Upgrade options for AMD Thunderbird 1GHz

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S

Si

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Apr 1, 2004
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I am looking to upgrade the following system to allow me to continue
recent games such as Call of Duty and Half Life 2.

Curreny system:
AMD Thunderbird 1GHz processor on EPox K8TA3 mobo (4x AGP), 256mb ram,
32 GeForce 2 DDR

This works fine running the (aged) Quake 3 engine - eg Jedi Outcast -
but I want to know what options I have to upgrade on a budget of
around £200 (UK sterling):
1) What would be a good graphics card for this setup
2) is it worth putting in a 1.4GHz processor

Any suggestions would be most welcome!
 
J

jk

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Apr 4, 2004
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Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Buying a high end video card probably wouldn't help much until after you
upgrade to a much faster processor and faster ram. So your first step in
pgrading should probably be for a new motherboard, an Athlon 64 3000+,
and new ram. Here is the US pricing. I don't know about UK pricing.

Athlon 64 3000+ socket 754 & heatsink $165
512 meg PC 3200 ddr ram $85
Socket 754 motherboard $80

You might also need a new power supply if yours is not a high quality
one of at least 350 watts.

After this you should consider buying a new video card. Buying a new
video card (especially one more than around $100) without upgrading
your cpu and ram first might be a waste of money.

si wrote:

> I am looking to upgrade the following system to allow me to continue
> recent games such as Call of Duty and Half Life 2.
>
> Curreny system:
> AMD Thunderbird 1GHz processor on EPox K8TA3 mobo (4x AGP), 256mb ram,
> 32 GeForce 2 DDR
>
> This works fine running the (aged) Quake 3 engine - eg Jedi Outcast -
> but I want to know what options I have to upgrade on a budget of
> around £200 (UK sterling):
> 1) What would be a good graphics card for this setup
> 2) is it worth putting in a 1.4GHz processor
>
> Any suggestions would be most welcome!
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"si" <anyMouse@lycos.co.uk> wrote in message
news:6bb4359d.0410270512.2ef4ef55@posting.google.com...

" Any suggestions would be most welcome! "


Epox K8TA3? I can't findanything on this motherboard, which would suggest
you've got the model number incorrect. Perhaps you can check on it. Google
gives zero results.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

In article <6bb4359d.0410270512.2ef4ef55@posting.google.com>, si
says...
> I am looking to upgrade the following system to allow me to continue
> recent games such as Call of Duty and Half Life 2.
>
> Curreny system:
> AMD Thunderbird 1GHz processor on EPox K8TA3 mobo (4x AGP), 256mb ram,
> 32 GeForce 2 DDR
>
> This works fine running the (aged) Quake 3 engine - eg Jedi Outcast -
> but I want to know what options I have to upgrade on a budget of
> around £200 (UK sterling):
> 1) What would be a good graphics card for this setup
> 2) is it worth putting in a 1.4GHz processor
>
> Any suggestions would be most welcome!
>
Brand new CPU, Motherboard and RAM.

Get a nFORCE 2 based motherboard for about £50.
Get an Athlon XP2500 for about £50
Get 2x256MB PC3200 DDR for £60 total.

SELL the Geforce 2 and use the onboard graphics on the nFORCE 2 based
mobo as they're Geforce 4MX 400.

--
Conor

Opinions personal, facts suspect.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

"Cuzman" <cuzNOSPAM@supanet.com> wrote in message
news:2u9n5nF27kgccU1@uni-berlin.de...

" Epox K8TA3? I can't find anything on this motherboard... "


Got it now. it's the EP-8KTA3. http://tinyurl.com/4batk

For Doom3, I would normally advise getting a new motherboard, CPU, RAM,
graphics card, and possibly PSU. However, for your budget of £200 i would
suggest you do the following:

You should sell these at www.ebay.co.uk :

- Athlon 1Ghz Thunderbird
- GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR

Your motherboard supports 266FSB Athlons, so an Athlon XP 2400+ is the best
readily-available CPU around. There was an early version of the Thorton
core with which the L2 cache could be unlocked to 512KB. They aren't
readily-available any more, but this guy on eBay seems to sell them for
£48.49 including P&P: http://tinyurl.com/68n5x . You should check that your
current BIOS, or a flashed version thereof, can support these CPUs.

