Need help on upgrade or new rig!

[Henrik2k]

Hi folks!

Ive notived that my computer is getting alittle slow.
And I work alot with maya and does some heavy gamings.

My system now is:
P4 Northwood 3.2
Asus P4C800-E Deluxe
Corsair 3200XL 2-2-2-5 2x512mb
SATA Hitachi 160gb 8mb Cache
Excalibur ATI X800XT-PE
DELL 2405FPW TFT
Enermax 460W

Now I need to make this rig alil faster or the more expensive option buy a completly new rig. Thou Im not sure about this cause the new cpus, chips are coming soon and noone knows the performance on them and so on.

So I wounder if I should stick with single core use most of my current stuff and boost it with a small upgrade? and then later when new chips are out and are more worth the performance then buy a new one?

Now what im thinking of upgrading if that is the right call then this:
1gb more memory cause my 1gb runs out fast.
Then my question is should I just buy 2x512mb of exact same type of memory im using now? or is it much better to try sell my 2x512 and get 2x1gb? I dont want to spend to much money on the upgrade.

My second upgrade im thinking of should be a new faster HDD.
Like a raptor 74gb 10krpm as OS and main prog use and keep the old 160gb for storage.

And third upgrade a new cpu as my current northwood is REALLY bad when it comes to OC. I can only run it 100% stable at 212fsb. And yes I know this cant be right everyone will say. But it is. I can push it to 222 but then its not stable. Its a very weak cpu I had bad luck on that one. I tried my friends prescott and it worked 100% stable around 230fsb.
So I was thinking if I try to sell my northy and get a new prescott 3.6 that is pretty cheap now and perhaps OC it to 3.8 rock stable. I would get a pretty nice boost to my old rig? Then my question would be will my asus mobo support the 3.6, 64 bits prescott or the none 64 bits cpu ?

Or ofcourse the last option try to sell my whole rig and buy a new rig Using dual core and ddr2 and 7800GTX pci-e card. But this will cost alot more and Im not sure about buying current duals from intel as new ones will come later in january I think I read ?

Any suggestions would be great.
THanks!

 

[LordDarik]

I would say sell it, but if you're doing heavy gaming and overclocking I would go AMD and get a cheap Venice processor like the 3000+ or 3200+ and OC it to ~2.7GHZ. 2x1GB of RAM is also good, you'll notice a large difference - especially in games like F.E.A.R. and Battlefield 2.

 

[Henrik2k]

Im not sure if AMD is something for me. Im not that much into Overclicking just alittle to get alil more performance out of the money

And as im working with Maya alot then dual core is alittle interesting. But as the new dual cores comes out later I think it would be stupid to buy one now ?
I also read about single cores are still the fastest cause the programs and games are not optimezed for multitasking yet.. and will prolly not be for a long time.

Thats why I was thinking of a cheap upgrade to get alil more speed.
But now I see they only sell S775. 478 looks dead ? does this mean I cant use a new Prescott 660 with my mobo ?

This looks like its gonna be expensive then... hmm I have no clue what to do..
When I play games such BF2, fear and Q4 I have no lag at all so I dont think I need an AMD to improve that. As I got a decent vid card. I do see on tomshardwares site that the prescott 660 wins in most cases when its into gaming. so thats interesting. Thou it gets last when it comes to rendering in 3Dsm, now thats sad.. However I do need lot of power when im using my 24" monitor at 1920x1200 native res....

Heeelp....

 

[BstOnTheBrain]

If a few hundred bucks in performance is little to you..

 

[Henrik2k]

If a few hundred bucks in performance is little to you..

What do you mean?

Any suggestions on my thoughts ?

 

[ckj]

Videocard is primary, cpu secondary when it comes to games. If you're going to stay single core, I'd stick with intel since you use maya. Intel tends to be a little better than AMD at that sort of computing. However, if you decide to get dual core, ditch Intel entirely and get an AMD dual core. They outperform intel is pretty much every category and they OC pretty with without too much work.

Dual cores will probably help you, since it sounds like you use a lot of programs at once. This means that if you're gaming, one core will be used solely for the games, while the other core handles the backround processes.

