New build or an HD3850?

[Geist]

Hi all,

I’m currently looking to replace my aging system which has lasted extremely well (plays Left4Dead, CoD4 etc still).

But I’ve run into the problem that the ATI x800 does not do Shader3.0 therefore CoD5 and a few other games I can not play.

Now I game on a 24” monitor now and for around £100 the ATI HD3850 (agp) would solve the shader3.0 problem and give a huge boost to the settings and fps.

I don’t know if the rest of the system (<- in profile) would be able to keep up though.

If it can’t keep up then its new rig time in which the below would be around £1000.

Quad Q9550, Yorkfield
Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme HSF (Without Fan)
4GB (2x2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2 PC2-8500 (1066)
620W Corsair HX Series Modular
Asus Striker II Formula NF780i
1GB XFX GTX 280

(It’s a flip of the coin I think for the 4870’s or 280’s)

The hope being that the above new rig would also last a good many years before being binned.

Would it be worth putting the HD3950 into such an old system? Or would the other parts just bottleneck it?


tl;dr
Should I put £100 into an old machine for half year, year or a grand on a new rig?

[staffsMike]

It's not a terrible time to upgrade. Some prices are still going down or staying very cheap but others are still going up or staying very high (PSU's for one).

With i7 about now by buying a new S775 system you are limiting future upgrades a bit, but then you can buy a S775 mobo, cpu and DDR2 RAM for about half the price of just an i7 board or CPU if you wanted to lol.

I wouldn't buy the AGP card, thats shooting yourself in the foot.

I would buy a cheaper S775 system but built with a nice case, PSU, GPU etc.. so if you feel the need for an i7 upgrade later then everything is ready and raring to go.

That would be,

Intel pentium dual core E5200 ~&#163;60
4GB PC6400 ~&#163;35
Biostar P45 ~&#163;85 (can go cheaper though)

And then a decent 500/600W (like the corsair )

That sort of system will clock to 3.0GHz and above (not that you need it for gaming) and will run everything want for a long long while.

[tonpal]

Upgrading your graphics card only would give a boost to your settings but depending on your CPU (I am assuming that you currently have a P4) may not do much for FPS and as staffsMike said investing in a new AGP card is the next best thing to flushing your cash down the loo.

&#163;1000 would get you a Core i7 system.

Alternatively if you wanted to save a bit of money, I would wait until January until Phenom II comes out. If the Phenom II performs as expected against the Core2 quads it will put pressure on Intel to drop their prices. Plus waiting a bit gives the &#163; a chance to recover.

[Pob255]

Yep I'd agree with mike here, with some additional notes.

I'd not be surprised if your cpu will start holding you back, the actual day to day performance of a duel core cpu just within windows is a marked improvement over a single core cpu.

By the fact that your system can still cope I'm guessing you already know how to keep windows and it's carp buildup under control. (although I've definitely spotted a trend in software to get more and more bloated and I'll stop there before going into full rant, just say that keeping windows sleek and addition unneeded carp to a minimum is getting harder)

Back to the subject at hand.

e5200 and overclock to 3.0ghz ish or spend a bit more and go for a Q6600 and overclock to 3.0ghz ish

Cheap p45 or p35 motherboard would be a good start. don't get an SLi motherboard unless you plan to use sli, the nvidia motherboard chipsets are not great and expensive for skt775

memory, 2gb of 800mhz ddr2 is all you should need for now if needed another 2gb is not a costly addition at a later stage. (remember 32bit OS is still the most common and game developers do pay attention to that) Although I should note that 2x2gb is currently cheap and is an option. just don't discount 2x1gb and more later if needed.

Graphics card . . . you'll see a major difference when you go from shader 2.0 to 3.0 and your graphics requirements jump a step as well.
But if your used to playing on a 24" on a x800 then you're ether willing to compromise on quality or fps already. So what ever you go for you'll not be disappointed.

PSU, you may or may not need a new one depending on what you have. but if you do don't go mad, shouldn't need anything over 450-500w for a single graphics card and 650ish for an sli/crossfire setup.

Case, while you've got a nice one already check sizes, the high end graphics cards are very long.

Hard drive & dvd, depends on what you have currently, I'm guessing IDE by the age, which may be a problem as new motherboards only have a single IDE port so you may have to get new SATA drives as well.
SATA dvd-rw drives are very cheap &#163;15ish so are the easiest to replace. Hard drives cost more but at the same time a good SATA Hard drive is a good performance improvement over an IDE drive. (I'm talking real world here, my game loading time went down a chunk when I swaped from a 250gb ide to a 250gb sata)

[Geist]

Thanks for the views

I was thinking that top (sort-of) of the line quad system would be better than the low-end i7. I7 is still unproved and I am just not convinced about such new tech for the long run. Priced up an i7 rig and it looks like a good &#163;2-300 more than the quad for bits people recommended as well and those were still the lower end of the range.

The plan with the quad would be to wait until the GTX280’s drop and grab a second one just before they disappear and then leave the system for years again.

I already have SATA HDDs (Western Digital ftw) so that is not a problem.

I guess I just prefer running stuff into the ground.

I will have a play around with the dual core prices and see how things look as by what you are saying the performance is not worth the extra price in the real world.

Cheers.

[NightshadowUK]

The plan with the quad would be to wait until the GTX280’s drop and grab a second one just before they disappear and then leave the system for years again.

No no nooo, SLi for the lose unless you're buying two top-end cards at the same time.

By the time they drop in price there'll be a single card that gets similar FPS to two GTX280s, so you can just sell your single GTX280 and buy this mythical card. You'll have the same performance with half the heat and half the power draw.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would personally wait a month or two until the exchange rate recovers and the newer AMD processors come out. I would also get something around what staffsMike suggests. You could then use an HD4850 or HD4870 or GTX260 as your graphics card. A newer 55nm version of the GTX260 is coming out soon and this should mean price drops for the HD4870 too! It should not cost you more than &#163;400 to &#163;500 for the whole upgrade at most. This will leave you around &#163;500 which you can use for upgrades in 12 to 18 months time when quad cores and ddr3 become commonplace and hopefully as cheap as dual cores.