Upgrade?

Griffyn

Griffyn

Griffyn

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Joined
17 Jun 2004
Posts
393
Is it worth changing a X800 XT PE for a 1900XT-X? I currently have a S754 3700+ cpu so will need to change my motherboard I also have 2gb of pc3200 ram so think the gpu is the limiting factor in my system. So will I get worthwhile gains? I am going to build a new pc next year around august but as an inbetween is it worthwhile? Especially since battlefield 2142 is out later this year and spore is out early next year.

I was thinking of this board: Abit NV8 nForce4 4X

I currently have an Asus Asus K8V SE Deluxe. Will this board be the same performance wise? Currently have 1TB of space and 2gb of ram which the Abit can accomodate so just wana make sure it will be fine?

Thanks for your comments.
 
Yes that will provide you with a worthwhile boost, the 3700 is still a good chip. Going PCI-E might allow you to keep the graphics card for your new build whenever that may be and finally yes that motherboard will perform on a par with your current one, in fact you should even be able to overclock which you can't do on the K8VSE Deluxe(I have the same motherboard).
 
semi-pro waster said:
Yes that will provide you with a worthwhile boost, the 3700 is still a good chip. Going PCI-E might allow you to keep the graphics card for your new build whenever that may be and finally yes that motherboard will perform on a par with your current one, in fact you should even be able to overclock which you can't do on the K8VSE Deluxe(I have the same motherboard).
Click to expand...

I second that :)

Stelly
 
Well I have decided mite as well upgrade this summer. The only thing I am worried about tho is the new ATI card that is meant to be amazing in DX10...does it mean when I get Vista that if i got a X1900 XT-X that I couldnt use this for DX10 games?

I will wait till the end of the summer as my current rig is perfectly capable.

Just out of interest though I have two people interested in my current PC and I dont know what kind of price I should be asking for?

It would have the following when for sale:
AMD Clawhammer S754 64-bit 3700+
ATI X800 XT PE
2Gb Corsair LL PC3200 RAM
ASUS K8V SE Deluxe
Globalwin 450W quiet PSU...was £120 new :eek:
CPU and GPU silent coolers
Antec Sonita case (original)
2x7200rpm 80gb Maxtor SATA in Raid 0
120gb Maxtor IDE
DVD RW X8

And a Creative Audigy ZS2 THX 7.1.......now is it worth keeping this or get a X-Fi bearing in mind I have the Creative Gigaworks S750 speakers (very good ones if you dont know them). If it is worth changing pc will include soundcard.

Obviously I am going to wait for the new Conroe chips but in terms of getting the best graphics power for the same moeny is better to get one X1900 XT-X or 2 lower cards in Crossfire or SLI depending on make. Also picture quality is important and HDR sounds cool.

Also are these physics processors worthwhile? From what I have read not really worthwhile at the moment?

Thanks again for comments :)
 
In order, no games will be DX10 only for at least a year probably closer to two and an X1900XTX will still be a very good card for about the same period.

I'm not normally too good at this but as a rough guess at the moment I'd say you would be looking at £400-450(ish) for your PC based on new prices/depreciation. I'm not including the sound card in this although it won't be worth a huge amount by now, onboard sound is generally pretty good so I don't know that you will see a major benefit from an X-Fi.

I'd go with one high-end card as it is easier to replace/pair with another one later although as a general rule SLi/Crossfire isn't worth it unless you are playing at very high resolutions.

And finally, no, almost certainly not at the moment, they don't appear to speed up anything, if anything rather the opposite and not all games support them so I see them as an expensive way to slow down the PC although make it look a bit prettier. They do have a place, just like SLi/Crossfire but it isn't going to be worth it for most people.
 
So will the X1900XT-X be able to play DX10 games? If not will games be relased so that they can be played in both DX10 and 9 as otherwise would be a bad move by the game industry.

I am thinking of also finially changing my lovely Vision Master Pro 454 (CRT) for a 20.1" TFT....is this format okay for gaming? Just that I use my pc to watch a lot of movies and a widescreen monitor would be nice for that....but I also use my pc for gaming a fair amount hence wanting to upgrade. So would a 20.1" TFT also be a worthwhile upgrade?

So X-Fi wont make a huge difference? Bearing in mind I am abit of an audiophile and have spent a lot on speakers for car, pc, home cinema (dont want to even think about that now). So would onboard 7.1 be adequate?

Cheers once again
 
I don't know for certain but it would be tantamount to commercial suicide to release big games as DX10 only at least for a couple of years, of the home PC market most are not working with bleeding edge PCs so it makes no sense to make games that most people can't play. If you want a parallel most games were programmed for DX7/8/9 for a long time, maybe there was less of a jump but it is the same sort of thing.

Most 20.1" monitors seem to work at a resolution of 1680*1050 which ought to be fine for gaming on and an X1900XT is easily capable at resolutions like that.

As to the X-Fi, I am still using an Audigy 2 and a decent(ish) hifi for my sound system so I'm probably not the best person to ask. Onboard sound is pretty good overall but it will still use some additional CPU power that an add-in card won't, you could try out onboard first and then if it doesn't satisfy change to an X-Fi :)
 
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