Breath new life into my gaming rig?

[PiNPOiNT2K]

I'm at a difficult position with my current gaming PC. Its at the point where i either scrap the whole thing and get a brand new "expensive" machine, or try and breath one last bit of life into it, but i need your help.

Here's what i currently have

AMD Athlon 64 x2 3800+ O/C @ 2.4ghz
2GB OCZ platinum DDR 3700 dual channel ram
Evga geforce 7900 overclocked
asrock 939 dual sata 2 mobo (volt modded)

The games that are coming out for now are starting to require me to turn down settings to medium to get decent frame rates out of them.....

would i get much of a performance boost of i upgrade any of my components? eg: few hundred dollars vs few thousand?

i could get a AM2 cpu daughter board to allow me to use AM2 chips on my board, or go with a 9000 series geforce card, but would this really help get me the performance im looking for?

or save up for a whole new beast.

thanks for your help guys.

 

[spuddyt]

umm.. if you can go with a 9000 series graphics card, then go ahead :lol:
but seriously, you could still probably get an 8800 gts 320 and justify it to yourself before a complete overhaul (after all you can use it again)

 

[computertech82]

The answer can get complicated, but will center around your monitor and the required resolution. As LCDs have to run "native" to look good, some of them really can push a video card. You can upgrade the system to support a few more "new" games but it will hit a limit of what it can do.
The E6750 seems to be the best price/performance cpu. 3-4gb of memory, and a motherboard can can use SLI or Crossfire (Geforce or ATI in that order).
I would suggest looking at benchmarks from Tom's (including dual video cards) and other websites to get an idea of performance at your resolution. Note that most are using a X6800 Intel cpu in their benchmarks.

 

[bas]

I would buy a 8800 GTS and postpone building/buying a new rig until Vista matures and then upgrade next year or so. You can re-use the graphics card then.

 

[PiNPOiNT2K]

How about the GTX version as opposed to the GTS version? From the benchmarks i've searched, the 8800 GTX is about 80% faster than the 7900 i have now, vs the GTS that's only about 20% faster,

 

[BABL315]

Hey PiNPOiNT2K

What games are you playing that you think you are not getting good results? I am only asking because I am currently on a very similar setup to you and play everything out there on a 20" ws@1680x1050 with most specs cranks and AA&AF atleast on 2X or a little higher

I honestly think you should just save your money and see if you have your settings wrong. I am not trying to be rude, just trying to help.

 

[computertech82]

How about the GTX version as opposed to the GTS version? From the benchmarks i've searched, the 8800 GTX is about 80% faster than the 7900 i have now, vs the GTS that's only about 20% faster,

The difference between 8800 GTX and GTS isn't that big, just a $200 difference for a little gain. And with some 8800 GTS with factory OC, the difference is even smaller. How much are you willing to pay?
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics_2007.html

 

[PiNPOiNT2K]

BABL: medal of honor airborne has been a big dissapointment, bioshock as well, they both run like crap, and even after searching the forums and finding out all of the tweaks, they still dont run as smooth as i'd like to,

Airborne is running at 1024x1280 at medium, and im getting below 30 fps. I'm going to try a fresh install of XP first and see if that helps. its been a while.

 

[BABL315]

I can't speak on Medal Of Honor Airborne, but I played the Bioshock Demo and the new Enemy Territory:Quake Wars and have settings pretty high on both. My rig is Abit AT8 32X mobo, 939 X2 4400@2.6ghz, 2 Gigs DDR 500, X1950 Pro (stock), 700 Watt FSP PSU, 20" Dell widescreen@1680x1050. I don't know specific FPS, but all games are playable and pretty.

The format will not help that much, but I would make sure you have the most up to date drivers for your hardware, especially your video card. Our rigs are comparable and I am not even thinking about upgrading anything... just my thoughts.

 

[lakedude]

Just an educated guess but for gaming I'd say a new graphics card will make a much bigger difference than a new CPU. None of your stuff is all that bad BTW. I'm running BioShock at 1680 by 1050 pretty much maxed out with a 8800GTS-320.

3dMark 2006 scores:

1950XT, AMD 4400 @ 2.2GHz, 1GB RAM.......5500
1950XT, Core 2 Duo @ 2.33GHz, 2GB RAM....5900
8800GTS-320, same Core 2 Duo, 2GB RAM....9300

 

[ilias]

you dont say what 7900 you have...if its GS even overclocked its weak against 7900 gt and gtx from nvidia and even weaker from a 1950 pro and xt. i dont even mention 8800...
i cant find which 7900 is only 20% slower than a 8800gs and in the same time 80% than a 8800gtx (that means about 50% between 8800 gs and gtx). remember that the gs 320 cant handle very big resolutions because runs out of vram. (if you want to play in res higher than 12x10 go for the gs 640 or gtx) you cpu @2.4 is fine as well the 2 gigs of ram but the gtx will be an overkill anyway i think in this machine + you might need a better psu.

i have a 4600x2 and 2 gigs ram + a 7800gtx 256mb (all stock) wich makes our system close to performance. new games strugle in high settings so i dont ise AA/AF but i manage to use high settings in 12x10
if you plan an upgrade i say buy a 8800gs now and keep you money for 1 year later when even the 8800 would perform nice with a new powerfull pc...