PCI Express

[EvilG]

Hello yall

Right my situation is thus:

Doom 3's Imminent arrival has prompted me to upgrade my system, and spookly coincides with my friend's need for a pc, my proposed soloution will follow, but first my current setup:

Residing in a coolermaster ATC-210:
2ghz P4
1gb unmatched RAM
A Geforce something something Ti 256mb ram, that i bought so long ago i cant even remember the model number, suffice to say it cost me about 250-300 squids at the time, anyhow...
who cares what size HDD

My friend Is going to give me £200 for the parts of my old system less the case obviously, and im going to front about 300-600 myself

im sure using a minimal amount of money I could buy A 3.4+ processor and a decent asus MB (im planning to use RAID also btw) with a gig of ram and a R9800xt which would be sweet

But

I was thinking of buying a new 775 MB (with sata RAID) and PCI express, and a 3 Ghz P4 and a mere 512 of DDR2 with the idea of upgrading bits down the line where and when ive got the cash

And if I do that the real question is... Will a x600xt (or even pro) do the job until PCI matures and the £300 I would otherwise spend on a X800 can be better spent?

I guess what im really asking is Will an x600tx be good enough to run Doom3 at a decent enough resoloution

phew

thanks

[bullfrog_173]

Rest assured, I can be pretty freakin' certain that you'll be able to run doom 3 pretty well on that card, seeing as straight out of the box a geforce 4 can run it (but with low res & detail, although still with vital shadowing, bumpmapping etc. on; i.e. playable with all the settings on which make doom 3 doom 3). PLUS; and see the thread on speeding up doom 3 for info; relatively minor tweaking has allowed a guy on planetdoom to run it on an ancient geforce 2. [thank you john carmack]. Therefore, your question should probably be "would i be able to run doom 3 on very high or just high settings", as I believe an x600 is pretty good in comparison with these cards at least.

[EvilG]

Ahh, thats what I like to hear BF, I was ready for an extreme shooting down for going with the new 775, or even some fanatical AMD and NIVIDIA zealots advancing with a baptism of fire

[bullfrog_173]

Of course, you should also wait for other people's opinions and not just base it on mine - i can't be right all the time ;-)

[Boogle]

X600 is a PCI-Express R9600XT. By the time PCI-E offers any advantages over AGP you'll be looking at a CPU/Mobo/RAM upgrade anyway (I doubt u keep the same combo for 2 years). You definately want 1GB of RAM over 512MB.

You would be mad to get a 9800XT when you could get a 6800 for the same price of less.

[bullfrog_173]

This is a benchmark report from HardOCP on Doom 3. Unfortunately there are no benchmarks for your processor, but the closest is the pentium 4 2.4ghz. If the x600 is a PCI-express 9600xt, then i guess you *could* refer to the benchmarks on these pages:

http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0LDg=
http://www2.hardocp.com/image.html?i...hfOF80X2wuZ2lm

But remember, the system there is using a slightly different system to you. They suggest 800x600 on medium quality, but also mention that this is their suggested setup; i.e. you may find it playable on higher settings. Note that they have very high frmaerates with these settings, so my guess is they probably didnt strain it as far as you could if video quality was your priority.

[ed^chigliak]

R9800XT are you sure? For not much more you can have twice the performance with a x800 series card. A 128mb 9800pro maybe because these are bargain prices otherwise x800 or NV6800 all the way. Cards perform exactly the same on PCI-E as they do on AGP so who cares what slot except perhaps for future upgrades and if you leave it 2 years you'll need a complete new everything all over.

[Nomadd]

re: "even some fanatical AMD and NIVIDIA zealots advancing with a baptism of fire"

Well, I'm niether, but I'd suggest not wasting the money on a 775, PCIe or DDR2. I've a P4, but if I was building now, for gaming, I'd also look strongly at the Athlon 64, now the prices have improved.

And like the other guys, I'd say do go for 1GB of RAM, and definately think of using some of the money you'll save on going for a better graphics card: 6800NU, or for a bit more 6800GT or X800Pro.

My system is a ASUS P4C800, with 1GB of Kingmax DDR RAM, a PNY 6800GT (overclocked) and a P4 (overclocked @3.5). I'm not a fan of Doom3, but I will say that it does run super-smooth on my rig. I'm sure you could put something 'like' this together easily for the money you are looking to spend.

Nomadd