So £100 would give you how much more power than an old 3ghz P4?

[NeilF]

So out of interest, in raw processing power, if I was to spend around £100 on a modern motherboard & CPU, how much (if any?) more processing power would I end up with than my current old P4-3.2ghz (533 bus)?

Let's say for example processing video footage, which is basically just solid CPU intensive stuff...

 

[NeilF]

Cant realy wuantify it, lets just say a lot. I would suggest keeping your money until you have enough to buy a Quad though, especially if you dont upgrade often.

Why a Quad?


I'm looking to upgrade my machine enough to allow me to play games for the next years or so adequately (not high settings, just medium is fine).

This can be done in two ways...

1) Stick with my current setup (so nice easy life) and just spend £150 on an HIS 3850, no faster AGP card than this around! - Job done.

2) Or, as has been suggested elsewhere, replacing my motherboard, and CPU to go PCIe and getting a lesser GFX card. However, this would also mean replacing my memory, and without a doubt I'd want to replace my system disc (as I'd have to do a fresh install) with a new SATA drive as well.

Option (1) will cost me about £160ish...

Option (2) will end up costing me (I suspect) about twice that...


My gut feel is to limp along with my AGP system for another year or two by putting that 3850 in... Unless say £120 on the motherboard and CPU is literally going to blow my current CPU performance out of the water...

note1: I don't play many games really... Just HL2 engine stuff (which runs OK at the moment) and I want to play Mass Effect (hence upgrading!).
note2: I have a 700W power supply ready....

 

[NeilF]

Some of your links for the mb/cpu/mem point to the same thing so I can't see specific items

I think your first comment is a very interesting, and may have answered my question... 'Most games are NOT cpu limited' - So if I can get away with just £150 now and games play fine, I'm happy...

I know for about £350 I can have a nice setup, but is does end up being £200 more, and I suspect I just won't get much value out of... For example, if I were to play 'Mass Effect' on both setups I bet they'd both play fine (at least I hope so )

 

[NeilF]

Get a 360.

Seriously tempted except I hate console controls... Especially as a lot of stuff I do is FPS type stuff...

Unless someone is suggesting the HIS 3850 + my current setup will not allow me to play things like Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead and the like, in reasonable settings at a good frame rate, then I'm going to put off the MB and CPU upgrade I think...

In the next 1-2yrs prices will only substantially drop in price and on my next upgrade I'll do the whole lot and change OS... For the time being just changing a single card will keep me happy I hope...

"Why a quad"?

presumably because you mentioned video processing, and most of the video editing type software is well positioned to make use of all 4 cores of a quad chip.

Well, just a (poor) example I guess.... Just trying to get some feeling of ummmfff of the new Core-Duo processors when compared to my old P4-3ghz. eg: Basically twice as fast for the cheaper (£50) ones?

The trouble you face here is the budget - it's a *little* low to get something which would last you long enough to make it worthwhile.

Indeed! I just cannot justify spending more when I don't play much and really just need enough performance to make things reasonable...

My inclination would be to spend the minimum just now, if you can save up enough to splash out a tad more in say 6 - 12 months (or after Nehalem comes out, and hopefully the older architecture chips and chipsets come down in price as a result).

That's what I'm planning to do anyway - I'm on PCIe at the mo, so my 8800GT is great, but the system is still 939-based and the CPU and RAM aren't a scratch on the new wolfdales + DDR2 or DDR3 I live in hope that once Nehalem comes out, DDR3 prices will have come down enough for me to get a fast wolfdale and a decent ddr3 motherboard.

I think I agree... I'll hold off and then just replace the whole lot in one go, rather than doing bits and pieces... Including a complete OS upgrade/install.

 

[NeilF]

Mobo: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-086-GI&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

CPU: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-152-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=793

Ram: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-088-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=

Graphics: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-002-PN&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1008

You can overclock that to 3ghz on air easily and the GT will keep your games looking and running fine for ages to come.

All for a grand total of £266 +shipping

VERY tempting... If I did that I would want to buy a new SATA main drive to replace my IDE system disc. So we're talking about £320 by the end of it all... Plus fitting/installation/getting back all applications etc... Hmmm....

Tricky... I'm not interested in multi-tasking. My current desktop experience is fine... Just concerned about games like Left 4 Dead, Team Fortress 2 and Mass Effect being smooth... Hmmm....

 

[NeilF]

surely that mobo is a bit expensive for the budget

You're only going to skim £10 or so off of it... Personally I think a good MB is worth it... You really do not want it to fail on you!

i would advise against getting the agp card too - if you decide to make an upgrade to the mobo/cpu, you will be forced to get a new card too.

