Need Upgrade Advice. What CPU etc. would you get if you were me? (Hardcore Gamer)

Need Upgrade Advice. What CPU etc. would you get if you were me? (Hardcore Gamer)

I have a bit of a dilemma that I would like other people's advice on. I'm a hardcore gamer anticipating Quake 4's release and I'm planning on building a new system for it. Quake 4 is supposed to be out in October/November so I still have time to think about what I'd like to do but it would be nice having the system to play with sooner.

I don't know if I should go with the 3000+, 3700+, or one of the X2's (3800+, or 4400+). I'm afraid that if I go with the 3000+ I may get a crappy overclocker and not get near 2.7 ghz. I'm going to be using air cooling no matter what I pick. I think the 3700+ would be the safer bet because I *should* have no trouble getting around 2.7 ghz plus I'll have the additional L2 cache. Now on the other hand I could spend even more by going with an X2. The 3800 X2 is only about 100 more bucks than the 3700 San Diego without the extra L2 cache but I'm thinking it's completely pointless since games won't be supporting dual core for quite some time. Even when games do start supporting it who knows how much benefit you'll gain performance wise. Quake 4 will not be supporting it so if it's not going to give me any extra frames then why bother or will it somehow? No hardcore gamer is ever going to be encoding stuff while playing a game with or without dual core regardless. On top of that I'll have the system I'm using now to do all my encoding etc. while I game on my new one. Here is the system I'm upgrading from:

P4 3.0C OC'd to 3.5 ghz
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb
Fortron 400W PSU
1gb OCZ PC3700 Gold Rev.2
WD 80GB SE 7200RPM w/8mb cache
Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-105
Audigy 2

Here is the system I'd like to upgrade to:

A64 3700+ San Diego (Possibly 3000+ or an X2)
Nforce 4 mb
2gb ram
7800GTX
Audigy 2

The last decision I'm trying to make up my mind on is if I should wait for ATI's stupid R520 they keep delaying. I'll be ****ed if I go with the 7800GTX and the R520 is released later giving an additional 20+ frames!

Summary: Bottom line is I want the best possible performance for Gaming.
1. What processor do you think I should go with?
2. Should I wait for R520 or do you think I should buy now?

Bonus Question
3. Do you think I'm stupid for upgrading considering the specs of my old system?

Remember I want the best possible performance I can get without paying rediculous FX-57 etc. prices. This Intel system is holding me back and AMD can produce a lot of extra frames according to all the review sites benchmarks I've been reading.

Put yourself in my shoes. All feedback and recommendations are extremely welcome and appreciated.

Fortron and good cooling may be able to push the inexpensive latest revision Venice to your 2.7 GHz goal....


...unless you're very unlucky. When you walk outside, do pots of flowers fall on your head, things of that nature? No? Then Venice could be a good gamble for you.

San Diego is a sure thing at a premium though.

X2s are not for gamers and will overclok as far as the slower of the two cores overclock. I wouldn't buy it at the expense of other components.

Concentrate on good case cooling & CPU cooling, last time I checked, there still weren't better overcloking mobos than DFI (right guys?)


The video card issue, check this out, they talk about the XT and non XT versions here: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25898

I was under the impression that the FX line was the best for "gaming systems." Although I still don't know what seperates it from the high end A64 systems besides the unlocked multiplyer.

Unfortunately, I can't use my old card in the new system because it's AGP. Yea I've already read that article but it is not a very reliable source.

If you have the money now then don't bother waiting for r520. I'm a bit of an ATi fanboi but even I can see the next ATi core looks to be lacking based on what little information we do have. If you still need time to collect a bit morre cash then check out the r520 as it still might surprise us.

I don't think a 400W Forton will be enough to support 3700+ and 7800GTXs, especially if your OCing. I'd highly recommend a Forton AX500-A, or if your budget allows it, a OCZ PowerStream 520W would be stable enough for two 7800GTXs even under OCed conditions.

If your a real hardcore gamer, and want to base your system mainly towards Quake 4 and probably a few other games and such, then you would want the best out of it.

The 3000+ would most likely OC to 2.6ghz-2.7ghz in 9 out of 10 setups, well there's a lot of variables, ram, PSU, and etc. But still, it's quite possible.

But then if your an extreme gamer as you said, even 5 fps would make a difference then. I'd recommend you getting the 3700+, with extra cache you can get about 5 more fps and also be almost "guaranteed" to OC to 2.7ghz.

I'd recommend the Epox board for gaming, since you'll want to OC and be able to game well, the Epox is great at both. DFI is a great choice also, since it can probably give you the most out of your OC, but then the few extra Mhz won't be a difference at all in gaming.

If your budget allows it, the Abit AN8-SLI Fatality is a great performing board. It gets the top scores in benchmarks and even gaming fps charts. It's also a great OCing board, you'll still should be able to hit 2.7ghz on it.

But then honestly, I doubt the OC would affect your gaming by a lot. Even if you can't hit 2.7ghz, and be unlucky and only get to 2.6ghz, that loss of 100mhz won't be a difference, at MOST it'll be 1fps.

I'd say get the 7800GTX, even though if your a ATI fan or whatnot, the 7800GTX is already running great for all games, topping out all the charts. I doubt the R520 will be that great, and they'll release the better verison in the R580.

