To upgrade or not to upgarde?

[chatman]

Hi!

MY current specs:

Athlon 64 X2 4600
2x 512 MB DDR 400
ATI X800

I already have Vista 64 installed together with XP Pro and want to switch completely as soon as all my devices are supported (printer, tv-card and Joystick are still missing)

So I seek advice wheter to upgrade to Intel core 2 duo 6600 and 2x 1024 MB DD2 now and add a DX 10 card some time from now. Or just upgrade to 2x 1GB DDR 400 and stick with the Athlon.

I use it for work as well as gaming (mainly FSX)

Your recomendations?

Thanks!

 

[jamiepotter]

Depends on the mobo, I'd say. Have you got space for another couple of DDRs? You might as well have 4 512s. I think you'd kick yourself if you got 2x1gb sticks of DDR400: your current machine will be the end of the line for your DDR400.

Do you OC? If you don't, the E6600 isn't a _massive_ improvement. Look at the CPU charts.

If you do, my general thought would be that recent tech + Vista invites a new machine rather than an upgrade: now would be a good time to go DX10, DDR2, and Core2Duo all at once.

However, that's a big expenditure, so if you can honestly say you wouldn't be hankering for another upgrade soon down the line, and will just buy another midrange card when you need one (say), then all you need is a 2 extra banks of 512 on your current rig.

Summary
If you OC and you've no space on your mobo for extra memory: go Core2duo, new mem and new mobo.
If you don't OC and you've space on your mobo for extra memory: buy 2x512mb DDR400s for now and worry about a new machine in a couple of years when it restricts you unduly.

Don't know about the middle options (i.e. OC but space, no OC and no space). They're by no means clear-cut.

 

[jaguarskx]

The best and cheapest upgrade for you is a new GPU and another 1GB of RAM.

Going from a X2 4600+ to a C2D E6600 doesn't seem worth the amount of money you'll need to dish out. The E6600 at stock speed will preform better than the 4600+, but not by too much. Of course, if you overclock the E6600 then it will rip your 4600+ to shreds, but you can also overclock the 4600+ to compensate if the mobo you have allows you to do so.

 

[sailer]

In my opinion, you should probably upgrade your ram (2 x 1 gig) and overclock the 4600+ a bit. After that, a new video card would be in order. Good thing about the video card is that you can more it to another machine later if you want. If you have the money, I think it would best to upgrade the video card to a DX10 class card, either a 8800 or if you wait a bit, the new ATI R600 when it comes out. This would give you extremely good performance under DX9 and let you upgrade to Vista and DX10 later if yoiu decide to do the OS upgrade.

 

[pmr]

I would upgrade memory and wait for a cheaper dx10 card (or a 8800gts 320Mb). You can always OC your cpu, because even at stock it's powerful.

 

[nilepez]

Hi!

MY current specs:

Athlon 64 X2 4600
2x 512 MB DDR 400
ATI X800

I already have Vista 64 installed together with XP Pro and want to switch completely as soon as all my devices are supported (printer, tv-card and Joystick are still missing)

So I seek advice wheter to upgrade to Intel core 2 duo 6600 and 2x 1024 MB DD2 now and add a DX 10 card some time from now. Or just upgrade to 2x 1GB DDR 400 and stick with the Athlon.

I use it for work as well as gaming (mainly FSX)

Your recomendations?

Thanks!

Personally, I'm moving to C2D, but if I was in your shoes, I'm not sure I would. I made the move, because my DDR sells for about $250.00. I got Crucial PC8000 on sale for 265. Sell the MB and CPU for 100 bucks (maybe more) and I'm off to the races. But in your case, you've got ram that won't sell for much and you can probably get a really nice performance boost by simply upgrading ram and GPU.

The only thing that might make me change my opinion is if you have AGP. If you're on AGP, then I'd be reticent to spend the huge premium for a new AGP card.

 

[chatman]

First, thanks for the answers.

As for the memory: I had installed 4x 512 MB for test pupose a while ago. It turned out that my mobo (Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9) increased access times when all 4 banks were occupied so 2GB was actually slower than 1 Gig. That's wahy I'd change the 2x512 to 2x 1024. (bwt do actualDDR2 mobos still have that problem?)
What I read, DDR2 677 CL4/5 is not that much faster than DDR400 CL2 right?

I'm not too much in overclocking so from that point of view it seems best to stick with the Athlon I guess...
GPU upgrade is planned but not until ATI comes out whith their DX 10 cards...

I'll keep watching for your commets!

Martin

 

[sailer]

4 banks were occupied so 2GB was actually slower than 1 Gig. That's wahy I'd change the 2x512 to 2x 1024. (bwt do actualDDR2 mobos still have that problem?)

What I read, DDR2 677 CL4/5 is not that much faster than DDR400 CL2 right?

DDR2 mobos have the same problem. Its not the mobo, but XP that causes this. As far as ram goes, from what I've read, DDR2 677 with CL4/5 isn't much faster than DDR400 CL2, but the difference is more because of the cpu involved. Doesn't really matter, because the new cpu's go on boards that only work with DDR2 ram and older cpus only work on boards that take DDR ram, with the exception of a couple of boards from ASRock.

 

[jamiepotter]

Well, 4x512 is bound to access slower than 2x1024 or 2x512 for that matter (around 5% drop in overall system performance: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2560&p=2), but I think it will be slightly quicker than constantly using the page file on the HDD! That would be the point of having more memory, after all...

It's by no means ideal, but it's still going to help in Vista, where by all acounts you do need two gigs.

 

[nilepez]

Well, 4x512 is bound to access slower than 2x1024 or 2x512 for that matter (around 5% drop in overall system performance: http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2560&p=2), but I think it will be slightly quicker than constantly using the page file on the HDD! That would be the point of having more memory, after all...

It's by no means ideal, but it's still going to help in Vista, where by all acounts you do need two gigs.

It helps for some games in XP. OP, I would not move to Vista unless you need DX10. It is definitely slower than XP for gaming. Stick with XP until you're ready to change CPU/GPU and MB....or at least until the GFX drivers are a hell of a lot better than they are now.. I can't even run my monitor at 19x14.4 at 85HZ in Vista, while I can in XP.

 

[scorch]

Well my system specs are in my signature. Since my system is working fine for what I do now I am sticking with XP. I played around with Vista and it seems to me more eye candy more than anything else (just a new toy). However as time goes on I'll learn more about vista and probally want to get it. One option I was pondering was selling off my 2 x 512's and buying 2 1GB modules. I ordered a 7600GS videocard so I will have decent video for games and such and I can use it in a new build if I want to.

Well anyways getting to the point I am not doing any further upgrading, I will be probally do a new build because the dual core processors totally left me in the dust.