True, but this is true of every item you ever buy...

The question is will £150 now mean I can play games like Mass Effect (& Fallout 3?) etc over the next year or two... If the answer is yes, I'm happy to do that, and then wait and do a mass replacement after that, when my saved money will only get me more anyway!

If the answer is no, then I'll have no choice to spend £320-400 now... plus do a complete re-installation/setup... So basically £200+ more and lots more time and effort as well...

ps: Again, I'm not interesting in top notch visuals, just average and smooth...

 

[NeilF]

Is this £150 amount taken from what you expect to make back for your old pc parts, or could you add that ontop even? As you should manage to gain at least an extra £100+ for 2nd parts...

No, it's taken from the amount of money I can realistically justify spending on something I don't do very much (gaming)

If £150 will mean I can play Mass Effect (ok'ish) I'm happy... If I have to spend £300+ then I'll likely skip it (maybe)...

However, what I don't want to find out is if I do get the HIS 3850, is it doesn't allow me to play the games. That would just be £150 wasted Hence me trying to gauge my CPU's performance against modern (cheap) CPUs... (bit of a daft request really I guess!)

 

[NeilF]

Well tbh for just £150 your going to struggle, £225+ then your talking smooth pc upgrade which allows you to enjoy all round decent budget pc, along with very acceptable gaming quality.

9600 gfx card or the above, either will do absolutely fine with games you mention.

Thanks for that! I'd need a SATA hard drive as well, as I'd be doing a fresh OS install.

That's a very interesting spec you've detailed there! How future proof is the motherboard... The last thing I would want to do with an upgrade is find I'd need to upgrade again shortly. ie: If I was going to upgrade I wouldn't want to compromise too much.

The thing is here though, from spending £150, which TBH is a bit more that I'd llike to spend, we're now upto £250-300 (at least). Not impossible, just harder to justify (for me)...

 

[NeilF]

Not sure if this will help then...

I've downloaded the Crysis demo as a base mark. Playing at the moment at 800x600 resolution it's OK (at least in the first 10-20mins of play) ranging from 25-50fps. CPU usage never seems to go abouve about 75%.

If I do a simple walk forward test in an area - 1440x900 (monitor res) around 20fps, 800x480, around 28fps. All the time about 75%ish CPU usage.

So, if I were to change my GFX card for the 3850? What would happen? Would my frame rate double or tripple for example? If so, then sorted? If not, then why not?

As I said, CPU usage seems to hover around 70-75%ish?

 

[NeilF]

crysis is a huge all-round system stresser.
if you upgrade the gpu, your performance loss at higher res's will be minimal, but you will not be able to get better performance as you will end up with a cpu bottleneck instead of gpu.

why didnt crysis use all of your cpu?!? i doubt its even close to powerful enough to run it without being in full use

I suspect the botteneck is the GPU... There's a hell of a lot of stuff being displayed all the time... Leaves, trees, etc etc... Hence the resolution making only a little difference, and the CPU not being fully used?

This would imply - as I suspect with modern games - the 3850 would make quite a nice difference. Compare HL1 and HL2, what's the real/main difference? Video quality... Which surely equates a lot to GPU performance?

I'm certainly no expert though...

I've seen people who own the 3850 AGP saying they can run crysis with mid settings smoothly with a P4?!

 

[NeilF]

I guess you could, at really low resolutions..

but you may aswell spend the money on a console if you're not bothered about eyecandy. £150 will get you a 360, which should keep it's value for a while.

A 3850AGP is the dead end of a dead technology, it's resale value will be next to nothing, and it won't play anything that's coming out in the next year - it's false economics.

I'm not asking about the resale value of a 3850...

As for comments like it won't play anything out in the next year... How do you know? The only thing I've mentioned so far is 'Mass Effect'...

ps: Here's a review from a buyer on the net - "my 3.5 year old Alienware box (P4 3.0ghz HT, 2GB RAM, RAID 0 SATA drives, nVidia 6800 ultra) was aging fast. CS:S/TF2 wasn't so bad, but I had to play BioShock at low/med settings. Gears of War and Crysis weren't an option, even at the lowest settings. I installed this Sapphire card, applied drivers, and BAM. I've got Bioshock at maxed out quality (granted, on XP, so no dx10) at 1680x1050 and it runs smooth in all environments. i've got HL2ep2 maxed out and getting at least 40fps in all environments. i can't wait to finally play Crysis. BOTTOM LINE: if you're cheap like me and don't wanna drop money on a new rig, this is your answer. i'm so glad i waited a little while and stumbled onto this card." And another - "Runs Crysis on High at 1280x1024. Doesn't run very hot. No Glitches Yet - P4 3.2, Asus P5800-E MB"

 

[NeilF]

I dont see why you would need a new hard drive in the spec if you wouldnt replace it if you changed graphics card... couldnt you just re-install xp ? Or is it an OEM version? (which have always seemed to re-install fine for me too).

