to play Q4 100%+ in Ultra quality, (still) capped at 60fps :p

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:38 am
by SOAPboy
2 gigs of ram..

Why anyone buys 1 anymore is beyond me..

and pay that 40 more for the 7800, i had a 6800GT and even with it overclocked well past ultra speeds, its NO WHERE NEAR my 7800gtx

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 3:58 am
by Psyche911
Jesus, SOAP. WTF are you talking about?
BF2 is the one and only thing anybody here probably runs that benefits from 2GB of RAM. I know it would because when I quit it, my system has a shitload of data to load off the hard disk for Windows as BF2 was using up too much RAM.

Quake 4 doesn't do that. No other game does, which would make it quite apparent that they all run well within the amount of RAM I have. 1GB.

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 4:41 am
by glossy
SOAPboy wrote:2 gigs of ram..

Why anyone buys 1 anymore is beyond me..

and pay that 40 more for the 7800, i had a 6800GT and even with it overclocked well past ultra speeds, its NO WHERE NEAR my 7800gtx
"expert"

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 4:52 am
by Scourge
I've been managing fairly well on 512 for some time now. :shrug:

Re: upgrade time

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:11 am
by Sanction
losCHUNK wrote:what you guys think ? and what power supply should i be looking at ?
Enermax, Seasonic or OCZ
450w or more

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:14 am
by Psyche911
I want one of those Seasonic S12 PSUs. They're supposed to be incredibly silent and have very stable rails. I'd get one of those, but Sanction named 3 great brands there.

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:26 am
by Deathshroud
I just got this PSU last week, and it kicks ass...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817104152

Re: upgrade time

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:26 am
by Kills On Site
Sanction wrote:
losCHUNK wrote:what you guys think ? and what power supply should i be looking at ?
Enermax, Seasonic or OCZ
450w or more
Lets not forget Antec

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 1:15 pm
by losCHUNK
eyyy cheers people, think ima be sticking with the venice core

gunna be getting an antec 460w powersupply

now then, the graphics card

the 7800 i was looking at was

BFG GeForce 7800 GT OC 256MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/ ... eries.html

note its not the 7800GTX, worth it ? or worth getting the 6800 and getting the 7800GTX further down the line ? (which means i can put that extra 40 bucks into the 3700 san diego core) :]

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2005 1:29 pm
by DiscoDave
Defniatly go with the 7800GT, a nice improvement over the 6800GT and not that much more expensive.

I went for a 7800GT and a SD 3700+ (didn't get an SLi board, didn't see the point really) which saved me about £20 or so.

I'd rather get the 7800GT now rather than a 6800 and then getting a 7800GTX later on.

If you're a heavy gamer, go for the 7800GT, if not, go for a 6800 and get a 3700+SD as you've stated.