Worth upgrading from an AMD64x2 3800+ ?

[cronjob]

I've been building my own machines for fifteen years; never bought a pre-built in my life. I'm a software engineer so the only time I get involved in hardware is when I'm leading up to building another box, which I do annually (with a budget of $1,500 to $3,000). It used to be a simple matter of going with AMD and buying at the price-break. Now, however, both brands have half a dozen lines of chips and the only way to really compare is through other people's experiences and benchmarks.

I built the following machine in November of 2005 and play most games at 2560x1600 with high/highest graphical settings. I pull 30+ FPS in Battlfield 2 with no problems and have had no complaints with any game until I started playing the MMORPG "Vanguard" recently, where I average around 10fps to 25fps at the low resolution of 1280x800 and settings at low to medium.

- AMD64x2 3800+
- A8N-Sli
- 2 GB RAM
- GeForce 7800 GTX (256mb)
- 10,000 RPM Raptor (SATA)
- 30" Apple Cinema Display

I am used to building a machine every year and knowing that the performance has at least doubled what I built the previous year. At the current time, I'm not seeing that this is the kind of performance increase I can expect. For example, benchmarks on Tom's seems to indicate that the performance difference between my 3800+ and a Core Duo E6800 / AMD64x2 5200 / FX-6x is around 20%. I'm not really willing to spend $500 to $1,000 on a CPU that only returns a 20% improvement.

So, the quandary I am in at the moment is whether or not there is an affordable configuration I could build right now that would offer remarkably greater performance that would hold me over for another 12-18 months when I get the itch to build another box comes? While I could afford to buy a $1,000 Intel Quad, I simply refuse to on principal (aside from the fact that I don't necessarily believe current gaming engines are designed to make use of it).

I have never ugpraded a system in my life. I just build entirely new systems. But at this point, I see the 8800 GTX as being a significant improvement over the 7800 GTX (double, I believe) and would like to upgrade to it. However, I'm not sure if I will be missing out on a lot of paid-for performance in the card by not throwing in a whole new system with a newer chip?

I would appreciate any sort of guidance at this point. I'm not averse to dropping the cash for a whole new systm. I'm merely averse to dropping it for a system with an unremarkable performance increase outside of the graphics card itself. And I'm not sure if buying the 8800 GTX with the intention of upgrading the rest of the system over the next year makes any sense, because by that time there will be a 9800 GTX and I won't want to have a whole new suped-up machine with an old 8800 TX.

Thank you and have a great weekend!

 

[UAL3312]

okay, here's what i would suggest, this will more then likely hold you over for your year

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819115003
i have one of these, it is ammazingly fast, and very hard to beat for Price/features/performance mine is overclocked to 3.4GHz on Air, at the temps/Vcore i run i expect it will work at least 1-2 years, by the time i rebuild

320 dollars

eVGA 680i, Nvidia's newest latest and greatest, P24 Bios is out now, witch has solved 99% of User issues. i also own this board, it is no longer to be feared
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813188009

250 dollars

Corsair XMS DDR2-800. this Ram is very good, i think Ram is a personal choice, but i am a hardcore Corsair Fan, i have this Ram and it rocks 100%

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145034

280 dollars

the Grand Tamale, the 8800GTX. this is more then likely the most amazing part of the system it runs anything i throw at it, if you can stop this thing from performing, idk what to tell you. the CPU actually bottlenecks it, so this will outlast the Core 2 Duo. or should anyways

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814130072

580 dollars


1430 dollars, not bad for the improvements you will see, keep the Raptor and DVD burner etc. they are still very usefull

 

[cronjob]

That's what I largely expected to hear at the moment. I had a 2ghz AMD Athlon one year and upgraded to the dual core 3800+ and that was an incredible improvement. I'm just not seeing that same improvement from the 3800+ to anything right now.

But is the GeForce 8800 GTX worth getting if I stick with the 3800+ right now? I have read plenty of comments and reviews around the net indicating that if you play with the graphical settings set high and in high resolutions, the 8800 GTX is a remarkable improvement (even over the 7800) even if you don't have an C2D E6600, because when you're going for quality over "performance", the GPU seems to be the limiter.

Since I have no idea when to expect the quad core AMD to come out and when it will become reasonably priced, I don't think I can plan on upgrading to the 8800 GTX today and hoping to upgrade to a faster chip/platform in six months. So purely sticking with the current 3800+, is the 8800 a good ideas?

At the moment, I'm mostly concerned with this game if anyone else is familiar with it. At lower resolutions and settings, it just looks terrible. But at the highest it is incredibly stunning!

Oh, by the way - I have no intention of moving to Vista anytime soon. The only machine I have that runs anything other than Solaris, Linux or OSX is this gaming box and until I find myself dying to play games that are geared toward DX10, I'm happy with 64bit XP (especially since Vista will render a lot of current games unusable or difficult to accommodate).

Anyway, I realize this is largely subjective. Thanks.

