tough decision

[Dybowski]

which of the following will play games the best?

opteron 165
2gb value
x1900xt
wd se16

or

athalon 3500+
2gb OCZ ddr 500
7800gt
raptor 74gb

will the raptor make that much of a difference?
and will memory speed make a big difference?

 

[MadModMike]

which of the following will play games the best?

opteron 165
2gb value
x1900xt
wd se16

or

athalon 3500+
2gb OCZ ddr 500
7800gt
raptor 74gb

will the raptor make that much of a difference?
and will memory speed make a big difference?

1) No the raptors will not make a big difference, if one at all

2) The memory will impact by 3-12%.

Use the former setup and change that to 2GB G.SKill DDR500 1GBx2

~~Mad Mod Mike, pimpin' the world 1 rig at a time

 

[sleepdeprived82]

Yep option 1 i would say.

the x1900xt will make the biggest difference to games, rag the nuts of the opty by overclocking it and you will have a very nice rig.
Try to get faster ram if you can, makes ocing easier and allows better performance if you have an increased fsb.

The raptor may make loading times a bit faster but thats about it gaming wise.

Sod go over budgetm i always do

Option 1 plus the raptor and DDR500 ram.

There is a post some where saying the price of the x1900xt will be cut when Nvidia launches its 7900 you may want to wait a bit.

 

[sleepdeprived82]

reading your specs I guess your trying to compair your comp to a mates, a whos is biggest contest.

In which case yours is in most aspects, most games are gpu dependent now and you cleary have the better graphics card.

 

[Dybowski]

no

there both my computers im just wondering which setup to take to a lan next week, and there going to be in a sff case so iwas wondering which will give me smoother fps because someone told that hd speed make alot of diff in bf2.

and im gonna do a fresh install of xp so the drives will be clean.

 

[sleepdeprived82]

Oh ok, the raptor will allow BF2 to load a bit faster but thats it, it will make no ingame difference.

 

[Rustol3um]

and as far as your graphics goes, as someone has already pointed out the 1900t is a far superior card then the 7800gt...

 

[Heyyou27]

How is this a tough decision? Two 7800GTs have a hard time keeping up with an X1900 XT, so a single one would get destroyed.
Also an Opteron 165 vs. an Athlon 3500+?...

 

[Powerdog_69er]

Your hard drives "DO" matter....it's called swap file...if you had two monitors and one was playing BF42...and the other monitor was showing you all of your system stats... you'll see that BF42 [along side Halo and others]... uses swap BIG TIME!!!!. if you have faster hard drives ....HELLO!!!!...you have faster swap...which will help in storing and retreving memory faster... while processing.... it is not the most imporatant thing to think about when developing a system... but it does matter!!!!
99% of all window programs use swap... it definately helps in running programs.
here is a link to download "Memstat"...
http://www.majorgeeks.com/MemStat_XP_d665.html
That program will show you how much certain things use "Swap".

 

[Dybowski]

HELLO!!! bf2 runs completly in ram thats the point of 2gbs so it wont have to swap chocking the game. correct me if im wrong

 

[Powerdog_69er]

well if you were to run duel monitors and have some programs that showed you your swap file useage... along with your RAM useage...you would know for a fact that BF42 utilizes alot of "swap".
If you were to have 1536mb of RAM...you would notice that BF42 uses roughly around 600mb of RAM...while it's loading that RAM...you'll notice that its also paging the same amount [roughly]...into swap.
But obvously your not running two monitors...because your saying that BF42 uses no swap at all...which I can see that it does....on my secondary monitor easily.

 

[Dybowski]

well doesent it take more memory to run those extra programs you are using so that eats up your ram causing bf2 to swap

 

[Powerdog_69er]

Running idle with the second monitor while Free Meter, Net Meter, CM Monitor, Memstat, Task Monitor, and MB Probe running.... I have just over 1100...when I load BF42, my RAM goes down to about 600 [depending on the map and such].... while BF42 is loading... Is when I see the numbers just grow on my swap...with or without all the stat programs running.

