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PC needs an upgrade?

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Terminat.

Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2004
Back in February, I assembled a computer with these (back then) near-state-of-the art components:

Athlon XP 2800+ At 2.19Ghz (3200+ Barton.)
1Gb PC3200 DDR.
ATA100 7200rpm Disk Drive.
K7N2 Delta Series Board.
Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB Video Card.

However, now it is beginning to get older. Recently it got a PCMark04 score of 3600, and - when the video card is overclocked - it gets a 3dMark01 score of 12,000.

If I am to play games like D3 and others similar to Far Cry in terms of graphics, what needs to be upgraded? I suspect it is primarily the video card - and so hence my reason for putting it in the video section - but could it be the hard drive and other components also?
 
Video card, not the hard drive.

The hard drive's speed mainly just will affect the load times of games, rather than their in-game performance.

The 9600 Pro isn't a bad card, but there's better stuff out there. If you don't want to spend too much, I'd suggest waiting for the X700/6600's.
 
But aren't they PCI-E?

Thanks for your help. :thup:

Aren't those cards going to be PCI-Express? That's another thing that is worrying: with 64-bit processors, DDR2 and PCI-E coming out, is a mainboard change going to be necessary soon? Hopefully not, but is it?

When I referred to the hard drive, I meant as in load-up times also. I don't want to wait ages for D3 and other new games to load.

Thanks again. ;)
 
it might be....depending if there still going to produce agp...agp will be like the old pci compared to the pci-e
 
You're system looks like it should handle pretty much anything you throw at it. The video card is your weakest link for games though, so I'd look into upgrading to either a 9800 series or a X800/6800 series (if you have the cash to spare).

The 6600 and the X700 are both PCI-Express according to the info I dug up. Theoretically, nVidia's PCI-Express bridge they have could allow the 6600 to be released in AGP form (so says [H]ardOCP anyways), but it's anybody's guess as to wether nVidia will actually do it.

JigPu
 
Yeah,everything you have is fine except you will have less than Ideal performance on Doom3 with the 9600pro.
I know,My9600XT gets about 24fps on it.
 
Yea, video card should be your next upgrade. Either go with a 9700/9800 pro or wait for the x700/6600 cards to come out.
 
Terminat. said:
I am probably going to go for this card: (I am more of an ATI fan, but their X800s are far more costly):

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=66090

It's only £240. Quite cheap for a GT wouldn't you say? I reckon a 9800 just won't do for the games of tomorrow, and - as mentioned before - I'd prefer an X800XT but that's way more expensive!

that 6800gt only has 128mb of mem [ergo low price] not sure how much of a performance drop it will be over the 256 version's since it's the first 128mb one i've seen.

if you can find a 256 one for not much more i'd go for that.

/jmho
 
Another £40.

It's another £40 to go to 256MB of DDR3. Is it really worth it though? I thought that 256MB was just a marketing ploy to make people think their card was twice as good.
 
Thats not a GT its the NU. It says in the spec's it only has 12 pipes, and I would bet it dosent have DDR3 either. The GE which is Gamer Edition has 256 DDR3, but as far as I know ASUS dosent have a regular NU.
 
Sure?

Are you sure: it says quite clearly GT with DDR3? Unless ebuyer have got it wrong - not unheard of, but still...

Anyway, speaking of NUs, there's only here for only £189!

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=62623

It does only have 128MB DDR though it's still an amazing buy! I would rather get a GT though, if that Asus one really is a GT.

Is £60 more for a GT worth it though? I heard somebody say it was because of more pipelines, better clock speeds and DDR3.
 
Nandro said:
Thats not a GT its the NU. It says in the spec's it only has 12 pipes, and I would bet it dosent have DDR3 either. The GE which is Gamer Edition has 256 DDR3, but as far as I know ASUS dosent have a regular NU.

Superscalar 12-Pipe GPU Architecture

doh :bang head
don't know how i missed that, was lookin for it too.



terminat, don't buy that card, it's way worth 40 more for a real gt with 16 pipes and 256mb.
 
Terminat. said:
Thanks for the advice. :)

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/prod...2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X3Jldmlld3M=&product_uid=64851

This looks like a true GT. There are several positive reviews: one says it easily handles D3 on 1280*1024 with 4xAA.

Is it a good buy for the price for £300? That's certainly expensive (nearly twice the 6800NU for £180)!

not sure how that relate's to $US but the performance diff is worth it /imo

nu=less eye candy+lower res
gt=more eye candy+higher res= longer lifespan
meaning you'll upgrade from a nu before you would a gt.
 
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