CPU Upgrade

For all of you technically proficient computer folks, I have a question.

In preparation for the new games coming out, I'm planing to upgrade my processor. Right now, I'm running an AMD 3500+ 939 pin setup that is overclocked comparable to the 4200+. My RAM setup is 2GB of PC4000/500MHZ Corsair XMS, and my motherboard is the DFI Lanparty nf4 UT SLI-DR. The video card is the eVGA PCI-E 6800GT 256MB.

My question is: In choosing a new AMD processor, would I be better off using the AMD FX series (FX60 at $833.00) or the AMD 64 X2 939 pin processor (64 X2 4800+) at less than half the price?

Your thoughts and opinions, please.

Go the X2 4800+. No its not quite as good as the FX60, but bang for buck, it's MUCH better.

I dont know... I'd probably wait until UT2007 shows its head. I suspect by then we'll be looking at quad cores...

I would honestly wait on an upgrade. Bang for the buck, you are going to be paying a lot of money for very little difference in overall performance.

I have a very similar rig to what you are running, and I don't see a problem with any games that are out now. I can run most of them at pretty dang high resolution with a frame rate that my monitor wont display (over 75). For an older game like UT04 I get reports of frame rates that are impossible.

You know what? I did not look close enough.

Buy another eVGA card to pair with what you have and you should be good to go for a quarter of a generation (3 or 4 months at least)

I have the 64 x2 4200+. Bang for the buck it's WAY WAY better than the FX series.

However, I agree with the others. Wait.

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

I dont know... I'd probably wait until UT2007 shows its head. I suspect by then we'll be looking at quad cores...

Reading my mind, Dru? I'm thinking in terms of UT2007, Halo 2, Diablo 3, and the remaining 2 episodes of Halflife 2 (er, HL3 perhaps).

Grizzled, what would be the advantage of two matched video cards? Simple math leading to 512MB video RAM or are there other advantages?

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

TheDruidXpawX wrote:

I dont know... I'd probably wait until UT2007 shows its head. I suspect by then we'll be looking at quad cores...

Reading my mind, Dru? I'm thinking in terms of UT2007, Halo 2, Diablo 3, and the remaining 2 episodes of Halflife 2 (er, HL3 perhaps).

Grizzled, what would be the advantage of two matched video cards? Simple math leading to 512MB video RAM or are there other advantages?

Mostly because you have an adiquit system to run just about anything, the bottleneck, if any with the new gen games, will be GPU power. For an SLI rig, you have to have matching vid cards to make it work. So if you go SLI, it would drasticly improve that end without having to do any major upgrades. Of course, with the coming of DX10, the case will be, will the next gen games be DX10 only, or will they have DX9 compatibility built in? DX10 is win Vista only with no backwards compatability for earlier versions, as they have done up to DX9. So, I would wait to find out the min/reccomended requirements of the games you want to play first. Software has always driven upgrades and always will.

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

Grizzled, what would be the advantage of two matched video cards?

Sli splits up the frame processing, not always equally but it can make visible differences. Also "two heads are better than one" right?

Celor wrote:

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

Grizzled, what would be the advantage of two matched video cards?

Sli splits up the frame processing, not always equally but it can make visible differences. Also "two heads are better than one" right?

Not so much "two heads", as that term is used to refer to the monitors, and most decent cards today support that, but rather "two sets of brains" (set because of remembering that most graphics boards have multiple rendering pipelines).

Even the Radeon 9500Pro card in my old system has dual heads, but a slow fat brain.

I just went through the process of getting a new system, mainly because mine was so darned old (I got it when the K7 Barton core first came out, though I did have a new MB with SATA that I swapped into it) that I could not really wait. So what I got almost certainly cost me a bit more, and is not the hottest item out there compared to what I could get in a few months. But given that we are now seeing things on the GeForce 8xxx video cards, I would expect the prices to drop pretty rapidly on the 7xxx and earlier cards over the next couple of months.

BTW... what I have seen on the Intel vs. AMD side would also say that if you are not locked into AMD, Intel is once again worth looking at. Intel has dramatically improved their performance to be competitive once again, and their price/performance ratio has actually been better than AMD for several months. Of course, typical disclaimer, and things could be different tomorrow.

Thx Spacey.

Yeah, I've been watching Intel striving to regain their edge against AMD. But you know what they say-twice burned, three times as shy.

However, I'm locked into the AMD 939 pin as I'm trying to keep to a low cost upgrade (wife's order's and I had to get back on my knees just to get that). I just upgraded to 2GB RAM and was planning to upgrade the process but most people say wait until later, so I'll wait.