As for graphics card, your motherboard supports AGP4x, but an AGP8x card
will work fine with no real performance loss. You can see a Doom3 graphics
card comparison at http://tinyurl.com/6t75r . I would suggest getting
either of the following:

- Sparkle GeForce FX5900XT 128MB http://tinyurl.com/3lx4e £118.62
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB http://tinyurl.com/4n2lo £126.84

As for RAM, if your current stick of RAM is PC133 then you should keep it,
and get another identical stick. It will be much cheaper to shop for one on
eBay, as new SDRAM is very expensive today. If your RAM is PC100, then sell
that too and get 2x matched 256MB PC133 from eBay.

Hopefully your PSU can handle the upgrades, and with the money made from the
sale of your stuff you can easily do the above for your £200 budget. It's
not going to run Doom3 at maximum quality, but it's about the best you can
do for the money.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

I agree with Cuzman..

Put in an athlon xp2400 (or about that range). You could even overclock it
slightly. I have an Athlon 2400 running at 2.26GHz.. make sure it's one of
the 266MHz Athlons, and then run your bus and memory at 133MHz. You'll need
to check if you have pc100 or pc133 ram.. in any case 512mb is a nice
amount. Anymore doesn'tt really benefit many games.

Video card is the key here for gaming performance.. as time goes on what
video card you have is becoming more and more important than things like
cpu for gaming performance. You don't want a bottom end card, very slow..
and the top end cards are too exspensive for what they are.. go middle
ground.. or better yet as Cuzman recommended.. a top end card from 6 months
ago.. a radeon 9800pro for £100ish is real bang for the buck! That's what I
would get.. unless you're really into Doom III then get an Nvidia card
(Doom 3 runs better on nvidia, but then farcry/halflife2 run better on
ATI.. )

So after this you should be left with,
2 gig+ CPU
512mb 133MHz Ram
ATI 9800pro

...and you can play any game out with ease




Cuzman wrote:

> "Cuzman" <cuzNOSPAM@supanet.com> wrote in message
> news:2u9n5nF27kgccU1@uni-berlin.de...
>
> " Epox K8TA3? I can't find anything on this motherboard... "
>
>
> Got it now. it's the EP-8KTA3. http://tinyurl.com/4batk
>
> For Doom3, I would normally advise getting a new motherboard, CPU, RAM,
> graphics card, and possibly PSU. However, for your budget of £200 i would
> suggest you do the following:
>
> You should sell these at www.ebay.co.uk :
>
> - Athlon 1Ghz Thunderbird
> - GeForce2 GTS 32MB DDR
>
> Your motherboard supports 266FSB Athlons, so an Athlon XP 2400+ is the
> best
> readily-available CPU around. There was an early version of the Thorton
> core with which the L2 cache could be unlocked to 512KB. They aren't
> readily-available any more, but this guy on eBay seems to sell them for
> £48.49 including P&P: http://tinyurl.com/68n5x . You should check that
> your current BIOS, or a flashed version thereof, can support these CPUs.
>
> As for graphics card, your motherboard supports AGP4x, but an AGP8x card
> will work fine with no real performance loss. You can see a Doom3
> graphics
> card comparison at http://tinyurl.com/6t75r . I would suggest getting
> either of the following:
>
> - Sparkle GeForce FX5900XT 128MB http://tinyurl.com/3lx4e £118.62
> - ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB http://tinyurl.com/4n2lo £126.84
>
> As for RAM, if your current stick of RAM is PC133 then you should keep it,
> and get another identical stick. It will be much cheaper to shop for one
> on
> eBay, as new SDRAM is very expensive today. If your RAM is PC100, then
> sell that too and get 2x matched 256MB PC133 from eBay.
>
> Hopefully your PSU can handle the upgrades, and with the money made from
> the
> sale of your stuff you can easily do the above for your £200 budget. It's
> not going to run Doom3 at maximum quality, but it's about the best you can
> do for the money.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

