Upgrading graphics card

Lighters · 2 Nov 2007 at 20:33

AMD 4000+
X850 XT PE (8800 GT)
GIGABYTE GA K8NXP-SLI S939
2GIG PC3200 Corsair
Thermaltake butterfly 480w psu

Will my psu be enough to power a new 8800GT? (X1950 or another card that will run cod4 nfs

ro street unreal 30 reasnobly no a VERY TIGHT BUDGET

I want to upgrade my PC for newer games that are coming out and want the best bang for BUCK! and a new graphics card seems the way forward, i dont mind waiting until around christmas but ideally i want one as soon as the 9th because cod4 comes out then and unreal also in novemember SO LETS SAY NOVEMBER

£cheap as poss

Lighters · 3 Nov 2007 at 22:10

?

????

uber soldat · 3 Nov 2007 at 22:18

Lighters said:
AMD 4000+
X850 XT PE (8800 GT)
GIGABYTE GA K8NXP-SLI S939
2GIG PC3200 Corsair
Thermaltake butterfly 480w psu

Will my psu be enough to power a new 8800GT?

I want to upgrade my PC for newer games that are coming out and want the best bang for BUCK! and a new graphics card seems the way forward, i dont mind waiting until around christmas but ideally i want one as soon as the 9th because cod4 comes out then and unreal also in novemember SO LETS SAY NOVEMBER

£cheap as poss

Id upgrade to a 600w PSU and get a 8800GT

J.D · 3 Nov 2007 at 22:27

http://www.slcentral.com/thermaltake-w0021-purepower-butterfly-480w-psu/

Is that your PSU?.

If it is then the answer is yes. You will need a new PSU as that one in the review has only got 17 amps on the 12v rail which isn't enough.

Lighters · 3 Nov 2007 at 22:41

YES

that is my psu and thnx 4 the reply, i want to be able to run cod4 n unreal 3 with the best performance upgrade for CHEAPEST price so am i better off getting an x1950 as my PSU will run that! ?

mame · 3 Nov 2007 at 22:47

the box for my x1950pro states that it needs 30a on the 12v rail. My PSU has dual 12v rails with 18a on each

craptakular · 3 Nov 2007 at 22:52

Well those 8800GT's are really good value & will allow you to play games next year. Buying a x1950 is kind of a false economy with these 8800GT's out.

Lighters · 3 Nov 2007 at 22:53

mame said:
the box for my x1950pro states that it needs 30a on the 12v rail. My PSU has dual 12v rails with 18a on each

meaning i cant even run an x1950 pro with my current psu?

J.D · 3 Nov 2007 at 22:59

Lighters said:
meaning i cant even run an x1950 pro with my current psu?

It would be VERY risky as if it blew you don't know if it will take anything other components with it

.

If you have to save up a little more then I'd do so. An 8800GT and a decent but cheap PSU would be a world of difference to the x1950.

Lighters · 3 Nov 2007 at 23:00

J.D said:
It would be VERY risky as if it blew you don't know if it will take anything other components with it .

If you have to save up a little more then I'd do so. An 8800GT and a decent but cheap PSU would be a world of difference to the x1950.

I cant believe my PSU SUCKS SO DAMN MUCH!
So will my amd 4000+ hold me back a lot on an 8800gt? and will the price of them 8800gt drop soon if so when?

EDIT* TBH i never has a PSU blow and will it be likely? tbh i wouldnt care with this current spec coz i want to upgrade anyway ahha would just be an excuse

J.D · 3 Nov 2007 at 23:09

Lol don't worry. My Thermaltake Purepower 560watt just cut it with the X1900XT and no more (22amps on the 12v rail but very efficient so that's why it barely passed the 26Amps needed from my x1900).

When I bought the 2900Pro the PSU cut off 3 times within an hour so I had to get another PSU too

.

As for your CPU holding you back in the latest titles?. This is dependant on the resolution you play at?. If it's 1280x1024 then yes, you will be fairly CPU bound sadly. If you are @ 1440x900 then that's better but still a little CPU bound but @ 1680x1050 is when the graphics card will take charge a lot more.

8800GT prices falling. Hmmm this depends on many things. The release date and the performance of the new GTS's/GTX's and the upcoming HD 3850 from AMD/ATI are the main ones I can think off. I can't see it falling too much though as rumours seem to suggest the new ATI card is another weak link but I will only believe it when I see it

.

EDIT: I've had one or two blow on me before but nothing damaged thankfully. It's like picking names out of a hat though. I can't give you good advice on what will happen as it's too varied. Think of it this way?. How would you feel if you got your new card and the PSU isn't up to the job and you have to wait a few days extra to just play with the thing?.

500 watt with one of the reviewers and a x1900xt http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-017-OK&tool=3&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

550 watt with a 8800GTS running with it http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-018-OK&tool=3&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

Or for just £2 more than the 550watt you can get http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-006-CS&tool=3&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=

I know the last 2 will be capable of running the 8800GT. Not sure about the first one.

Lighters · 3 Nov 2007 at 23:11

ok thnx a lot for the info, and any ideas on the 8600, looks like i'm getting a new PSU rofl, and i play on 1280 x 1024 max resolution and want 2 play cod4/unreal3/nfs

ro / other newsish games but moreso for AS MANY FPS as i can get rather than quality

J.D · 3 Nov 2007 at 23:21

No problem

. I've listed some PSU's above (ninja edit

).