Because, I don't like half doing things... If I'm going to have to re-install the OS, and all my software and settings, I'd like to do it properly on a new (bigger) SATA drive. ie: Take the opportunity... I'd also put the existing drive in a caddy and use it as a backup for all my configs/program/settings during the move over...

Ideally I'd actually just get a 1TB drive and just have one drive in the machine...

But you see how easily the scope creeps up

Hence me saying if just this one AGP card can keep me going for a year or two, and then bang, do one big hit then for the whole lot...

I've started a thread in the video section hoping someone with one of these cards can actually comment on if I'll be wasting my time getting one. And therefore if I need to do a bigger upgrade instead

 

[NeilF]

<cough>****ocks</cough>

Sorry, but that's just lies. Unless "Runs" means "at 3fps".

*edit*

Here's the benchmark results for a 3850 on a 3.2Ghz C2D..
http://movies.custompc.co.uk/cpc/images/3850results.gif
Crysis, veryhigh, 1024x768 gets 7-17fps. On a P4 3ghz, I'd expect just over half.

Possibly, or simply getting carried away a bit, but then your test is 'Very High', whereas the quote mentioned 'High'... I'd be happy with medium settings...

I need someone with the AGP card to comment

 

[NeilF]

As has been said, buying the 3850 AGP is false economy. You're pumping money into dead technology. Personally I believe Crysis to be quite CPU-limited - it's pretty terrible at using multi-core, which would explain why it only uses 75% of your P4 if it has HT. However, if you bought a cheap C2D and clocked it to 3Ghz, each core would be almost twice as fast as your P4 - that's gonna make a big difference in gaming but will blow your P4 into the dust in terms of video encoding.

If you can really only justify £150 then you could probably do worse than the 3850, but to me it just seems like wasting money. The 3850 AGP is a bit of a niche part - that's why they can get away with charging £150 for it, and why it will have very little resale value when you do come to upgrading to PCI-E.

nVidia would say that It depends what type of games you play, and which resolutions you like to play at - and, of course, which CPU and GPU you have. With a 3850 and P4 I'd say that most games would be heavily CPU-limited at the resolutions you're likely to be playing at.

Not interested in false economies etc. If the 3850 fits my request then, I'll get it... If it does not, I'll not... Just need to know if will help a reasonable amount. If I cannot play Mass Effect with it then that's it...

I simply want to be able to play Unreal 3 engine games etc for example. Not interesting Crysis as such, but FYI, on lowest settings I can play it (at least the demo) just fine at 800x600 at about a playable 20fps...

 

[NeilF]

Not trying to be unhelpful, but you seem to be in the wrong forums slightly here - i.e. OCuk members seem to be mostly hardware nuts who lavish plenty of cash on regular upgrades... so you wont find many ppl with P4's any more.

From personal experience, my mate got a big gaming increase on going from 9800XT > X1950Pro AGP, and another equally large increase going from AMD64 3000 > X2 4200.... all at stock.

I cant see the P4 being *THAT* terrible for games, when paired with a 3850 - if you want that last gasp of AGP, then go for it.

To be honest, in 6-12 months time you probably wont be the last person on earth with AGP wanting a faster gfx card, so I have a suspicion that you may be able to sell it OK - should you want to.

I know the feeling of being on limited budget, im sure you would love a C2D and board, but if its too much then just take the risk with the 3850 - hopefully you should love the results, and if not then flog it 2nd hand before prices drop too much. Sorry I cant help specifically with the games you mentioned.

Thanks for the feedback... So he got a reasonable increase in game speed from upgrading a AMD64-3000 from an 9800XT to an X1950... (although I suspect that AMD is somewhat faster than mine mind!)

If I cannot just upgrade the AGP card to make the games playable, then I'd want to do an upgrade properly which will cost over £400...

 

[NeilF]

Yey! Mass Effect uses Unreal 3 and my main concern is to be able to play it, and Fallout 3 well (and I can play Oblivion currently)...