Your best bet would not be to get a new cpu. For now I suggest you just go with another 6800GT. Quite possibly another EVGA 6800GT. SLI will considerably improve your performance, but there is no actual guarantee that you will get double the performance. At most, I'd say 10-40% improvments in overall system specs. But your video card is your most likely bottleneck. The only improvement for the FX-60 is the bragging rights, unlocked multiplier and the "wow" factor. So I would say stay with your 4200. Your computer is quite well and I would say stick with your 4200. If your interested, you could try to step up to a liquid cooling system and push the computer even more than you are right now. But you need to be extremely careful with a liquid cooled system.

Other than that, regarding Direct X10 and Intel. The 8800GTX is an awesme piece of hardware, but the design is the first of its kind and it is very robust. I would wait until the second or third generation of Direct X10 cards come out when the power requirements and the performance is improved overall. A 400-1K watt barrier to try and get a Direct X10
card(s) is very ridiculous. I wont touch the Direct X 10 cards until the 9800GTX and the R700 come out. The designs by Nvidia and ATI will be refined and improved; in fact, the power requirements should hopefully be lowered and brought down to a more manageable level.

Moving onto Intel, I would say their living the high life after two years. The Conroe is an excellent piece of work. If your wanting to jump ship to quad core go ahead, but the Kentsfield is not a "true" quad core cpu design. The gaming industry is one of the slowest industries to integrate over to multiple cores. You will not notice much of an improvement over a regular dual core in terms of gaming; in fact, the performance is actually lower. Performance numbers and benchmarks prove what I am saying.

It will be interesting though to see what AMD has in store for the Core 2. The Quadfather is just one of their surprises they have for Intel. The K8L and the rare possibility of having the K9 coming out next year will be interesting.

Grizzled, what would be the advantage of two matched video cards?

As previously stated, you need the exact same (even manufacturer) card to run in SLI.

The games I am currently playing with dual 6800's run very smoothly at high frame rates and high resolution. I dont even take a noticible hit on Night of Nature with a lot of players on.

UT2004 80+ frames at 1200 X 800 with 4xAA. All the goodies turned on.

Counterstrike runs at 74 average using 1200 x 800 with 2x AA and dynamic lighting tuned on.

Doom 3 runs at 69 average using 1024 X 768 with all the goodies (no AA).

The few adventure games like Titans Quest I play I can turn the res up real high and keep all of the goodies on.

The way that SLI is supposed to work, each graphics card will either:

1. render every other Frame (no, in actuality it does not double the frame rate due to the need for the cards to coordinate) OR

2. Each card renders half of the screen and they share RAM for having textures pre loaded.

you can also download optimizations from the SLI site that optimize the cards for paticular games, which will increase the overall ability of the cards to render those games, once you have it set up, it will recognize when you launch a paticular application.

The cheapest, Largest upgrade where you will actually see some difference is going to be buying a single new card or one of the dual 7xxx series of cards.

Grizzled thats incorrect, last time I remembered due to a driver update somewhere in the 8xxx series, you didnt have to have two cards be the exact same manufacturer. Due to the fact in the past you had to have two cards that were the exact same BIOS, design, etc they wouldnt work out. But I have heard that you can match two different cards from two differnet manufacturers for SLI and it work. But if you plan to do that, either A. Go with a card that has the exact same clocks or B. Go with a card from the exact same manufacturer. Honestly that whole exact same thing is baloney. In the past you had to do it, but because of the driver revisions that is a thing of the past.

Note: About the 7xxx series cards. I am running a 7600GT and honestly the thing is amazing. I can run F.E.A.R. at almost max setting with a smooth average of 40fps. I ran doom with the maxmimum graphics mod with high settings at 1152X864, which enhanced and brought out the true capabilities of Doom 3 out. I ran at a consistent 60 fps. Not once did I notice a slowdown. CSS runs at 1152x864 with 80-90 fps. UT2004 runs at 70-80 fps consistently on multiplayer. The real bottleneck would probably be my 1 gig of RAM and my 3200. But honestly, if you wanted to upgrade and do SLI your more than welcome to, but you probably wont notice much difference.

My 7600GT is "supposedly" 20% faster than the 6800GT and the ultra. But whatever works out.

Thanks for all of the input.

However,

I have to ship the new ram back. For those of you that was playing with me this weekend, you know I was having problems. BAAAAAAD RAM. So I'm back to 1GB of ram until the RMA is over with. RATS

As to the dual video cards, I'm getting very interested. I'm sure I can pick up another eVGA 6800GT for a reasonable price but where do I find the "bridge" between the two? My motherboard manual indicates that there is an upper bridge as well as the dual slots. Do I have to worry about a different bios setup as well.

Your current card needs to be SLI ready, as do the new card and your motherboard. If they all are, there's a special piece that's small with rectangular plugs on either end that plugs into the top of the two cards that bridges them together. It should have come with your motherboard.

Here's a GIS for SLI Bridge so you can see what they look like. As of the writing of this post, the first, middle, and last hits in the first row are all SLI bridges.