Pointless Power?

[ShreddyM]

Ok, first off, my goal is smooth and sexy 1080p gaming for as cheap as possible. And I have 2 main questions:

1. With the current rig I have, what would be the best video card I could throw in? Because it ain't the GTX 260 (apparently severely bottlenecked with my rig), and...

2. Now that I have a GTX 260, what's the cheapest processor/mobo combo that'll get me my 1080p silkiness? I don't care about SLI

Current Rig:
478 P4 HT 3.2ghz OCed and watercooled to 3.52ghz
Asus p4v800d-x motherboard (800mhz FSB)
3gb DDR1
550w Power Supply
Win XP

So initially i thought I could simply pick up a good and current gaming card (the GTX 260) and just slap it in and go. But to my dismay, I can barely get 15fps in Oblivion with everything turned down. And about 4fps with everything turned up. Let's not even talk about Crysis...

I started off with an ATI EAX1600 Pro (512 ddr2) and went to an EVGA GTX 260 Superclocked. Obviously a huge improvement. And man, do those 4 frames look super-shiny!

So this can go either way. I can still return the GTX 260 that I picked up for $250 and get a card that will comply with my slower socket 478 P4....OR I can keep the card and find a cheap processor/mobo/ram combo so I can still achieve my gaming Nirvana. Ballin' on a Budget. Help me out guys.

 

[paranoidmage]

first of all, you should define cheap

I'd get E7200 or E8400, depending on your budget, 2x2 GB of the cheapest 800MHz RAM you can find, and P45 mobo priced around $100.

 

[Shadow703793]

@OP: What is your budget?

Do you need a new case,PSU, DVD RW, HDDs?

 

[jerreece]

What processor to get really depends on what you want to do. Multi-tasking, video editing, etc.... or only gaming. Are you a hard core gamer, playing the latest titles (Crysis, etc) or playing older stuff (WoW)?

The E8400 is kind of the people's champion for dual-core CPUs right now, and dominates the gaming market.

For quads on the cheap, the Q6600 is the people's champion for quad cores.

Dual Core chips will get you higher clock speeds, with two cores (which is fine for current games). Quad Cores will get you slightly less for clock speeds, but give you four cores for future titles and multi-tasking power.

Generally though, as suggested above. The E7200 is a good chip. The E8400 is probably the "mainstream" gaming CPU right now. Far as motherboards, get an Intel based chipset like the P45, and 800Mhz RAM (DDR2-PC6400). If you want to run Vista, I'd go for 2x2GB as earlier suggested, as you'll need the 4GB of RAM total to run modern games smoothly.

If you're running Windows XP still, you can 'get away' with 2GB total.

 

[cjl]

I'd go with an E8500 or a Q6600, along with a cheap P35 or P45 board. I'd also get 2x2GB of DDR2-800 to go with it. In total, that should run you around $400 or less (closer to $300 with a cheap board and RAM), and should give a HUGE bump in performance.

 

[Proximon]

Ah I see now, 1080p.

I was running those games on a 7900GT and Athlon just fine, but that was not at that resolution.

 

[paranoidmage]

Definatley get 4 gigs of RAM. You have 3 now, you don't want a downgrade. You can get it for $50 anyway, much cheaper than any other components.

 

[lioncomputer]

E8500 is great but if want less,do not buy E7200 because E7300 has better performance and a little more than E7200.And about the Memory go for 2*2GB ballistix tracer it is the way that you can overclock your system in future.

 

[ShreddyM]

Thanks to everyone who advised me here. It totally influenced my buying decisions.

So this is what I bought:

CPU: e8400 $150
Mobo: Asus P5QL $100
Vidcard: EVGA GTX 260 SC $250
Ram: Crucial 4GB DDR2 2x2 1600mhz $50
Total: $550

Got everything but the ram from Microcenter. Ram came from Fry's. Everything else I recycled from my old rig. Being that I already started off with the vid card, I spent $300 extra, which was only $50 over my initial budget, but I think I made the right choice.....as long as I can finally install an OS, which is now the new culprit.

Trying to install WinXP64, but I'm getting nowhere fast. Most of my drives are still IDE, and I heard that most IDE controllers on new mobos are fairly crap. So I dunno why it's not self-booting. It's now just sits on a black screen with a blinking cursor. I set the boot order up properly, so I dunno what's the deal. I'm itching to move forward, but I'm currently hung up. Oh well, another topic for another thread, I guess.

 

[cjl]

DDR2 1600MHz?

Do you mean 800?

Sounds like a good combination though, and once you get the installation sorted out, it should be able to absolutely flatten your old setup in every way.

 

[ShreddyM]

Whoops, I meant DDR2 1066mhz. The motherboard supported it, and it was only 50 bucks, so what the hell right?

The problem with me is that whenever I buy a PC, I try to keep a budget, but ALWAYS get bit by the upgrade bug. But I was able to keep myself in check to a certain degree...

Figured out the install issue. Simple BIOS setting stuff.

But you know, come to think of it, one of my questions wasn't ever addressed... It looks like I'll be keeping the 478 P4 for mild gaming and Maya rendering. I'll be throwing it on a 1440x900 flat panel...no more attempting 1080p with that! But I still want a good card to buy for it. Keeping in mind the obvious processor bottleneck, what's a good older card I could throw in that won't be terribly hindered? geforce 8800?

 

[Shadow703793]

^Nope. 8800 and later are all PCIe.

 

[Proximon]

His board is apparently PCI-E. 8800GT would be about as high as I would go.
9600GT would be a good match at a bit less.
I heard somewhere that Maya likes nVidia drivers better than ATI, so I won't recommend one of those.

 

[ShreddyM]

Yes it does have a PCIe slot.

And i can attest to the ATI drivers sucking badly with Maya. Maybe its best that i finally switched to nvidia. Been an ATI guy all my life. But let's not talk about the 4870. It'll make me jealous.

This has all been great advice. I humbly bow.

 

[Shadow703793]

Ok, checked out the specs for the motherboard, but looks like the PCIe will be limited to x4.
See specs:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131147