second 7800gt, 7900GTX, or wait for phsyx card?

Right now I think your CPU is bottlenecking your rig. Neither of your graphic upgrades options are wise right now. Here's what I would do if I were in your position.

1. Buy AMD 64 X2 3800+
2. Sell AMD 64 3700+
3. Wait 2 months (nVidia 8-series release, supposedly)
4. Buy DirectX 10 compliant 8-series card
5. Sell 7800GT.

That's what I'm doing with my 7800GT. I can survive on it until the 8-series comes out. The PhysX card isn't worth buying. Most supporting games will be out in '07, and by then the card itself will be bigger, better, and cheaper.

if my 3700 is bottlenecking me now then surely a 3800 would bottleneck me more as games aren't really benefitting from the dual core setup then the fact that the individual cores on the 3800 are actually slower than my 3700?

A. You'll be futureproof (Games will start having dual-core support, coders would be stupid not to supplement the meteoric rise in popularity of dual-core cpu's).

B. My dual-core seemed to provide a very large bonus from my 3000+ (which I had overclocked to ~2.5), but I would check benchmarks just in case. I'll look around for you, gimme about 10 minutes.  

3700+ single core is faster in gaming then 3800+ X2. A 3700+ is not a bottleneck for any single card system that cou can make today.

However Jaffee is right, you would be future proofing your comp a bit more by getting a dual core cpu, however I would get something like an Opteron 165 or X2 4400 if you were going to upgrade your cpu at all.

As for your question, do not get a second 7800 GT. If you can get a decent amount of money for your current one, then I would reccomend selling it and buying a 7900GT. Or you could just wait a few months and see what Nvidia is coming out with (if anything), and upgrade then.

If it would be possible. sell your card for a 7900gt, wait, then get a Physix card and try running it in SLI. I dont know it it will work, but it might. :twisted:

The Ageia PhysX is a card that will be offered in both PCI and PCI-Express, but it cannot be run in SLI because..

A. It's not an nVidia GPU
B. It's not a GPU period

It's designed to be a standalone enhancement for games much like a sound card.

ok, i'm gonna have about £200 to spend

if i sold my 3700 on ebay, i'd get around about £125 for it worst case.

which would give me £325 which is just enough to get me a x2 4400.

doing this would lose me 5 fps in far cry as shown here

if i bought another 7800GT and SLI'd it i'd gain 18 fps in FEAR
as shown here

if i sold my existing 7800gt, i'd get around £150 for it on ebay worst case.

which would give me £350 which is just slightly short of enough for a 7900GTX which would give me a gain of 20fps in FEAR (taken from the interactive charts + the same day meg launch article)

or i could blow my £200 on a phsyx card and it might be really nice or it might be a dead duck.....


i dinnae ken!!!

I guess the first question is, are there any games you currently play that you can't play at settings you like with your rig?

Because if the games you play are at settings you find satisfactory to you, then upgrading is useless right now... wait until you get a game that doesn;t play the way you want it to, then upgrade for the game... wether it be physics card, or video card...

like you said sell your 7800 and get a 7900gtx

It's very easy to get sucked into the "enthusiast Realm" of gaming. Then you drop tons on equipment that doesn't improve much on your previous equipment. That's why I save my $$$ for now and overclock the bashizznet out of my rig. :twisted:

if i wait i'll spend it on summin else!!!. but your point is valid, my 17inch tft only goes to 1280x1024 so i may not even benefit from the upgrade....



i got sucked down that road a long time ago, infact probably when i shelled out on a rage fury maxx, now that was a graphics card  


i'm swaying towards the phsyx card at the moment.....

I have nothing real useful to say. If you are rich buy whatever cool and new stuff you want.

If you're a poor slob like me it's justs not worth doing so many upgrades and spending all that money. Stay a step behind and upgrade more often for the same price as buying bleeding edge but only being able to do that every few years. Don't fall for the marketing BS...a game a year old played on a year old technology is wonderfully cheap, and eventually you get to play the new games once they become old. SAVE MONEY!!!! Play just as hard!