 

[UAL3312]

btw, AMD's quad core is out, however it really doesnt matcht he Intel. the REAL quadcore from AMD, is due somewhere around summer i would say

 

[cronjob]

okay, here's what i would suggest, this will more then likely hold you over for your year

...snip...

1430 dollars, not bad for the improvements you will see, keep the Raptor and DVD burner etc. they are still very usefull

This is a vague, non-concrete, anecdotal question, but what do we believe the real performance increase is between the system you described and my existing system? If I stuck the 8800 GTX in my current system, how would it compare with yours?

If the difference between my 3800+ system with a GTX 8800 and the system you describe is only 20% or so, then that doesn't seem worth $1500 and I may as well just spend $600 and stick the new card in my current box. I am really curious what comparisons you (or someone who has experience with very similar systems to both mine and yours) could make.

Thanks for the reply and assistance. I've never asked anyone for guidance on a system in my entire life, but I am just so overwhelmed by the variety of options we have this year that it's driving me insane. I have gone back and forth from "I'm not spending a dollar on this machine for another six months" to "I want to drop $3,000 on a killer new box RIGHT NOW" about 50 times in the last week alone. I think I need a therapist and some drugs!

 

[UAL3312]

CPU wise, MMORPG games as well as many games like Age of empires 3 become taxing on a system because they are always updating/commanding Drone's etc. this is where Hardware comes into play. graphically with the resolutions your running, the fastest and the best video cards are required to get good frame rates. playing Dark mesiah with eye candy turned up HDR and Anti Aliasing at 4X at 1280x1024 resolution every so often i get somewhat of a choppiness with Highly intensive Shading situations, like on a dock, with water below and a gorgeous ship out in front, this is the point where SLI becomes usefull.

 

[jkflipflop98]

The issue here isnt your system. The issue is that Sigil's unreal 2.5 based engine isn't running properly.

 

[cronjob]

The issue here isnt your system. The issue is that Sigil's unreal 2.5 based engine isn't running properly.

Dude, you're damn right about that. Not to draw up a long flamewar in here or anything, but any suggestion that a system that runs 2560x1600 30+FPS high-setting Battlefield 2 should be able to run Vanguard pretty well just results in a wave of "your system sucks!" and "it's the debugging software in the beta, because it decreases performance by a whopping 10%!".

But when it's running how it should (or at least, in the screens Sigil has shown) it is amazing. Hopefully they'll optimize things starting in February and we'll get some improvements!

I've been trying to get people who have been playing the game longer (or developers themselves) to list out a system part by part that they use along with a demo of the quality that machine can pull down with the game, but I have yet to see that done. That way there'd be a better idea of what is really needed in a new box.

At the same time, many people have made claims that they run in very high settings with high frame rates and no problems even with relatively old(er) systems. I'm not sure if I actually believe them or not, but . . .

I sure would be disapointed if I put together a machine as described above (E6600, 8800 GTX -- maybe even SLI, etc)... only to find the quality is only marginally improved.

 

[Dahak]

You could try purchasing another 7800gtx and go with sli.This small investment will bring you anywhere from 20-50% inprovement on most games and benchmarks.I decided to get a second 7800gt and was quire surprised by the increase in 3dmark05.I've also found that overclocking the cpu will help,which is free performance you know.You should be able to clock your 3800 to about 2.5ghz.Add the second video card and voila,you have a significant performance boost with minimal expense.This should hold you over for at least 6 months to a year,when you can decide what to build with the newest and greatest hardware.By then there will be a significant amount of the 8800 series and the r600 series(the r600 is ati).Nyways if you have any other questions let me know.Goodluck.

Dahak

AMD X2-4400+@2.6 S-939
EVGA NF4 SLI MB
2X EVGA 7800GT IN SLI
2X1GIG DDR IN DC MODE
WD300GIG HD
EXTREME 19IN.MONITOR 1280X1024
THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850WATT PSU
COOLERMASTER MINI R120

 

[ch1ckench0wme1n]

If you buy the 8800GTX(3 times more ram on the card), which i would recommend, that card itself will allow you to play vanguard with at least 50 fps constant. Then when you need to upgrade just keep your 8800gtx(probably will be the 1,2 or 3 best card on the market still) and upgrade your mobo, cpu, ram.

 

[Dahak]

But if he stays at stock speeds on the 3800 the 8800 will become cpu bound.So ya go for the 8800,just oc your 3800 as much as you can.Goodluck.

Dahak

AMD X2-4400+@2.6 S-939
EVGA NF4 SLI MB
2X EVGA 7800GT IN SLI
2X1GIG DDR IN DC MODE
WD300GIG HD
EXTREME 19IN.MONITOR 1280X1024
THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850WATT PSU
COOLERMASTER MINI R120

 

[cronjob]

Yeah, I have considered overclocking my x2 3800+. I haven't done any overclocking in years so I'll have to dig up some more info on that with the recent generation of chips. It looks like most of this can now be done in the bios (and now that I look at it, my A8N board's Award bios even has some sort of overclocking configurations you can choose from by default increasing your system 3, 5 and 10%. I have no idea if it's as simple as that, but at least it's looking like no more cutting off CPU pins and taking tweezers to the jumpers.

