dillema

[Lithium]

Not sure what forum this should be in but this looked like the best. I am currently running a AMD Athlon 64 300+ 1gb corsair xms, ATI X800XT

I am going to upgrade the machine and I can't decide whether to keep my current video card and buy( AMD 4400+ Teledo) and Ram(2GB Corsair XMS) or keeping the current processor and going with the ATI x1900XT and still upgrading the ram.

Will my current processor bottleneck the x1900?

Will i see a huge performance boost with the x1900

Since the processor and the video card are roughly the same price I can't make up my mind!

 

[bweir]

You would certainly have a bottleneck with the 3000+ if you were to use the x1900xt card with it, but you would still see some improvement. Don't know how much, but it would be much more if you were to use the 4400 with that card.

You would get the best improvement overall upgrading the CPU and RAM, plus, the video card would also improve a slight bit because it has more headroom with the better CPU.

 

[Vokofpolisiekar]

From x800XT to 1900XT = massive increase in performance gain
Expect to play at 1280x1024 with AA/AF and HDR easily, if not beyond.

With respect to your choice, get the RAM and the X1900XT, and leave the CPU for now. I've been corrected before on the CPU issue (I felt that 3000/3200+ would bottleneck a 1900 - but hey, it's AMD and it's using Hyper Transport), if processing power becomes an issue, then hopefully Ageia PHYSX might eliviate such headaches.

The CPU afterall is more responsible for physics than anything else in todays games (bar the memory transfer from HDD<->RAM<->Gcard).

 

[Lithium]

I'm starting to lean more towards the card b/c right now the processor is running at stock speed. If I replace the stock fan with a nice cooler, and OC the processor a bit it would help alleviate the bottleneck some. Although that still doesn't alleviate the smaller cache issue of the chip

I will probably been in the position to upgrade the chip in 3-4 months as well. I just wasn't sure where to begin :lol:

Oh and i'm pretty sure I'm going to have to go with a new PS too :?