AMD XP3800+ vs Graphics card

[McIvan]

Difficult to find info on this topic, probably because it's a moving target, but (thinking in terms of games like Oblivion, Empire Total War, Mass Effect, GTA IV, FEAR, CoD V) at what point would that 3800+ CPU bottleneck a card to the extent there was little point buying it?

I have a 7800GT at the moment....would like to upgrade to a 9800GT or GTX...but would I lose some or all of the benefit? Is the 7800GT already powerful enough for my CPU?

Thanks & regards
Ivan

 

[gkay09]

No, you will notice a lot of improvement by going with the 9800GT...
But to utilize its full power, you would need a better CPU...
So go ahead with the 9800GT...
If you can wait for a sometime, both Nvidia and ATI are set to release newer cards...Not that am saying you to buy those new cards, but with the release of those cards, it will bring down the prices of the other cards too...so you can get a better deal then...

 

[McIvan]

Yeah I know what you mean about bringing the price of the older cards down.

It's hard for me to tell, but given my CPU - and this is really meant to tide me over for 18 months or so (will then build another system as mine will be 5 yrs old) - it seems like the present sweet spot maxes out at a 9800GT with 1 gig of ddr ram. Any better and I might as well just buy a new rig now.

Mildly irritated now that Socket 939 barely goes any better than the 3800+....sure I could buy an early dualcore....4400 is the best socket 939 went up to?....but no way that would make as much diff as upgrading the graphics card. But that's life....your rig is always outdated 3 months after you put it together

 

[gkay09]

But there is one choice...
For now forget about the Graphics card...
Get this combo for about $150...
EDIT :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboDealDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.172781
the onboard graphics is very gud and mayb will perform as gud as that 7800GT...and it provides you with a gud upgrading platform...
So for now change the mobo and CPU to this...and mayb in few months time, get a better card...like I said you can expect newer high performing cards at cheaper price...
The mobo can easily support AM3 CPUs also...

 

[Wolfshadw]

gkay09 - You forgot RAM. The old S939 motherboards use DDR RAM where as the AM2+ boards use DDR2. While 2x1GB of DDR2 ram can be had for around $20, it's still $20 more.

-Wolf sends

 

[McIvan]

Yeah thats a nice mboard/chip combo, but it wouldn't do anything immediate for my gaming, because the onboard graphics are, at best, no better than my 7800GT, which is become increasingly outclassed and is the point of this thread. I suspect I would be better off simply waiting 18 months and buying that combo cheaper and newer (or whatever is best at the time) than buying that combo now for little discernible benefit.

The only real show stopper in terms of an 18 month tide-me-over upgrade is a graphics card. I don't have to buy cutting edge to get a highly noticeable benefit. Just wanted to check, really, whether the lower capability 3800+ CPU would suck out most of that benefit.....and so far it seems that it would still be well worthwhile.

 

[megamanx00]

Well, the difference between a 9800GT and a 9800GTX would be rather small on your system due to being limited by your CPU. The RV740 is comming out in like two weeks so I suggest you wait till then as it will have performance between a 4830 and a 4850. I suspect that ATI will try and phase out the current 4800 series based on the 770 and replace it with the RV740 on the lower side and the 790 on the higher side. If you really wanna stick with nVidia the low price of the 740 should drive down the price of the 9800GT and 9800GTX/GT250 a little bit. From there upgrade your card to an RV 740 based card (It's suspected the GDDR5 version will be called the 4750), or a 9800GTX/GTX+/GT250. Latter on pick up a good CPU/motherboard combo that will let you run crossfire/sli down the line. I'd suggest you running SLi now, but it's a little late to recommend running 2 7800GTs in SLI .

 

[McIvan]

True Plus it probably requires a power supply upgrade. Everytime I looked at upgrading to SLI it didn't seem to offer as many gains as simply buying a single better card.

I'm firming on a 9800GT. Like you say, not much diff between the GT and the GTX. Will also have a look at the ATI equiv. I'm a bit ignorant on the ATI cards due to an issue the Radeons used to have with a game I played a lot...ignored them for a long time (also it's an nVidia chipset board) and there are so many cards its easy to lose track of what is what. 18 months from now will upgrade the whole system.