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P4 system, GPU limit/bottleneck?

amigafan2003 said:
But all way overpowered for a P4 system so they would be a waste.
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I'm not so sure they are at the prices they are now going for. If they were still £120-150 I'd agree.

It means the minimum framerate won't drop so low and you can have max settings in the the drivers. Plus he's playing at quite high resolutions.

The P4 will massively limit FPS, but the card will render a better image with less slowdowns at the maximum speed the P4 is capable of.

If spending as little as possible is the goal, then yeah I'd agree.

As far as balance goes, a x1950 is a good combo with a P4 and you really do need a better CPU to get the most out of modern cards.
 
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estebanrey said:
Anyway, the X1950 does pretty much do want I want but I do get some slow down in some of my games. BF2 takes about 5 mins of gameplay for the FPS rate to stabilise and can't get 1920*1200 with 4AA at the moment but I think that may be down to my poor RAM set up as much as anything (will be getting a RAM upgrade tomorrow, currently have 2.5gb of mismatched RAM).
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To be honest BF2 is pretty RAM hungry so running 4Gb will make a huge difference. Conversley I wouldn't bother with expensive RAM like the Ballistix either, just get a good value appropriate kit, OCUK are selling a 4Gig 6400 kit for £37.

Save whats left toward the big upgrade. I suppose if your new CPU/ Mobo combo is likely to still be DDR2 then it makes more sense to buy better RAM, but personally I'd go cheap now and see if I can stretch to a core i7/i5 and DDR3 on the upgrade.

E-I
 
Anything much qiuker than the x1950 will be wasted until you upgrade IMO.

If you look around you can build a p45 wolfdale system with a GTX260 for £200. If you sell you current kit and throw another £100 at it you could build a very tidy system.
 
spirits247 said:
I'm not so sure they are at the prices they are now going for. If they were still £120-150 I'd agree.

It means the minimum framerate won't drop so low and you can have max settings in the the drivers. Plus he's playing at quite high resolutions.

The P4 will massively limit FPS, but the card will render a better image with less slowdowns at the maximum speed the P4 is capable of.

If spending as little as possible is the goal, then yeah I'd agree.

As far as balance goes, a x1950 is a good combo with a P4 and you really do need a better CPU to get the most out of modern cards.
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Thanks very helpful.. I do OC my proc to 3.4GHz not that makes much difference to the advice I suppose.
 
jigger said:
Anything much qiuker than the x1950 will be wasted until you upgrade IMO.

If you look around you can build a p45 wolfdale system with a GTX260 for £200. If you sell you current kit and throw another £100 at it you could build a very tidy system.
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Yeah thought about that but really I want to wait until Win 7 and DX11 are mainstream and then build an i7 (or i9 even) monster :D

believe it or not my now ancient PC was beast when I built it years ago...a bit like me really only I can't be upgraded as easily :D
 
Yeah, what you have is pretty good. If you need to replace it and want something slightly better look for the following.

7900 GTX
X1950 XTX

Those 2 should be from 0-25% faster depending on res and game if your CPU can cope.

On the 2nd hand market, they sell from £25 to £40. Any more is too much.

Anything much faster is going be a waste if you're not going to upgrade the cpu for 6 months, a lot can happen in the world of graphics cards in 6 months.
 
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Actually, £50 is a pretty good budget to set for your P4 upgrade to last 6 months. Auction site you can definately pick up something good for that.

Overclockers have a few cards in the B-grade section. There is a 3850:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=BG-032-GW

and a few more powerful options for a little more, but I would really save your money for the big upgrade.
 
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Thanks again guys, really useful stuff and it means I should be able to get a everything I need tomorrow instead of spreading it over 2 weeks.

One last thing, would 1GB be a waste as most of the cards I'm now looking at (3850/7800s) are 512mb and that's what my current card is so in a weird way I don't feel I'm upgrading if I buy another 512mb.

Just need someone to tell me I'm being stupid really.
 
I don't know of any game that really takes adavantage of 1GB at the moment. I have a 512MB card and nothing has made me want 1GB memory yet. Perhaps one or two titles have an insane setting with huge textures?

I doubt you see any difference between the two for now. Just keep your costs down at the moment while you have the overclocked P4. If you spend too much on a card you may be dissappointed when you still have slowdowns due to the CPU. Just make sure you get a card with at least a 256bit memory interface as you game at a fairly high resolution.
 
Sasahara said:
Old stock that's probably been forgotten.

Buy 2nd hand. I picked up a 7900 GTX for £30.
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If it's old stock you'd think they'd be selling it cheaper to get rid....

Hmm, bit skeptical of used GFX cards though, you don't know how much they've been OC'd but worth a butcher's I suppose etc
 
XFX ATI Radeon HD 4830 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI £75.99

Asus M4A785D-M Pro AMD 785G (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR2 £57.99

AMD Athlon II X2 Dual Core 245 2.90GHz (Socket AM3) £50.99

Corsair XMS2 4GB (2x2GB)£46.99

£231.97 inc VAT

Thats if you psu & case would allow it.

you could get it down to £150

If you buy second hand.

4850s go for around £50
A half decent AM2 mobo can be had for £40
& 4bg of drr2 for around 30.
Chip wise doubt theres that many am3 for sale yet.

Plus you could get a few bob for you old bits.

Or you could also get the above cpu,mobo,ram run of the onboard gfx for a bit sell your old bits & get the 4890 or 275 you want but you would need a new psu as well & maybe case 2 fit it
 
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