Heheh. True, true.

Remember, it's almost summer: Booze, Cars, & Women are other financial investments that can show significant returns in your enjoyment of life...

Your PC is about as good as mine and I can play any game well. No need to panic.

I am not a big fan of SLI. Because one good card is usually better than 2 sucky/old cards.
I suggest you keep your old graphics card for now, wait a few or many months. Then you end up with a superior DX10 card and a physics card.

If you have money to spend, wait anyway because you have other bottlenecks like your CPU. Get new everything when the (64 bit and multi-core) Conroe/AM2/DX10 comes out.

If you don't do a major upgrade later, your athlon64 3700 will be like a 486 running Win NT.

If guys spend on Booze, Cars, & Women, then what do Women invest in to get a high return on life?

Elementary, my dear enewmen.

They invest their time into guys with lots of money (who can afford Booze, Cars, & Women), of course...

P.S. Who the hell is that guy in your avatar?

Get the 7900 GTX. However fore the prson that said that their CPU would be thr bottleneck, that's not true if you get enough RAM. I have the X2 4400+ with 2 gigs 2x 1024 (formerly 1 gig 2x 512.
and the X1900XT and there is no bottleneck here. When I had 1 gig of RAM
and playing bf2 it was ok, but with 2 gigs it's so smooth with no bumps at all.
So the CPU is not the bottleneck.

Women spend your investment on clothes and shoes.

The guy in the Avatar is "Tom Baker" aka "The Doctor" Doctor Who - #4.

Link to The Doctor. - If you have to ask.

The list of this long running series[/quote]

Even if you did decide to get another 7800gt good luck finding one (new at least) in the states anyway.

I say sell the 7800 get the 7900gt or gtx, and if you can (not sure about Europe) check out eVGA, cuz you have a chance to upgrade within 3mos for the difference in cost if something new comes out.

Not sure if there are other vendors that do that..

I still don't see the point in selling the 7800 in favor of a 7900 when the 8 series and DX10 is right around the corner. It'd be a bad investment.

"sell my existing 7800GT and get a 7900GTX "

That would be the ticket...!

A Pair of 7900GT's run quite nicely as well...!

"I still don't see the point in selling the 7800 in favor of a 7900 when the 8 series and DX10 is right around the corner. It'd be a bad investment."

A good point, to be sure....

However, with Vista delayed until Jan 07, there is still the better part of a year of better performance to be had, although personally, I find a 7800GT to still be quite adequate...

"wait anyway because you have other bottlenecks like your CPU."

a 3700+ is a bottleneck?

By just how many frames/sec does one's FEAR 1280x960/4xAA/16xAF performance jump by bosting the the clock speed from 2.2G up to, say, 2.8GHz ?

a. 2 fps
b. 1.5 fps
c. 20 fps
Hint: "C" is quite incorrect!


I do agree, however, that there are some major gains coming with the advent of Conroe!

I think people are calling the 3700+ a bottleneck because of demands of the future Vista with Aero and future DX10 games.
Not because of any software available today.

I think people are calling the 3700+ a bottleneck because of demands of the future Vista with Aero and future DX10 games.
Not because of any software available today.

I would have guessed more in the 5 to 10 fps range. Maybe FEAR is more CPU bound than most games... do you have a benchmark to back this up or is this a guesstimate?

You think you wouldn't benefit from a dual core CPU but that you can find games that will really take advantage of the physx engine? That's funny! In any case, if you use your comp for anything else other than gaming, or if you have anything running in the background while you play (eg. anti-virus or P2P) then you would most likely benefit from the second core of a new CPU

Unless you're running an intense app in the background, dual core is going to do very very little for you unless the game is optimized for it...

And 99% of them are not dual-core optimized, at this time.

I don't know about you, but I don't encode video while I game...

