Upgrade advice needed : FX-53 to A64 4000+

[Deks]

Hi all,

I am after a little advice regarding upgrading my system

I currently have ;
Asus AGP motherboard (A8N or something)
FX-53 socket 939 (Clawhammer)
1gb corsair DDR400 ram
Ati X800xt graphics card

I want a cheapish upgrade to last at least to after christmas. I struggle in some games like Oblivion, COD2 etc when trying to run in 1280 resolution with eye candy turned on. As far as I can see my main weekness is the graphics card.

I have decided to place an order tomorrow for an ATI X1900XT graphics card along with the Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS).

My main question is would it be also worth upgrading the FX-53 to the AMD Athlon 64 4000+ San Diego (Socket 939) ?
Would there be much of a difference in gaming? Its £80 I don't really want to spend if I wouldnt notice the difference. I play RTS games which require a fair bit of processing power as well as FPS games.

Any comments would be appreciated.

All the best

Deks

 

[Deks]

Hi and thanks for the replies,

I will be placing my order at lunchtime. I was trawling the net last night and managed to find the following link

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005uk/page64.html

It shows the 4000+ as faster than the dual cores in games which I didn't realise. But the main thing is it shows the 4000+ only marginally faster than the fx-53 approximately 6 fps or 3% but I like the thought of a cooler chip as my fx-53 is constantly sending Asus Probe warnings at 69 deg which I set the limit at.

I'll have a think about it this morning as I am uprading from an x800xt to a X1900xt which should hopefully show massive improvements and getting a new cpu in conjunction might help or maybe spend the money on 2gb ram instead. Damn I only just thought of that one!

Cheers

Deks

 

[Deks]

Thanks again,

I am going to take the advice of better cooling to OC the fx-53 and invest in a couple of gigs of ram (along with the new m/b and x1900).

I must say HL2 episode one used to lock up when entering new areas and stuttered when say a new sound was played (using Audigy 2 Zs) so not sure what the bottleneck there was but I reckon its ram.

Take and thanks for the advice

Deks

 

[Deks]

Could you recommend some ram (2 X 1mb) that would overclock well but not cost the earth?

cheers

Deks

 

[Deks]

hI m8,

I held back placing my order this morning as the HIS X1900XT is now out of stock and showing 4-7 days. I have next week off work and had planned doing the build then.

I have read loads on the Conroe and must say your comments do make sense. The thing that put me off was knowing which Motherboard to pick as the 775 chipsets are really expensive. The Giga hs3 seams reasonable tho.

How would you say the Conroe 6600 would stack up against the FX-53 ?

Cheers

Deks

STOP your planning changing your mobo, ram and gfx and going 939. I really wouldnt mate if i were you id spend the little extra and go AM2 or conroe. Not denying 939 is good but your cpu is the only thing your carring over you would be as well go for the latest tech.

 

[Deks]

Thanks for the replies,

I was just reading your threads sgoaty about you trying out an E6600 compared to your current o/c'd E6300 this weekend and am looking forward to reading your thoughts.

I looked at the connect x1900xt that is appprox £210 inc vat which I am very tempted with although the HIS IceQ is suppossed to be nice and quiet. I suppose I could get a Zalman cooler or something if the connect is too noisey.

I tlooks like after years with AMD (going back to an XP2100+) i'm being tempted back to the dark side for the first time since my Pentium 233mhz (god my memory has gone, I think thats waht it was called!)

Thanks for the advice I'm getting all excited again

Deks

 

[Deks]

Thanks for that comment sgoety. I'll have a look into this in more detail when I get over this damned hangover! Stella, white wine and whisky, not to be recommended . I presume youv'e posted your thoughts on the 6600 in another thread. I'll have a search later on when I feel better.

In the mean time my 3 options as I see it are

OPTION 1 - Nice and easy tkae out current card and stick this in. Should be a decent upgrade and will tide me over until all the current Conroe niggling issues are sorted out.

Gainward BLISS GeForce 7800 GS SILENT 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (AGP) - Retail (GX-030-GW) £252.57 inc vat

OPTION 2 - Keep current system just updating the graphics card and a cheap motherboard (either Asus or MSI) and not worry about going up to 2gb. This should tide me over nicely until into the new year and vista / dx10 becomes available.

HIS ATI Radeon X1900 XT ICEQ 3 SILENT Heatpipe 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-HT) £229.07 inc vat

MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-046-MS) £76.32 inc vat

Total £305.32

Option 3 - go for it and update the lot to a conroe rig. This would be new m/b, x1900xt, 2gb memory, new cooler and a new install.

The only thing is with option 3 is there seams to be a lot of niggles with the current motherboards and until the new batch comes out it seams pot luck if the components are compatible.

Any comments would be welcome and if possibe could you spec me some components that are compatible and good overclocking potential. I presume 6300, DS3 and gskill HZ6400 memory is a good combo

Cheers

Deks

 

[Deks]

Thanks for all the advice. Finally went for option 2. ie keep the exact system except for new motherboard and X1900xt.

Hopefully this should breathe some new life into my system and I can think about the conroe setup next year when the compatibilty issues have been ironed out.

I would have liked 2gb ram but that would have been throwing money down the drain as it wouldnt be able to be used with the conroe setup next year but i'm sure my 1gb will suffice in the mean time.

thanks again

Deks