Stick with your two original choices on GPU's. 8800GT first then the X1950Pro second.

Also, have you overclocked that 4000+?. If not then get pumping that CPU speed up

.

mame · 4 Nov 2007 at 00:43

J.D said:
As for your CPU holding you back in the latest titles?. This is dependant on the resolution you play at?. If it's 1280x1024 then yes, you will be fairly CPU bound sadly. If you are @ 1440x900 then that's better but still a little CPU bound but @ 1680x1050 is when the graphics card will take charge a lot more.

I don't understand that.

J.D said:
If it's 1280x1024 then yes, you will be fairly CPU bound sadly

1280*1024=1310720

J.D said:
If you are @ 1440x900 then that's better but still a little CPU bound

1440*900=1296000

J.D said:
but @ 1680x1050 is when the graphics card will take charge a lot more.

1680*1050=1764000

Lighters · 4 Nov 2007 at 02:21

just finished playing a game and my cpu is 4000 and whenever i overclock the fsb i get error is orthos something about being mismatches or incorrect, i even tried to cap my memory at 200because its pc3200 crap so :S

ACESHIGH · 4 Nov 2007 at 08:52

Its definitely worth investing in a faster dual core CPU if your thinking of getting the 8800GT.

mame · 4 Nov 2007 at 10:34

Lighters said:
just finished playing a game and my cpu is 4000 and whenever i overclock the fsb i get error is orthos something about being mismatches or incorrect, i even tried to cap my memory at 200because its pc3200 crap so :S

With a64 you can't just up the FSB, there's a bit more to it. With the 4000 you can get upto 3ghz with a bit of luck. There's loads of overclocking guides around but try this just to start off with:

Change HT multi from 5x (or 1000) to 4x(800)
Limit RAM speed from 200 to 166 (will run faster than that because it's decided by your final CPU speed)
Increase vcore by 0.05, so if it's 1.35v up it to 1.4
Increase FSB from 200 to 217

The HT multi is quite important, anything over 1000 and it can cause instability so 5x220 would be 1100 which is no good so you set it at 4x. It was probably the memory holding you back before. When you set it at 200mhz in the bios, it assumes that you are running the CPU at 2400mhz and simply gives the RAM 1/12 of your cpu speed so 2400/12 is 200 which is fine but if your cpu was running at 2600 and you set memory to 200mhz will actually run at (2600/12) 216. Give those settings a go and see how you get on.

Lighters · 5 Nov 2007 at 01:13

mame said:
With a64 you can't just up the FSB, there's a bit more to it. With the 4000 you can get upto 3ghz with a bit of luck. There's loads of overclocking guides around but try this just to start off with:

Change HT multi from 5x (or 1000) to 4x(800)
Limit RAM speed from 200 to 166 (will run faster than that because it's decided by your final CPU speed)
Increase vcore by 0.05, so if it's 1.35v up it to 1.4
Increase FSB from 200 to 217

The HT multi is quite important, anything over 1000 and it can cause instability so 5x220 would be 1100 which is no good so you set it at 4x. It was probably the memory holding you back before. When you set it at 200mhz in the bios, it assumes that you are running the CPU at 2400mhz and simply gives the RAM 1/12 of your cpu speed so 2400/12 is 200 which is fine but if your cpu was running at 2600 and you set memory to 200mhz will actually run at (2600/12) 216. Give those settings a go and see how you get on.

Multi 4x = 800 (done)
limited ram but i cant specificy 200/xxx its set by divider so i used a divider of 1.5 which = 324 ddr = 162 correct?
It says my current voltage is 1,500 and also 1,5020ish on cpu-z
I can only increase in increments of 25 or 50 i thinks its 25 should i go over 1,500?
I increased fsb to 217

RESULT: System hung during startup and then restarted, it did however look like my graphics gard was messing up because when it restarted my screen had a lot of white blocks placed around the screen,

Toned down fsb to 210 and successful boot with,
2527.2 mhz
12multiplier
210 fsb
ht link 842
memory at 158 mhz

CPU TEMP - 42ISH idle

EDIT* Upped FSB FROM 210 - 215 Compute running at 2583 861ht link memory at 161
I ran an orthos blend test and got an error in the first few seconds
Test 1, 4000 Lucas-Lehmer iterations of M19922945 using 1024K FFT length.
FATAL ERROR: Rounding was 0.4985428004, expected less than 0.4
Hardware failure detected, consult stress.txt file.
Torture Test ran 0 minutes 4 seconds - 1 errors, 0 warnings.
Execution halted.

I DID NOT GET THIS AT 210! FSB
Do i want the memory timings on auto or manual also? how do i correct error at the top?

Phil2008 · 5 Nov 2007 at 03:06

your cpu is holding you back a lot mate, cos I had a fx55 @ 2.78, single core cpu and upgraded it to a opty 185 @ 2.78 dual core cpu. The diff it made to games was huge, it was like upgrading the graphics card

J.D · 5 Nov 2007 at 12:50

mame said:
I don't understand that.

1280*1024=1310720

1440*900=1296000

1680*1050=1764000

It's monitor resolutions

. The smaller the resolution the more the CPU is utilized.

I agree with Speedy. Dual core is so much better than single core. Hardly any system hangs. When stupid buggy software hangs and utilizes your single CPU at 100% then it brings your system to it's knees. If you had dual core then you would have one core using the full 100% in a game (example) and then the other core to run all your background applications with no affect to what your doing with your PC.