Also try to get some tight timings on the 2x1GB set of ram, maybe some OCZ PC3200 2x1GB Platinum is a great choice at about $240 on newegg.

If you want even better load times, you might want to consider getting a Raptor if your budget allows it, it'll help your load times for certain maps and levels a little faster.

And for the bonus question, I would say you would notice a large difference between your Intel setup and the AMD setup for Quake 4.

muscl3s said:

Yea I've already read that article but it is not a very reliable source.

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What you talkin'about Willis, Fuad kicks ***.

He even got in trouble for being "too close" with ATi.

But yeah, it might be a wait for the ATi.

darksparkz said:

I don't think a 400W Forton will be enough to support 3700+ and 7800GTXs, especially if your OCing. I'd highly recommend a Forton AX500-A, or if your budget allows it, a OCZ PowerStream 520W would be stable enough for two 7800GTXs even under OCed conditions.

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You're assuming I'm going to be using parts from my old system which is not the case. I'll be buying all new parts for the new system and I'm keeping my old system completely intact which I'll be changing over to a Linux box.

Thanks for all the comments though so far guys. If there are any other opinions out there please don't hesitate to share them.

...just be sure to list the specifics before shelling out the cash, can't tell you how many "hey look what I just bought" threads around here are filled with "you should have bought --- instead" replies.

c627627 said:

...just be sure to list the specifics before shelling out the cash, can't tell you how many "hey look what I just bought" threads around here are filled with "you should have bought --- instead" replies.

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Good idea. I've decided to take the plunge so I've created a new thread in the general hardware section for feedback on the parts I've selected.

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?p=3952017#post3952017

First off, congratulations on your change to an AMD system.

Well, in the case of your new PC, I'd recommend you save some money and keep 1GB of RAM, instead of 2GB. I only ordered 1GB of RAM (but they sent me a second set by accident, which I kept), and compared 1GB vs 2GB. The results were pretty much the same.

For the CPU, I'd recommend any X2, as 2006 is the year multi-threaded apps will come out, and even a 3800+ X2 will fry an FX-57 on MT Games dramatically.

And for the sound card, I'd say you should wait a month or two for the "Soundblaster X-Fi"... which is WAY better than an Audigy 2 or 4.

waiownsyou said:

First off, congratulations on your change to an AMD system.

Well, in the case of your new PC, I'd recommend you save some money and keep 1GB of RAM, instead of 2GB. I only ordered 1GB of RAM (but they sent me a second set by accident, which I kept), and compared 1GB vs 2GB. The results were pretty much the same.

For the CPU, I'd recommend any X2, as 2006 is the year multi-threaded apps will come out, and even a 3800+ X2 will fry an FX-57 on MT Games dramatically.

And for the sound card, I'd say you should wait a month or two for the "Soundblaster X-Fi"... which is WAY better than an Audigy 2 or 4.

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Two of the best game programmers in the world (Tim Sweeny & John Carmack) have said that programming for dual core is much more difficult and it's going to be a slow process. With that in mind I suspect it will be quite some time before games actually start taking advantage of dual core. Who can honestly say how much of a performance increase there will be with dual core? I wouldn't be surprised if the first dual core supported games only gave a 5% performance increase. I could be totally wrong but at this very moment in time, dual core does absolutely nothing for gamers. The future of dual core and gaming is pure speculation at this point

One thing, since you have a lot of time until Quake 4 comes out, I would wait til the last moment to upgrade. Prices will probably go down, and there would probably be some newer/better stuff on the market.

muscl3s said:

Two of the best game programmers in the world (Tim Sweeny & John Carmack) have said that programming for dual core is much more difficult and it's going to be a slow process. With that in mind I suspect it will be quite some time before games actually start taking advantage of dual core. Who can honestly say how much of a performance increase there will be with dual core? I wouldn't be surprised if the first dual core supported games only gave a 5% performance increase. I could be totally wrong but at this very moment in time, dual core does absolutely nothing for gamers. The future of dual core and gaming is pure speculation at this point

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And yet, a program like Prime95 (you should know what year that came out) can run on as many CPUs by settings its affinity. Microsoft is already working on versions of Visual Basic and what not to run on dual or multicore. Basically, all a program needs to do is to check a core's workload, and change the CPU#.

I think it's the OS kernel that does the load balancing rather than the individual apps.

I'm only guessing but with something like VB, MS is probably just adding some explicit threading API.

The release version of F.E.A.R. will support dual core/processor systems, and so will City of Villians. On top of that, the next official release of the Nvidia Forceware drivers will have dual core optimizations built in to them.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2005/08/24/city_villains_fear_dual_core/

I think the 4400+ is the best performance/price ratio right now, but I'm sure a 3800+ or 4000+ should be in the sweet spot for next year's gaming.

Btw my 3000+ is a terrible overclocker, I wouldn't get one unless you knew the stepping was going to be good.

Wait for the new Radeons, I am in the same position and I'm actually going to wait till the R520 or R580 to upgrade my system. But if I were you I would go for a X2...correct me if I am wrong but is'nt quake 4 and unreal 3 multi-threaded, and supports dual cpu's. Rendering / Physics would be a nice split and I am assuming thats what they did, and if so, an X2 4400+ Oc'ed a bit on good air and heatsink would make a killer addition to a new R580...which is my system goal along with crossfire.