 

[dmantech]

I would go with the first setup at least you will not have to upgrade for a
while. My setup: X2 4400+ 2 Gig Corsair 2x1024 AN8 SLI premium,
ATI X1900XT, Quadro FX 1400 for SLI Workstation Graphics, 550 Watt PSU, Creative XFi. 8)

 

[Heyyou27]

I do run two monitors, and have paging files disabled. During this Battlefield2 at max usually takes around 1.2GB of RAM.

 

[chuckshissle]

The one with the x1900xt will be the better one for gaming.

 

[Caboose-1]

I do run two monitors, and have paging files disabled. During this Battlefield2 at max usually takes around 1.2GB of RAM.

Yeah battlefield 2 is possibly the biggest RAM whore for FPS IMHO.

 

[Powerdog_69er]

Not to try to prove anyone wrong... but I went and dug up some stuff at some respectful sites on "Page Files".

The first url will explain how virtually ALL programs use the "Swap File".[from MS]

The second tells you about the performance hits on a hard drive that has the ""Swap" on it and how to set it up performance wise on different hard drives. [again MS]

The third one explains how you can not run a program without "Swap"...you might be able to on some programs if you set aside 2mb... [theeldergeek]

I highly doubt that you run BF42 without the "Swap"... I tried running BF42 from a virtual CD on my system without "Swap"...[with and without the 2mb min]...and I had problems.

The system I used was a MSI KT3, XT9800, 2-Raptors raided [OS], 3-WD's raided [Gaming], 1536mb RAM [Kingston], XP2200, and XP Pro... by far... not the latest/greatest...but definately plenty to test BF42 with.


http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555223/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314482/en-us

http://www.theeldergeek.com/paging_file.htm

 

[sleepdeprived82]

Plus we are talking about BF2 not bf1942 the games are completly different.
BF2 is a ram whore Bf1942 is not, BF2 will only use the harddrive on load not during play if you have enough ram. Obviously PB will access the hard drive to check files but that is minimal.

If Bf2 does not have enough ram it will use the pagefile then the swapfile is used but 2gb which he has is enough.

 

[Powerdog_69er]

Earlier in the post, people were stating that hard drives do not matter when gaming...obviously... they do.
and you might also want to go and read the third url on how "Windows" addresses the "Swap"...even though it's not using those addresses at that moment...

 

[sleepdeprived82]

The guy asked about BF2 and whilst ingame with his rig a raptor will make no difference what so ever. It will help with loading times but not FPS or quality of play.
People will get stutter in bf2 if they do not have enough ram as the swap file is used, so with little ram a raptor would help.

Other games that use the harddrive a lot more like I guess fear and its auto saves will benefit from the raptor but BF2 does not auto save.

The most important thing for BF2 is the gpu and ram.

 

[Powerdog_69er]

Well I did a search on BF2...gee...same engine...same game...then you look into some of the system requirements.... hmmmm...it says:

Hard Drive: 1.1 GB (plus 3 GB or more free space on Windows partition)

Now I wonder why it wants you to have 1.1gb...maybe...install the game....

then I wonder why it wants 3gb on "Windows" partition... I highly doubt it's going to put 3gb's of system files in the "Window" partition...

IT MIGHT BE TALKING ABOUT SWAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

take a look at the game specs on the url below:

http://www.ea.com/official/battlefield/specialforces/us/features.jsp

getting back to the main point of this "post"...faster hard drives do matter!!!... maybe not as much as FPS or Processing power in some people's minds... but in some...

and your BF2...does use swap...and I lay money on it that it uses it alot more then you realize...for starters..."Windows" allocates the addresses out even though it's not using it.

these url's explain addressing and provide links to more on the subject that will back it up.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dngenlib/html/msdn_manamemo.asp
http://www.forensics-intl.com/def7.html

 

[sleepdeprived82]

Actually the 3gb space is required for extraction of the patches.
People who had less than 3gb on their partitions could not extract the 400mb patch.

How can BF2 use a swap file if its turned off? a lot of people have turned off the swap file if they have enough ram.