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

NeilFawcett said:
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.
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Well you can’t run x4 dual channel on it even though there x4 mem slots (a pain, and noted in manual), so if you wanted 4Gb then buy 2x2Gb, other than that does accept quad (I've tested) + claims to run the new 45nm cpu's. Over clocking options are to my surprise are very good, E2200 to 3.2 GHz with no issues. But if you want lots of SATA connections and other additional attachment features; then perhaps a £60+ motherboard will suite your needs more.
 
NeilFawcett said:
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)...
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none of the current mother boards are very "future proof" as Intel's new socket is due to arrive at the end of this/beginning of next year. I advise all people that do not upgrade that often to get the cheapest performing Intel P35/X38 mobo & it should see you through the next few years.
 
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?
 
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
 
Devil_Spawn said:
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
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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?!
 
NeilFawcett said:
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?!
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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.
 
uvmain said:
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.
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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"
 
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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).
 
DavidB said:
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).
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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 :)
 
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uvmain said:
<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.
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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 :(
 
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.

Most games are graphics card limited not cpu - that's what NVidia says not me
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nVidia would say that :p 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.
 
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Mattus said:
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 :p 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.
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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...
 
Crysis at 800x600 low looks awful :p

Seriously, though - Unreal Engine games are among those which benefit the most from a faster CPU. UT3 used 100% of my dual-core CPU and was CPU-limited. Even on my quad it uses 60-70%.
 
NeilFawcett said:
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...
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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.
 
matt_fsr said:
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.
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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...
 
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
 
 
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