Should i upgrade?

jamie2497

jamie2497

jamie2497

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Joined
7 Oct 2005
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Hey all,

I currently have a P4 3.06 ghz, Radeon 9800 pro, 1 gig DDR system and was wandering if i should upgrade now or should i wait for more future proof hardware to be released? My system can play most games even though they arn't on high settings but will it last until the next gen of graphics and processor are released?
I know eventually Hi def will take over so a new graphics card will be required and processor speeds are being increased almost weekly.

Any opinions would be great!

Regards
Jamie
 
Entirely up to you, except for your Graphics you system seems reasonable enough. If you've got the cash and fancy more eye candy or being able to play leading edge games then yeah upgrade. But if your happy why bother. Certainly upgrading now won't be a waste of cash, a decent spec system ( X1800XT/X1900/7900 graphics, X2 AMD processor, 2gig ram ) will last a good couple of years at least (naturally over time finding some games may need graphics level reducing but it'll be playable at least that long ).
 
Basically as BigDom says, does your system not do something that you want it to do? If it still runs everything at a speed acceptable to you then I'd save your cash.

If not then by all means upgrade, bear in mind that there will always be a new technology 'around the corner' so waiting for that can mean you never buy anything :)
 
Thanks guys.
Yeah i suppose there will always be newer and better hardware, but does anyone know how far away DirectX10 and Hi def graphics cards are?
Sometimes it will jerk in BF2 but it can take up to 10 minutes to load a map!
Maybe a bit more memory and perhaps a switch to pci express will keep it going for a little while longer :)
 
DX10 is coming with Vista so in theory around Christmas time if memory serves.

Is your P4 socket 478 or 775? I'm guessing at 478 which means you don't have much choice in motherboard that support PCI-E although I believe there are one or maybe two. Also if you are thinking about upgrading Ram then you may want to consider getting 2x1gb sticks rather than 4x512mb although I think that Intels aren't quite so affected by using 4 sticks in terms of overclocking.
 
Yeah its a socket 478.
Hmm christmas, quite a way away then.
I was thinking maybe getting a Intel Pentium 4 805 Dual Core as they seem pretty reasonable and overclock well from what ive read, with a PCI-express motherboard, a graphics card that will keep me going for the rest of the year maybe more and some 2 gig Dual channel.
Any recommendations?
Would the dual core give a noticeable difference from my current pentium 4?

Thanks for your help :)

Jamie
 
semi-pro waster said:
DX10 is coming with Vista so in theory around Christmas time if memory serves.
Click to expand...

Microsoft, being the great company that they are, have changed the Vista release date from summer 2006, to Christmas 2006, and now to early 2007. Three cheers for Microsoft! :D

So waiting for DX10 is going to be a long way off, you might aswell upgrade.
 
If you go for a processor upgrade then go AMD. The difference between AMD and Intel, especially for gaming, is very very noticeable.
 
And by the time DX10 games are release will be close to 2008, i would think.

Definitely go AMD (faster, run cooler & cheaper than Intel at present).

Go dual core (X2 3800+ or similar) if you can.

Then get X1800XT or similar graphics & your good to go.
 
My system is exactly the same except I have a 6800 GT and my processor is overclocked to 3.2GHz. It performs well in games like HL2 and Doom 3, (running TFT so 1280 x 1024 res), it plays FEAR quite well but struggles a little some times. I will be upgrading this year, only I need to wait till June for the new AMD processors to come out :(
 
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