How much faster will this be than that? (The Cheer Me Up Thread)

[Iam]

Following the untimely & tragic death of my late

XP1900, 512MB PC2100 DDR, Abit KR7A motherboard, ATI Radeon 8500 64MB video card, & 80GB ATA 133 HD

I'm planning to get a new system using the following :

Athlon Barton 3200, ASUS A7NX8 Deluxe NForce2 m/b, Kingston Hyperx 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR PC3500, ASUS 9600 video card, Western Digital Caviar 120GB Spec Ed SATA HD with 8MB cache

To help me get over my grief , can someone tell me how much faster/better the new system will be (without overclocking) - 10 times faster, 20 times faster, 100 times faster?

[chrisf6969]

um about 0.5 times faster or 50% faster.

Really depends on what you're benchmarking. FPS, winstone, etc..

It will be faster... but at most 2x as fast!

[Barry]

it will be faster but i doubt even twice as fast

[evildoc614]

if your doing video editing it will be alot faster but if you just surfing the web then you wont even notice =)

[Galant]

I expect that due to the laws of physics they'll both move at the same speed when they hit terminal velocity. Cause to get there you'd need a point that's high enough.

Ah the days of dropping those paper snapper things fromt he top of multi-story carparks!

[Austin]

The XP1900+ may sound old but it's still plenty fast enough for all Windows tasks and even gaming if you adda decent gfx card. Of course XP3200+ is a big step up but a total waste of cash. I'd say look towards the XP2500+ or XP2800+ Bartons whether o/c'ing or not. 1GB of RAM tends to be way overkill for almost all home users, I seriously doubt you'll notice the diff going from 512MB ... you can always add more later (when it should be cheaper). Also PC3500 is pointless if you aren't going mad on FSB o/c'ing, PC3200 is more than fine and you will find any branded stuff more than fine (I rec Adata or TwinMOS).

If you want to game you'll be a little disappointed in the Rad9600, it isn't far off the speed of a decently clocked Rad8500 just with DX9 and superior AA+AF. Seriously look to the Rad9600PRO as a minimum, preferably the 9600XT if you aren't o/c'ing. WD tend to be a little noisier and hotter than the competition but they do come with a 3 year guarantee AFAIK which is nice ... if you keep your HD for that long. I'd suggest any 7200rpm HD with 8MB being preferable ... even an ATA100 will nto slow you down at all.

I guess the most pertinent question is, what will you be using this new PC for?

[Spritzup]

I would go with austin's reccomendation with the processor and save yourself a wad of cash. The 2500+ usually easily oc's to a 3200+. Personally I'd go with a maxtor 120 gig sata drive, as they tend to be slightly cheaper, quieter and also have a 3 year warranty. That way the cash you saved can be used to get a better gfx card (like a 9800 pro )

[Iam]

Thanks everyone. Damn, could n't at least one of you have said "Yes, 100 times faster sounds about right"?

I'll be using the PC for games, Star Wars Galaxies & Championship Manager (the xtra Gb should do some good in the latter at least).

I did n't know Maxtors came with a 3 year warranty - I'm a little averse to the brand at the moment as the drive in my late system was a Maxtor, & is a possible cause of death.

I take the point about the processor, but I'm wary of overclocking ... never tried it, don't really want to risk it, limited tech knowledge. Does the increase in FSB from 333 to 400 Mhz have so little an impact?

The 9800 video cards seem a price hike too far for me, looks a little like silly money, but I'll certainly look into getting a 9600XT.

Actually, I've just noticed that you can get a 9800SE with 128Mb for about the same price as a 9600XT with 256Mb ... anyone got an opinion as to which is better?

Thanks folks.

[Austin]

Yes, 100 times faster sounds about right! Well TBH it probably will feel much faster esp when gaming if you go for a Rad9600PRO minimum. Are all the parts of your 'old' PC totally dead? Can some not be salvaged?

If you want the 1GB from the off then go for it, esp if you have the cash. It can make things easier down the line as there's still uncertainty about populating all 3 slots on nForce2 mobos in terms of max perf, max FSB and of course matching the sticks as closely as possible. I'd still suggest looking to PC3200, even that wouldn't limit you even if you did o/c. I'm not sure how much Kingston HyperX costs but TwinMOS is around £50 for 512MB so 2x512MB=1GB PC3200 would be around £100 (CPUcity, Komplett etc). TwinMOS with WinBond is top notch stuff.

Not all Maxtors come with 3 years. It was industry std for a long time then pretty much all HD manus went to 1 year only with the biggest exception being WD with their SE (7200-8MB HDs). However since SATA HDs came along I think some manus are offering 3 year, certainly with 'bigger' HDs (either 120GB+ or 160GB+). Do check your old HD as it should have had a 3 year warranty, you should get a free replacement from Maxtor (they'll often upgrade it from 5400 -> 7200 or 60GB to 80GB). Your HD will never (AFAIK) kill your system, if it dies it usually just ceases to work itself. What happened to your last system?

