Can anyone recomend me some upgrades

[happytechie]

so that I can get Quake 4 running a little smoother. My current system is:

NF-7S v2.0
Athlon 1800XP
1 Gb Crucial twinX 3200 stuff (2* 512 sticks)
all running at 205 FSB = 2255MHz CPU speed

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
80Gb IDE and 300Gb SATA hard drives
case, soundcard

what I need, well I need dual head output, lots of USB ports for all of my kit and I'd like to be able to run Quake 4 in a little higher res than I can now.

I guess I need a new mobo and CPU along with one or two GFX cards. If I could go dual core that would be nice for multitasking when writing code and folding. I guess I can get another pair of 512 sticks and run 4 sticks of RAM in dual channel mode? Aditionally I suspect that my PSU will not be up to the job for this new rig so I'll need a new one of those as well. Can anyone recomend a motherboard and CPU along with a PSU and some video card choices.

Budget is £500 ish but if it's a bit more then no big deal, no Epox boards and as 'upgrady' as possible please. I guess that means an SLI mobo and SLI GFX card and plent of scope for new CPU / memory.

thanks in advance everyone...

HT

[kalniel]

I *think* that all you need to upgrade to get Quake 4 running better would be to whack a good NVidia card in that rig - a 6800gt for example.

[kempez]

Well the main thing for games like quake is the GPU so a 7800GT should sort you out there

Mobo and CPU wise:

Asus Sli Premium or DFI SLi-D (I'd get DFI if I were you: you obviously overclock and these are the Daddy)

AMD Opteron 146 (pre-order at SCAN clocks to around 2.7-9GHz

A bit more memory may help at some point: but not totally neede right now for quake 4

[happytechie]

can I get a 7800 in AGP ? I thought that the 9800Pro (mine is overclocked quite a long way but I can't rememebr at what speeds) got pretty close to the limits of the AGP bus' capabilities.

HT

edit: would one of these bad boys help? http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=274560

tbh I'm not that keen on splashing out on another AGP card, I'd rather bite the bullet now and go PCI-E as that is the way of the future. but if that means I can play Q4 @ a higher res than 640*480 then I might just go for it.

[kempez]

can I get a 7800 in AGP ? I thought that the 9800Pro (mine is overclocked quite a long way but I can't rememebr at what speeds) got pretty close to the limits of the AGP bus' capabilities.

HT

edit: would one of these bad boys help? http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=274560

tbh I'm not that keen on splashing out on another AGP card, I'd rather bite the bullet now and go PCI-E as that is the way of the future. but if that means I can play Q4 @ a higher res than 640*480 then I might just go for it.

I wouldn't have said that it does: a 6800GT OC'd a bit would be pretty awesome if you just went for a graphics card

I posted the 7800GT only if your going for a fuller upgrade

[happytechie]

anyone else got any opinions?

ta HT

[Thorsson]

Mobo and CPU wise:

Asus Sli Premium or DFI SLi-D (I'd get DFI if I were you: you obviously overclock and these are the Daddy)

AMD Opteron 146 (pre-order at SCAN clocks to around 2.7-9GHz

Does this work? I thought Opteron's needed a 940 board and registered RAM.

[Hans Voralberg]

There are s939 Opteron, they are quite limited though. No more than 3 e-tailer got them on their list, and so far only got them 1 stock. (not Scan by the way, but within this week im sure)

[Thorsson]

Thanks. What's the performance/price like compared to A64s & X2s?

[fredered]

x2s will run multiple aplications very well, and will run futeure multithreaded aplications well, although for just running one programm at a time there is currently little improvement over a single comparable core

[dodgybob]

If you're budgeting £500 and want the 7800gt then:

£250ish for one 7800gt?
£140 for the dfi or £100 possibly sub that for a good ocing board that supports sli?
£60+ for a good psu as you mentioned you want to replace it

You're going to have to add a good £50 to get the opteron or a 3200 with that budget assuming that they are about £100.

If you want dual core the cheapest is bit over £230 on scan so you'd really have to up your budget, particularly if you want more ram.

Might want to look at x800gto2 and unlocking/overclocking it to free up more money if you'd really like dual core.

nb: it's past 4am my figures may be way off.

[happytechie]

I was actually thinking more along the lines of an SLI capable board + a single 6600 GT(SLI capable) for now.

how do people rate the following setup...

3800+ dual core athlonXP ~ £260
Abit AN8 SLi NF4 ~ £80
2 * 512 Mb 3200 LL DDR TwinX ram to match the two sticks that I allready have ~ £70
PSU ~ £60

that leaves me £40 for a GFX card which isn't enough so....

6600GT SLI ready ~ £100
7800GT ~ £270

+ VAT on all that stuff. Now I know that the dual cores are not instaock at scan today but I guess they will get some more in when the price cuts come in later this week and they are on this week only over at OcUK. I guess the Q is whether to get the dual core board now, or to get a cheeper 3400+ single core and pick up a dualie when they drop in price....

What are the relative performance diffs between an x800, a single 6600GT, dual 6600GTs in SLI and a 7800GT

HT

[happytechie]

Hmmmm £350 over budget but:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA4200BVBOX) £260
OcUK Value 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 184pin DDR Memory Dual Channel Kit £118
Asus A8N-SLi nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard £75
Seasonic S12 500W Silent ATX2.0 Power Supply £70
2 * Leadtek WinFast PCX6600GT-TDH GeForce PCX6600 GT 128MB DDR3 TV-Out/DVI £180

£822.27 inc VAT

can anyone do me a better spec for less or recomend any compatibility issues / problems / better ccomponent choices. This leaves me a NF-7 + A1800 + 1Gb RAM combo to sell to re coup some of my £300 overspend....

HT

[kalniel]

The budget was exactly why I recommend just getting an AGP 6800gt.

It'll cost much less, and *still* the performance will be not far off the system above.

Seriously, I'm not joking. You've got similar performance, one option costs 200 quid, the other 822 quid. The 6800gt will last your current system a good while yet, and when upgrading later you can get the ASRock dual sata2 which is a great board but still keep the agp card at full performance.

[happytechie]

do you really think that a AXP @ 2100 + a 6800gt in AGP will be close to the performance of a A64 cpu + a new GFX card?

if it will be cool

HT

edit:

can anyone do a price check on an AGP Redeon 9700 Pro ?

[kalniel]

Yes I do.

Most games are GPU limited. I don't know how well exactly an XP scales to an A64, but I would wager there's not a huge difference on a clock to clock measurement - off the top of my head I'd say the XP at 2255mhz would be equal to an A64 at 2000mhz (ie 3200 or X2 3800+), so either way it won't be limiting your GPU.

A 6800gt has 256mb ram, which will help in texture heavy games, like quake 4.
Two 6600gts in SLI basically gets you to 6800gt speeds in a lot of cases, and you only have 128mb per card so would actually have to run with lower game settings.

So yeah, I really think the difference would be barely noticable for your needs. You'd probably get about 50+ quid for the 9700pro.