I Say Stick With Your Correct System ... & Wait For Something Much Bigger Than 7900GTX ...
Hey !! 3700 Is A BottleNeck ?? 8O Oh , That`s Funny ...
I Play A 100% CPU Limited Game ( Dawn Of War : Winter Assault ) In 1600x1200 On Max Detail With My CPU ( 64 3000+ OC To 2.2GHz ) & The Frame Rate Never Goes Less Than 25~30 ...
Hehe ... Some Peoples Doesn`t Really Know What Is Good & What Is Bad ... :twisted:

If you want the bang for your buck, and don't plan on upgrading for awhile, wait for DX10 video cards. DX10 is coming soon, and you're card should beable to handle most games on high quality. SLI isn't worth the money for only a 30% performance gain. Not many current games use Ageia PhysX, so I would only purchase one of those after you get a top of the line video card.

Get Oblivion. It will redefine your bottlenecks and you'll need both the dual cpu and a newer graphics card.

Seriously, dual core rocks and if 5fps in a single game is sacrificed, I'd still go with dual core for all the other positives, and the fact that new games like Oblivion totally eat it up!! Where's my Quad core?

No, but do you run Vent/TS, XFire, a browser, etc?

my games PC is purely for games, everything else i do on my laptop, or my wifes PC, so dual core not really an issue.....

the difference between getting a dual core and a phsyx card......

if i buy the processor, i've not got a phsyx card.

if i buy the phsyx card i do have a processor......

I would have guessed more in the 5 to 10 fps range. Maybe FEAR is more CPU bound than most games... do you have a benchmark to back this up or is this a guesstimate?

I made this mistake too Cleeve - he said C is incorrect! So the answer is A or B!

If you only play games on your PC then things are much more simple. The biggest by far benefit for your gaming experience would come from a new GPU. Indeed, you would probably not see too much benefit from a dual core CPU but neither would you see any real improvements from a PhysX engine. Unless of course you have a particular game in mind that you know for a fact it will take full advantage of it. Then again, by the time such games are out most, if not all, games will also utilise multiple CPU cores

And? The Ageia PhysX is TOTALLY useless right now. Some games have support for the card but that doesn't mean that the game implements the use of the card.

The Ageia PhysX will drop in price about ~$100 bucks (guessing) by the time it becomes mainstream and many games have implemented it. It's a bad deal at $250-$300 in 2006.

Can you even find one for sale outside an OEM?

That's what I'm wondering; the only game that the 7800GT may have problems with is Oblivion.

Just curious: if you're running dual 7800GT's OC'ed, what do you consider "problems"?

No, and that's exactly my point.  

</3 Dell, DELLienware, Falcon Northwest

No his cpu is not bottlenecking and if it was the 3800 would bottle morebecause most games are only single threaded. there is no way that dx10 cards are coming in 2 months because there is no os that would support the dx10 so y would anyone buy it. STFU n00b.

LoL please read all posts in the thread. By the way, how do YOU know that DX10 cards won't be coming out soon? You don't. Nice job. A 7800GT jump to a 7900GTX isn't worth the money cause then he'd just have to get rid of teh 7900GTX in 9 months (at the most). nV and ATI would be smart to put out their DX10 cards well before Christmas.

Thanks for your attempt though, gave me the chance to chuckle, "n00b."

I don't think any half-serious gamer encodes video while they play but that's not really the point. You can't deny that a dual core processor is more future proof than a single core. Everyone's moving in that direction and it won't be too long before we start seeing more and more games not only optimised for but actually written with two cores in mind. How many people can confidently say that for the physx PPU?

That is exactly what I am going to do around the summer / fall, the rest of your system is fine. Your system is similiar to mine, I have X2-3800 and am actually considering making it my fileserver and using a 3700 in my game box, since my fileserver can really use smp rather than my game box - maybe get the cheap PD 805 instead, they are cheap, more $ on mobo - ugghh... decisions...