In the past o/c'ing had minimal gains with pretty large risks and hassles. Not so anymore, so long as you take a few simple precautions and ideally choose your parts carefully it carries virtually no risk and has very big gains. Switching from 333FSB (2x166mhz) to 400FSB (2x200) is very easy but you ideally want to drop the multiplier, the biggest thing about o/c'ing is to go up in small speed steps and test each time. You don't want to go from XP2500+ 11x166=1.8ghz to 11x200=2.2ghz (XP3200+) in one big jump! Ideally you want to drop the multiplier, so go from 11x166=1.8ghz to 9x166=1.5ghz (to check mult changes) and then finally to 9x200=1.8ghz. Running 9x200 will maximise both your mobo and RAM without actually o/c'ing anything (though AMD might disagree). Then to actually o/c you just up the multiplier one notch at a time (and test). If you can't change multiplier then all you need to do is just up the FSB a little at a time (an test) which will steadily increase your memory as well as CPU speed. Esp nice with nForce2 as PCI/AGP is locked and takes a little more effort out of it. Anyway needless to say it makes much more sense to get a £60 XP2500+ than waste over £200 on an XP3200+ even if you don't o/c the XP2500+ (which tend to hit XP3200+ speeds).

However since gaming is your main concern you really should be looking to spend most cash on the gfx card which is far and away the most important part for gaming. At the mo the Rad9800 or 9800PRO (£200ish) are easily the best of the top cards and are a lot faster than the mid-range (9600PRO/XT). If that's too rich look for Rad9700 cards (now rare) which are just as good esp if you o/c. Otherwise it's a matter of waiting for the fresh cards due out around Feb 2004. Rad9600XT is still a very fine card, Komplett are doing a weekly special for only £119! However o/c'ing rears its head again as the 9600XT is little more than a slightly higher clocked 9600PRO. The 9800SE comes in a few discrete varieties but even in its fastest form it's 'only' as fast as a 9600XT but without the o/c'ing potential. People tend to like 9800SE as they stand roughly a 10% chance of modding (via sw) to a full 9800PRO. 9800SE is the gamblers choice. As for 256MB it's totally pointless for two primary reasons. Firstly by the time that extra RAM proves sueful the card will most likely be too slow to use and secondly the RAM tends to run slower than the 128MB versions meaning actual perf is LOWER (unless the 256MB is top of the range). I'm not sure about the games you intend to play with the new PC but as a gamer you'd be much better off with ...

XP2500+ 512MB_PC3200 Rad9800

than

XP3200+ 1GB_PC3500 Rad9600 (even 9600XT)

[Iam]

Thanks very much Austin, very helpful.

I knew my new system would be 100x faster!

I've just gone for 1Gb 3500 DDR & the Barton 3200, sorry to waste your good advice there (more money than sense, borrowed money that is, unfortunately - 3rd 2nd mortgage on the way ). The Barton is costing me £159 + VAT, so £100 or so more than the 2500 you advised. It just did not seem that much more to pay, given the amount I was spending overall. I really wanted 1Gb (I understand it makes a real difference for playing Champ Manager), but probably did waste £80 or so getting Kingston HyperX 3500 rather than TwinMos 3200, but again that's (comparatively) little, & the Kingston are matched sticks, so should work well together ... I had a lot of frustration trying to get 1Gb onto my last M/B (Abit KR7A) & eventually gave up & settled for 512Mb, which always used to nag me.

What did I do to my last system - God knows. Thing went into a cycle of crashing & restarting, I could only get into Windows in Safe Mode, briefly, then had a Welchia warning from Norton, tried removing it (fail & crash restart), then had "HD not detected when I eventually tried re-installing Windows, then "Error reading drive" on HD, then "Error reading drive" booting from CD as well, & finally (after I cleared the CMOS, somewhat desperate by then) - lost even the graphic card output. I posted about this a week or so ago, have tried MS support who've pretty much confirmed it could not have been just Welchia/MSBlaster, but is some hardware fault as well.

I can't be ahemed trying to find out what part of the hardware died ... way I see it is that I'd be buying loads of replacement (& dating) parts to test in the system to see if it'll work, with no guaranttee of anything other than a lot of hard work. I had been thinking of upgrading anyway, so am looking on this in a positive thinking "it's not a disaster" way. I'll hold onto the old parts to use in my PC2, in time, or in case of any future problems.

Hence my masterplan to replace/upgrade the lot, with latest kit - so very much more economical

Thanks for the info re the Radeons, if your advice did nothing else it lead me to go with a 9800 Pro - I somehow convinced myself that as I was n't economising with the processor etc, I might as well not economise with the graphics card ...

As you may have guessed by now, balancing a cheque book has never been a particular strength of mine.

Anyway, thanks again for your help.

[payniel]

Sounds lie you mother board form the one that died was old, you might want to check the capacitors(the large tube like things on your board if thats what they are called) for bulging becuase a little while back there were alot fo compaints about swelling and burst capacitors that can cause serious problems and kill your hardware. if that is the case you could probubly get your money back form the mainboard manufacturer. Also you may have gotten a virus, there are viruses that store themselves in the mainboards cmos chip so reformats dont work. Or your board just decided its time was up.