As far getting a 660, I think if you oc a 630, it does pretty well so the extra money might not be worth it. Also 775 is definately not compatible with 478 so yes, you would have to get a new motherboard.

If you want to keep your current video card, and decide to go AMD, I suggest you get the asrock motherboard that has both AGP and pci-e videocard slots. THis will allow you to upgrade your videocard later if need be, and if that ram is DDRI it'll run fine in any AMD rig, but if you upgrade your pentium, you'll need to buy DDRII.

 

[Henrik2k]

Videocard is primary, cpu secondary when it comes to games. If you're going to stay single core, I'd stick with intel since you use maya. Intel tends to be a little better than AMD at that sort of computing. However, if you decide to get dual core, ditch Intel entirely and get an AMD dual core. They outperform intel is pretty much every category and they OC pretty with without too much work.

Dual cores will probably help you, since it sounds like you use a lot of programs at once. This means that if you're gaming, one core will be used solely for the games, while the other core handles the backround processes.

As far getting a 660, I think if you oc a 630, it does pretty well so the extra money might not be worth it. Also 775 is definately not compatible with 478 so yes, you would have to get a new motherboard.

If you want to keep your current video card, and decide to go AMD, I suggest you get the asrock motherboard that has both AGP and pci-e videocard slots. THis will allow you to upgrade your videocard later if need be, and if that ram is DDRI it'll run fine in any AMD rig, but if you upgrade your pentium, you'll need to buy DDRII.

THanks for your reply!
It wasnt that long ago since I bought my videocard and I paid very much for it. so I do want to keep it as long as possible I doubt I get much for selling it.. And yes I am alittle interested in dual core as I can use both cores for my needs. But I would like to see what intel performs in their new dual cores that arrives in januari before I buy amd dual x2s.

So I guess if I want alil boost now before the big rig change later would be buy 1gb more ram and a new faster OS HDD.

Now a question on the HDD.
Some time ago I was reading about what is the best/fastest sata disk then most ppl agree on the 74gb raptor 10krpm. But now someone told me I can get eaqual speed with a new normal 260gb+ with 16mb cache?
I thought the double cache on a disk would not do that much. But 10krpm would do a pretty much differ in load time and that is what I will notice when runing heavy programs and such. ?

Thanks again!

 

[LordDarik]

THanks for your reply!
It wasnt that long ago since I bought my videocard and I paid very much for it. so I do want to keep it as long as possible I doubt I get much for selling it.. And yes I am alittle interested in dual core as I can use both cores for my needs. But I would like to see what intel performs in their new dual cores that arrives in januari before I buy amd dual x2s.

So I guess if I want alil boost now before the big rig change later would be buy 1gb more ram and a new faster OS HDD.

Now a question on the HDD.
Some time ago I was reading about what is the best/fastest sata disk then most ppl agree on the 74gb raptor 10krpm. But now someone told me I can get eaqual speed with a new normal 260gb+ with 16mb cache?
I thought the double cache on a disk would not do that much. But 10krpm would do a pretty much differ in load time and that is what I will notice when runing heavy programs and such. ?

Thanks again!

You could always get the ASRock motherboard that has a PCIe and AGP slot, than you could go X2 AMD, keep the memory, the graphics card, and everything else. That would be around $400 if you got that board and an X2 3800+. About the hard drive, I never thought those raptors were worth the price, 74GB for $160?!? That's just crazy when you could just get a high cache SATA hard drive and still get great performance.

 

[Henrik2k]

I see.
But if I change to X2 3800+ will I notice an increasement in game performance over my 3.4 northy vs the x2 3800 ? or will I only gain performance in multitasking ?

If there is a better performance in all my cathegories chaging to what you suggested instead of my intel 3.4 northy it is pretty interesting for $400 Will the different be big ? or only in some areas ?


I found ur mobo you suggested: ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 ULi M1695 4DDR-DIMM 3PCI 2PCIe AGP SATA Raid Audio LAN Socket939 ATX
But it doesnt have gb lan, I need that to.

Thou I found this mobo.. is this as good ? Does it support x2 ? it doesnt say..
Asus A8V VIA K8T800Pro 4DDR-DIMM 5PCI AGP SATA Raid Audio GB-LAN Socket939 ATX

Thanks