Questions of current technology

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Mr_furiouss

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Feb 12, 2007
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I just need some info on upcoming hardware and technology

at the moment im running on a
Asus A8N 32-SLI Deluxe
AMD 3700+ 939 skt
XFX 7900GT
OCZ PC4000 gold 2 gig

at the time i bought this i was under the impresion that i was building an up to date system and i shouldent have to update in a while.
how wrong i was!
now thers the new AMD AM2 skt and the new 8 series cards.
now i have a 30 inch dell screen and need something with a little more kick.
my question is if i go out and by a whole new system how long will i be safe? is there any new technology that i should be aware of?

what i know:
AMD AM2 skt, DDR2 RAM, PCI-E, Nvidia 8800GTX, SATA are the lastst technologys around.

What i dont know:
How long are these sockest and hardward going to stick around for?
Is it a good time to start building?
 
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Lacostiade

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Mar 8, 2006
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want my advice, wait for around Q3 2007. At that time u will have the choice of DDR3, AMD Barcelona, R600\R680 or G80\G81 ( depends on how things are gonna go for r600, at that time u will know what is the best performer), as well as PCI-e 2.0.
 
choirbass

choirbass

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AMD is switching sockets again soon... AM2+/AM3 (not sure of specifics really, but, i believe thats when performance above s939 will start to happen, AM2 wasnt a socket to improve architecture performance, it was mainly to allow integration of a DDR2 memory controller on the cpu, and a few other things)... the most cost effective upgrade you could go for right now though, would just be to upgrade your single core 3700+, to a s939 opteron 165, or a cheap s939 X2 if you can find one (theyre both dual core, and around ~$150 each, also depending on which X2 model), and thatll offer roughly similar performance to a stock speed E6300-E6400 C2D

what you can also do, is just overclock your 3700+, and that wont cost you anything

as far as gpu upgrades... i agree on holding off... ...until ati/amd come out with their gpus, the G80s are just going to stay expensive... and even if they dont drop in price, at least youll have more to choose from then
 
choirbass

choirbass

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yes, pci-e is here for the time being, and for the foreseeable future from what i can tell

but as far as the cpu socket, since you already have a s939 cpu, its not worth at all switching to sAM2, especially since its soon to be replaced again
 
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Mr_furiouss

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thats all i needed to know
for what i understand my current setup is fine i just need a better video gard for more kick
i was just worried that if i was to go out and buy a new one i wont be able to install it on a new system in time.
so i should be find if i go buy a 8800GTS OR GTX tomorow?
 
choirbass

choirbass

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yeah, if you go purchase an 8800 GTX or GTS youll be perfectly fine... your cpu certainly wont hold you back from getting playable framerates ...cpus almost never do anymore, since the vast majority of the workload for games is placed just on the gpu, and often limited by it as a result (such as when you increase resolution and detail settings in game, that just stresses your gpu more, making your framerates drop lower and lower, because the gpu has that much more to render)... now if your cpu was socket A, or older, the cpu might be more of a concern, not to mention the whole system would probably need to be upgraded anyhow to play anything current at acceptable framerates... but even then, as long as youre getting above 20fps on average, the game will still be playable

now, regarding cpus and games in the not so distant future (within the next year i would imagine)... having at least a dual core cpu is recommended, and for some games probably required (better ai, physics processing, natively coded for multiple cpu cores, etc)
 
choirbass

choirbass

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well, a game (application) is a single process typically (if you refer to the task manager)... ...but a process in almost all cases consists of multiple threads, sometimes dozens of threads, or more (all operating in sequence on the single core, waiting one after the other to complete)... very few processes come to mind that only consist of one thread, and those are usually very simple applications at that... ...an applications multiple threads may be rewritten and patched to 'acknowledge' the additional cpu core (most games currently only 'see' one cpu core)... but when recoded, they can then make direct use of the additional core when they are coded for it (and instead of their threads only operating in sequence, they can now begin to also operate in parallel)

im not a programmer by any means, as im sure most people can already tell, but, thats vaguely how it works
 
SuperFly03

SuperFly03

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yeah, if you go purchase an 8800 GTX or GTS youll be perfectly fine... your cpu certainly wont hold you back from getting playable framerates ...cpus almost never do anymore, since the vast majority of the workload for games is placed just on the gpu.
Click to expand...

Hey choir, :)

That is typically true, but THG did an article which basically proved that the 8800GTX eats up more data than a X6800 can spit out, therefore any system with a 800GTX is CPU limited in frame rates (in most applications).

So while the OP will be capped in frames by his CPU, it won't be terrible. The OP will definitely see an improvement and that improvement will continue through a CPU upgrade later on.

--Heyyou27

I don't know about that. That seems a bit extreme, I realize the resolution is high, but $1200 on video cards.... a bit excessive for my point of view. But, again that's me.
 
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