Released today, the Mass Effect PC requirements - suggests I can happily just get the AGP card upgrade

Minimum System Requirements for Mass Effect PC

Operating System: Windows XP or Vista
Processor: 2.4+ GHZ Intel or 2.0+ GHZ AMD
Memory: 1 Gigabyte Ram (XP) 2 Gigabyte Ram (Vista)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6 series (6800GT or better) ATI 1300XT or better (X1550, X1600 Pro and HD2400 are below minimum system requirements)
Hard Drive Space: 12 Gigabytes
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers

Recommended System Requirements for Mass Effect PC

Operating System: Windows XP or Vista
Processor: 2.6+ GHZ Intel or 2.4+ GHZ AMD
Memory: 2 Gigabyte RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX or higher. ATI X1800 XL series or higher
Hard Drive Space: 12 Gigabytes
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card and drivers – 5.1 sound card recommended

 

[NeilF]

Or for less than £220

Motherboard £32.89
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-016-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=808

Processor £43.46
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-200-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=803

Ram £29.36
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-084-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=144

Graphics £76.36
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-083-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=416

Hard Drive £35.24
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-121-MD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=768

Total £217.21

Again... If I was going to this trouble, I'd do it 'properly'...
1) I'd put Vista on.
2) I'd put a higher spec MB in to try and allow a longer upgrade path, and it would -sorry - be core duo...
3) I'd put a better/bigger HD in, not wishing to have to play around with it later...

As you can see from above, one of my two concerns, Mass Effect, I'll be able to run well with the Radeon 3850... And as Fallout 3 uses the Oblivion Engine, I'll assume with the 3850 I'll be able to easily run that as well (I ran Oblivion OK)?

So for £150 it appears I can almost certainly play all the games I'm concerned with well (Mass Effect, Fallout 3, HL2/TF2, Left 4 Dead)... I can then do a complete upgrade in 2009 (or 2010) if needs be

 

[NeilF]

*slaps you around the head* Dont do step 1! You'll find yourself back at P4 speeds if you did... (OK so i dont like Vista)

Going off the mass effect spec my gut feeling is that your P4 will be fine running it with a 3850, it will definately limit the card in some situations... but seeing as you're not spending £250-300, so what?

Check the bottom end results here, with specs for the P4 530 and Athlon 64 3200, no big differences really...
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/chart...,1292,1289,1288,1317,1219,1277,1282,1310,1309

Yack at linky!! ^^^

Thanks! All helpful

I'm fairly sure now the 3850 is the way for me to go at the moment to, (a) save spending the rest of the money I'd have to do to go PCIe (properly), (b) an easy life - uninstall my existing drivers, put in the new card, install the new drivers. Done!

 

[NeilF]

I was in the same situation a year ago (3ghz p4, agp fx5200) and wanted to play a few new games, at I first baught the fastest agp going (7600gt? Or something)

What a complete waste of money that was, totally CPU limited in games like supcom, slow and jerky (on low settings and res) in others.

You should do one of the following
1. Second hand 360
2. Complete system build (ideas above are good enough)
3. Just don't buy the lastest games until you eventually upgrade to save dissapointment. Gaming at 800x600? Dude... Just get a 360......

I don't want to play Supreme Commander...

I only want to play (in the coming year(s)), Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead and maybe Fallout 3. So the question is black and white for me (not being much of a game at all). Spend £150 and play everything I do now (TF2 and HL2) beautifully, and the games I mentioned above adequately at worst, or spend £400-500 to do a 'proper' system upgrade (not worth doing a half-cocked one)...

If £150 gets me what I want for the next 1-2yrs, why spend £400-500?

Yes, you can do a system upgrade for £250-£300, but then in effect mean you're not taking advantage of the rebuild to jump much forwards as I'd personally want to. And you'd only have to spend money again sooner, and/or upgrade core stuff again sooner...

 

[NeilF]

I've recently stuffed an X1950 pro into an aged AGP system and everything in the games dept is much improved.

I was contemplating a £250 odd system upgrade but could not justify the extra outlay when other than for some games, my existing setup fits my needs perfectly.

So for £100 odd, the 1950Pro has really given me the required boost without breaking the bank.

If you have the extra funds handy then go for the upgrade, otherwise, don't think a 1950 / 3850 AGP will be wasted in your current rig, it won't, the point is for an extra £100 or so you could get so very much more for your money.



A64 3000+
Gigabyte Nforce 3 AGP Mobo
2.5GB DDR400
HIS X159Pro 512MB AGP.

That's very useful! Thanks!

His PSU in sig would have a heart attack with that lot

I've got a (second-hand) OCZ 700W PSU ready! Like all 'silent' PSU's though it's a bit on the noisey side! (I'll probably change the fan in it like my previous Antec)