If you fry the CPU with bad overclocking, is it likely to take the video card with it? If not, perhaps I'll buy the 8800 GTX and see how it runs. If I feel I need to overclock the CPU, I'll do that. And if that goes down in flames on me, I'll just use it as an excuse to go with the E6600. With the nvidia sli board from evga, I could go with the 8800 today and go SLI with it in another three to six months, perhaps.

Seriously, I am really appreciating the input from everyone. I wish there were more exciting games out right now, because even if Vanguard didn't yield the results I want from a better system, I'd just enjoy the others. But man, it just feels like a real dirth in PC games the last year.

 

[choirbass]

i agree with the above... since your build seems mainly focused on gaming, the most significant improvement youre going to get, is simply by upgrading the gpu (to an 8800GTX)... and OCing your x2 3800+ cpu to 2.5-2.6 (with a quality 3rd party HS+F) which will bring performance on par with an E6300-E6400 at stock speed (already making it not worth the upgrade cost for a new cpu/ram/motherboard, at least right now anyhow)... you could also invest in additional memory too, depending on how much you have (if you only have 1GB, you should go for at least 2GB total)

so... those upgrades in themselves will bring you up to current top gaming performance, for certainly cheaper than investing in a whole new system ($1500-$3000 as you were saying)

you could even just go with an 8800GTS (for a couple hundred less than an 8800GTX, while also OCing the CPU) if youre looking to hold off from doing a complete system overhaul, till its actually worth it

as far as OCing, the only real danger you have, is applying too much voltage... if you can keep your cpu at a max of 1.5v, youll be okay... i personally dont go higher than that, simply for the risk of damaging it

as far as cpu temperatures, staying at 60C or less is always a good idea, but it can handle up to 71C before things go bad (instability and such), since thats what its rated up to... sometimes instability happens around 66C-67C... but either way, keeping an eye on your temperatures is something worth doing

 

[survivor]

I don't understand why you think that you need such amount of money to upgrade. get these

1- Asus p5b or gigabyte ds3 as 125 dollarif you don't need fireware port
2 - Conroe E6300 + TT Big thypoon or similar after market cooler 210 $(you can easily overclock it to 3.0 or over with these mobos and cooler)
3- 2 gb ddr2 800 any brand 250-300 $
4 - 8800 gtx 600$

total =1200dollar and if you sell what you have like 450-500 dollar then you only neeed to spend 600-700 dollar and it will be a huge upgrade later on when the prices fall you can buy a quadcore cpu.

 

[jitpublisher]

I agree with Dahak's post above. For a little over $200 this should power you along nicely for another year.

Get you another 7800gtx and run in SLI.
Bump your 3800x2 up in speed a little. They overclock fairly well if you don't try to get crazy. Just a couple hundred MHz will help.

 

[cronjob]

Are the Intel quad-cores likely to be as good (or better) than the soon to come AMD quad cores? I have had some people suggest that if I'm looking to build a killer box for a bit of cash, I should consider going with the Intel Quad Core (which looks to be around $1,000 for the CPU). My only concern is that a quad core is similar enough to a quad CPU, right? And I know that games are not currently designed to take advantage of multiple CPUs. It would seem pointless to have a quad core if all of my games are going to run on one core and leave the other three twiddling their thumbs.

Or am I completely off my rocker? I come from the Solaris world where we still largely only deal with single core chips (but multiple CPUs per machine).

Anyway, I want to thank everyone again. I am so glad I finally got around to posting on here. What an awesome place.

 

[Dahak]

A quad core is similar to a multi cpu system in that it can run multiple apps without slowing your system down.However,you do not have the added expense of multiple cpu's nor are you having to buy registered memory modules,hence saving even more money.As for what company to go for.....well that's entirely up to you.I do know that intel has a working quad core right now where as amd will have one soon.Right now intel has the superior architecture,but if I know amd,that won't last long.Anyways,I still go with my original recommendation of either buying another 7800gtx or get the 8800gtx and just overclock your 3800.And wait for something better and more of a selection to appear.This I believe is your best choice for the time being.I would love to build another gaming machine right now and yes I can afford it.But to be honest,what I have now rocks the house so like my wife says,there is no need to at the moment.Oh ya,most games out right now still don't make use of bothe cores in a dual core cpu yet,so really,getting a quad core just isn't worth it right now.Goodluck.

Dahak

AMD X2-4400+@2.6 S-939
EVGA NF4 SLI MB
2X EVGA 7800GT IN SLI
2X1GIG DDR IN DC MODE
WD300GIG HD
EXTREME 19IN.MONITOR 1280X1024
THERMALTAKE TOUGHPOWER 850WATT PSU
COOLERMASTER MINI R120