On 27 Oct 2004 06:12:20 -0700, anyMouse@lycos.co.uk (si)
wrote:

>I am looking to upgrade the following system to allow me to continue
>recent games such as Call of Duty and Half Life 2.
>
>Curreny system:
>AMD Thunderbird 1GHz processor on EPox K8TA3 mobo (4x AGP), 256mb ram,
>32 GeForce 2 DDR
>
>This works fine running the (aged) Quake 3 engine - eg Jedi Outcast -
>but I want to know what options I have to upgrade on a budget of
>around £200 (UK sterling):
>1) What would be a good graphics card for this setup
>2) is it worth putting in a 1.4GHz processor
>
>Any suggestions would be most welcome!

Your motherboard is a bottleneck because it only supports
PC133 memory. For "most" uses it's not much of a bottleneck
but for games your framerate will be directly effected.

Replace the motherboard, choosing whatever fits best into
the budget. Include at least 512MB PC3200 memory in that
budget. Better to get an Athlon 64 these days, IMHO, due to
it having more performance and future potential, it may save
you $ in the long run to pay a little more now.

As for video card, there is little point to anything faster
than a Geforce4 TI4200 for your current motherboard/system,
even if you did upgrade the CPU. A mismatch of faster video
card than that would allow higher resolutions and more
eye-candy, but a low frame rate. It might make something
like Doom3 playable but not "good" and questionable
near-future game performance.

Essentially you're looking at a task(s) (gaming) that
require highest performance possible. If you don't need
highest video resolutions or FSAA, AF, then you don't need a
high-end video card but still all parts (motherboard,
memory, CPU, video card) need upgraded to prevent any of
(the present parts) from being a major bottleneck.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

That older system, regardless of the 200 Pound upgrade you choose, is quite
weak for playing the newer graphics intensive games such as HL2. Sorry.

--
DaveW



"si" <anyMouse@lycos.co.uk> wrote in message
news:6bb4359d.0410270512.2ef4ef55@posting.google.com...
>I am looking to upgrade the following system to allow me to continue
> recent games such as Call of Duty and Half Life 2.
>
> Curreny system:
> AMD Thunderbird 1GHz processor on EPox K8TA3 mobo (4x AGP), 256mb ram,
> 32 GeForce 2 DDR
>
> This works fine running the (aged) Quake 3 engine - eg Jedi Outcast -
> but I want to know what options I have to upgrade on a budget of
> around £200 (UK sterling):
> 1) What would be a good graphics card for this setup
> 2) is it worth putting in a 1.4GHz processor
>
> Any suggestions would be most welcome!
 
S

Si

Distinguished
Apr 1, 2004
247
0
18,680
Archived from groups: alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt (More info?)

Thank you to all your advice - strangely enough the hard disk has
packed up overnight on the machine, so I am tempted to look at upping
my budget and getting a solid up to date base P4 or AMD64 system (not
sure which path to take yet), then adding a decent graphics card when
I get the chance.





"DaveW" <none@zero.org> wrote in message news:<3ZVfd.326802$D%.7492@attbi_s51>...
> That older system, regardless of the 200 Pound upgrade you choose, is quite
> weak for playing the newer graphics intensive games such as HL2. Sorry.
>
> --
> DaveW
>
>
>
> "si" <anyMouse@lycos.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:6bb4359d.0410270512.2ef4ef55@posting.google.com...
> >I am looking to upgrade the following system to allow me to continue
> > recent games such as Call of Duty and Half Life 2.
> >
> > Curreny system:
> > AMD Thunderbird 1GHz processor on EPox K8TA3 mobo (4x AGP), 256mb ram,
> > 32 GeForce 2 DDR
> >
> > This works fine running the (aged) Quake 3 engine - eg Jedi Outcast -
> > but I want to know what options I have to upgrade on a budget of
> > around £200 (UK sterling):
> > 1) What would be a good graphics card for this setup
> > 2) is it worth putting in a 1.4GHz processor
> >
> > Any suggestions would be most welcome!
 
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