Cheapest fastest PC

[RicardoSmith]

I've a P4 1.8@2.4/2.6 on a FSB400 board with a GF4Ti4200. I'm finding it a little slow and am wondering whats the cheapest upgrade that will give me more ooopmmf in my flight sims?

[acidrainy]

slow?! hmmm... probably what will make the difference is the graphics card, but with that spec you should be running fine...

[chrisf6969]

what mobo & ram?

He may have an SDR 845 mobo!? or crappy ram that he's got to run slower than FSB (async) etc... or an ALI or sis645 with crappy ram.

BTW Acid are you a chick or a dude? Either way, you're kinda bangable... with that long silky hair. LOL If we were in prison I make you my pretty little beotch. J/k.... sorry I had to say it... been thinking it everytime I see your pic in posts.

[BlackSheep]

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
I've a P4 1.8@2.4/2.6 on a FSB400 board with a GF4Ti4200. I'm finding it a little slow and am wondering whats the cheapest upgrade that will give me more ooopmmf in my flight sims?

Cheapest upgrade is going to have to be:

new mobo - nforce2 (NF7-S preferably - Rev 2.0)
new chip - AMD 1700XP JIUHB DLT3C
new memory - 2 * 256 DDR PC3200 (min)

*** can be had for < £200 ***

I think most current flight sims would benefit more from processor speed than graphics power - and you appear to have at least a fairly current graphics card.

If after this upgrade you have money left over, then get a 9700Pro (best upgrade price/performance) for graphics.

[Trickle]

Whilst it may depend on your current mobo, imho a 2.2Ghz Jiuhb isnt going to give you much more than a cpu30% speed increase over your current 2.6 p4.

In 6 months time the new intel chips should have landed properly and you may find that its a good time to upgrade. As stated above, upgrading the GFX card will be more benificial for flight sims. The 2.6P4 is probably doing ok.

[Rys]

It's not cool when I have to delete 80% of posts from a thread. Stay on topic please GDB is for stuff like that, not in here.

Rys

[chrisf6969]

Ricardo you never told us the other parts of your system and speeds your running at? mobo, ram, ram ratio/settings, etc...

Depending on what you have... you may just want to upgrade your mobo to an Abit IS-7 and all of the extra bandwidth would probably help.

Man, I missed the 80% of posts that were deleted?! I guess more people chiming in on Acid.... LOL

[Knoxville]

nah just some people threatening to knee you in the balls

I'd have to go with blacksheep, thats probably the best performance for your cash

[Stoo]

You realise you guys should be getting a kick-back from Abit for helping flog all their boards LOL

[acidrainy]

Originally posted by Stoo
You realise you guys should be getting a kick-back from Abit for helping flog all their boards LOL

Heh, the boards sell themselves tbh, they are good all-rounders

[RicardoSmith]

Originally posted by chrisf6969
Ricardo you never told us the other parts of your system and speeds your running at? mobo, ram, ram ratio/settings, etc...

Depending on what you have... you may just want to upgrade your mobo to an Abit IS-7 and all of the extra bandwidth would probably help.

Man, I missed the 80% of posts that were deleted?! I guess more people chiming in on Acid.... LOL

I missed 'em too. Email notification not working since I re-registered on Hexus? I've a Epox 4bda2+ (a 400fsb board)Samsung pc 2700 (768mb) was at 2.6-145fsb but now back at 133fsb since IL2 FB didn't seem to want to know when I was at 2.6ghz. As for ratio/settings I've left them at stock. Why what do you suggest? Not I'm using a Zalman flower and quiet fan settings. So heat is obviously an issue.

Can't see an overclocked 1700xp being quicker. Though it would be a good cheap/fastest PC.

[chrisf6969]

So your ram is only running at DDR290 not even at its default speed of DDR333. You only have 1:1 ratio or lower. You could probably use some more bandwidth.

That 768MB, Is that 3 sticks of 256, 1-256 & 1-512, etc?

If you have 2 sticks of matching ram. same size, organization.... preferably exactly the same brand & model. I would get an ABit IS-7 for now.

All of that extra bandwidth is great for games. You might even be able to overclock a little higher and you will have a mobo to slap a new 2.4C 800Mhz FSB processor in later. Also, its got an 8x AGP port for a later video card upgrade.

Your video card is ok, I'd wait a little while before I upgraded that. They have some new stuff coming out this fall from both ATI & Nvidia. So the ATI 9800 & GF5900 will come down in a few months.

[RicardoSmith]

I was thinking along those lines too. 1x256 and 1x512 I was hopping to get another 512 and ditch the 256. But would I not need DDR400 for a 2.4C 800Mhz FSB processor though? Are the 2.4C's available yet?

[acidrainy]

Originally posted by RicardoSmith
Are the 2.4C's available yet?

Yeah you can buy them...

As for needing ram that will do 200fsb for 800mhz, yeah you will.

[chrisf6969]

Well not necessarily. Its been shown that the higher the FSB the more memory bandwidth. You want to crank the FSB up and you can always use one of the ratios 5:4 or 3:2 to lower memory speed. EX: running at 1:1 250Mhz(DDR500) -conservative timings gets you about the same bandwidth as 5:4 250 (DDR400) b/c the FSB is more of the limiting factor just like with the Nforce boards. You need more FSB b/c the dual channel is saturating the FSB.

Especially since you're overclocking. I would go with like a 3:2 ratio and see how high you can crank the FSB. Lets say you get a 2.4C to 255FSB = 3060Mhz CPU and at 3:2 ratio ram will be at DDR340, basically at spec. And thats a very conservative estimate of what you should be able to do. A lot of people are hitting close to 3.4Ghz with those 2.4Ghz.

[Trickle]

You do loose a fair whack of speed when running the memory out of sink. Obviously in the case o a 2.4C you have little choice and a 3.4P4 on a 865 board even running out of sink is still going to give a 2.2Athlon a clean pair of heels.