the 64 jump

[beetlebz]

So, a while back I upgraded (woo!) my gaming rig to an athlon xp 2000. New ram, new radeon, the works. Recently one of my ram sticks died (down with centon! boo!) and i've decided im just going to get a 1gb stick of geil or somthing I can use down the road.

I did some digging around, and for about 300 bucks I can get the ram, a new mobo, and an athlon 64 2800. The question is, I need the ram, but is it even worth my time at this point to spring for the 64 series, or should I just save my pennies and go all out later on with SATA, PCI express and all that?

if I wont really notice a difference with an athlon 64 i probably wouldnt bother spending the other 200 bucks..

 

[beetlebz]

nah, 9800 Pro 128mb. Thats why im not ready to chuck it for a pci express flavor

 

[P4Man]

Just get two 512 MB sticks instead of one 1Gb, will be cheaper, and if you are using nForce, marginally faster. THing is, you'll be able to re-use that ram in an A64 later if you upgrade.

If you're not satisfied anymore with your XP2000, only then it would be wortwhile to upgrade. Will you see a big boost ? Yes, at least as long as your videocard doesn't hamper your game performance (assuming that is what you care about). Depends what videocard exacty you have now.

Serial ATA and PCI-E on the other hand, won't give you any noticable boost as such (if at all). OF course, a faster PCI-e card will be much better than a slow AGP one, but all things equal, performance is not really a reason to switch. Upgradebality is. SATA can be safely ignored though.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[beetlebz]

well, in that case I guess i'll fill you in on the back story. For a long time I ran my system (xp 2000, 256mb stick of centon pc2700 and 512 stick of crucial pc2700, radeon 9800 pro 128mb) and it was always missing somthing, never knew what. A few weeks ago my 256mb stick died and im AMAZED at what a difference that little 256mb stick made. So I was going to get a single 1gb stick so I could later add a second stick to get 2gb (the board im looking at only has 2 sockets).

On the other hand, eventually Id go with a PCI-E video card like an x800 or some such, and I could always go for a board with 3 ram slots, allowing me to add a 1gb stick to two existing 512 sticks if i followed that route P4man.


i hate upgrade time, im so indecisive :S

 

[P4Man]

Okay, so your videocard is more than fast enough for your current cpu. It will not fully unleash the potential of an A64, but will be good enough to give you a considerable boost nevertheless, I would guess.

As for RAM, yes going from 256 to 512 makes a HUGE difference. Going from 512 to 1 Gb, the increase is quite a bit smaller for 90% of the apps/games/users out there, but still worthwhile for many. Going beyond that, for typical uses or games just isn't worthwhile (yet). My advice is still, assuming you have 3 dimm slots now, keep the 256 Mb, and add one or two 512 Mb dimms, which you'll keep later. Unless you'll only upgrade >1yr from here, putting more than 1.3 GB RAM is probably not going to be worthwile.

Lastly, if you can't affor new-everything now, but still crave an improvement, consider buying an A64 motherboard with PCI-e AND AGP, and hang on to your videocard. I've not seen any reviews of these boards yet, but they do exist.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[Jito463]

Ooh, no. Bad P4man. Dual AGP/PCX boards are not good for running AGP cards. The AGP bus is tied into the PCI bus (not the PCX), thus making your high-end AGP a glorified PCI card. Trust me beetlebz, you'd be better off either sticking with AGP or going all out for PCX. Don't use the half-breed boards. Btw P4man, he said his 512MB stick was still good, but his 256MB stick died, not the other way around. But the rest of your comments were on target.

And back to beetlebz, over 1GB seems to provide minimal performance except in areas that require a lot of RAM like video editing or high-end graphics editing. Having said that, if you plan on upgrading to Socket-939, the RAM runs in dual-channel and you should consider replacing the 512MB PC2700 you've got for two identical PC3200 sticks. If you don't want to replace it, make sure you run the RAM in single-channel instead of dual-channel. Otherwise, you could encounter stability issues.

 

[Rugger]

Don't confuse PCX with PCIe - there is a definite difference between the two! We're talking video cards so this is PCIe.

__________________________________________________
<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>

 

[mozzartusm]

.......

Intel P4 550(3.4)<font color=red>Benchmarked 5Ghz</font color=red>
X800XL 474/609 <font color=red>#5 in 3DMark05 #3 in PCMark04
3DMark05-<font color=red>5965</font color=red>
3DMark03-<font color=red>13496</font color=red>
PCMark04-<font color=red>6170</font color=red>

 

[over_c]

He may have confused the abbreviation but he's dead on with the rest of his comment. Boards that have AGP and PCIe run the AGP off of the PCI bus at AGP 1x or less speeds. Running an AGP 8x card on one of those mobos would drastically reduce the performance of the card.

 

[Rugger]

I didn't disagree with the rest of his statement.

__________________________________________________
<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>

 

[over_c]

You're right. Sorry about that.

 

[Rugger]

No problemo!

__________________________________________________
<font color=red>You're a boil on the arse of progress - don't make me squeeze you!</font color=red>

 

[beetlebz]

well, I thank everyone for their replies. with the dual channel thing, it now makes sense that I should get two sticks of pc3200. I would be out my current 512 stick anyway so I guess it wouldnt hurt!

 

[P4Man]

>Ooh, no. Bad P4man. Dual AGP/PCX boards are not good for
>running AGP cards. The AGP bus is tied into the PCI bus (not
> the PCX), thus making your high-end AGP a glorified PCI
>card. Trust me beetlebz, you'd be better off either sticking
>with AGP or going all out for PCX. Don't use the half-breed
>boards.

Are you sure ? Quite possible though. Like I said, I've read nothing on the motherboards, I only know they exist. Would be interesting to see how much performs drops if you're right.

also, check this article: <A HREF="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22530" target="_new">http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22530</A>

AFAICT, it seems at least that this particular chipset doesn't suffer from what you explained above, but I could be wrong, the "article" is kinda vague..

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

 

[jihiggs]

you can build a pretty badass computer with 800 bucks, only problem is getting a high end video card.

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[jihiggs]

perhaps.

go tell your alien brothers, that ronnie cordova says they're gay!!! <A HREF="http://sockbaby.com" target="_new"> sock baby </A>