More POWER!!!!!

[Red_Baron]

Folks, I'm looking for a little advise. I'm currently running an AMD XP2400 currently o/c'd to 2.27g on an A7N8X (basic) MB with 1GB of Corsair 2100 ram and I'd like to get some more raw processing power. I've been looking at purchasing a new P4 2.6G cpu (FSB800) with a matching Asus P4P800 M/B. Temporarily I would be moving my memory to the new system so I know I'll experience a bottleneck until I can purchase new memory. So my question is, if I get this new CPU/MB combo, will I see much of a significant increase in performance, or should I wait until some of the newer technology comes down in price.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

Hardly significant.
That overclocked AMD you have is equivalent to about a p4 2.8 to 3.2.
I would seriously wait a while until something ALOT better exists.


<b>I am not a AMD fanboy.
I am not a Via fanboy.
I am not a ATI fanboy.
I AM a performance fanboy.
And a low price fanboy.
Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.</b>

 

[Guest]

>with 1GB of Corsair 2100 ram

Yet <i>another</i> 1 GB user. Okay, okay, I'll stop now, but I think its pretty apparent 1 Gb is anything but an exception in the enthousiast community.

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

 

[ChipDeath]

Hey... I'm still running 512Mb.. *nudges bb in ribs*

---
<font color=red>The preceding text is assembled from information stored in an unreliable organic storage medium. As such it may be innacurate, incomplete, or completely wrong</font color=red>

 

[RCPilot]

I'm running a gig in dual & have been for several months now. I'm pretty much a gamer is all. I needs my gig of RAM!

2 x 512 Hyper X to be exact! :lol:



Dazzle them with Brilliance, or Baffle them with BS!

 

[ChipDeath]

I'm pretty much a gamer is all

As am I... But a win98SE gamer, therefore a mere 512Mb :frown: .. but at least 98SE doesn't bloat out so much, so has a smaller footprint itself...

---
<font color=red>The preceding text is assembled from information stored in an unreliable organic storage medium. As such it may be innacurate, incomplete, or completely wrong</font color=red>

 

[Red_Baron]

If I am to stay with my current setup, what would be a good area to improve to increase performance? After benchmarking my system, I'm not overly thrilled with the results. With 3dmark01 I get around 11500, I'm lucky to see 3000 in 3dmark03, and Aquamark is around the 22000 level. These seem a little low from comparing the various scores that I see around the net. Any more advise is greatly appreciated

 

[Zoron]

Yet another 1 GB user. Okay, okay, I'll stop now, but I think its pretty apparent 1 Gb is anything but an exception in the enthousiast community.

I don't think anyone argued this point. The point that we did argue is that practically no home user (enthusiasts included) are running 2+ GB of RAM. 1GB is fairly common; and in fact I'm upgrading to 1GB very soon.


<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

actually Starwars Galaxies runs best with 1GB of RAM!

Edited:
Oh and with 512MB for SWG it still runs a little slow. EQ2 requires 512MB Minimum of RAM! Expect more games to be the same.

"Bread makes me poop!" - Special Ed

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=9933" target="_new"> My Rig </A><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by xxsk8er101xx on 10/29/03 01:15 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[Guest]

If I recall, I've been called a big exception for running 1 gig. Eden also claimed: "At best, next year the minimum low-end PC will need 256MB, the mid-end 512MB, and high-end like ours' at 1GB". Well, it seems its next year already today

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

 

[justaguy]

You didn't mention your video card, but my guess is that is what is keeping your benchies "low" (anybody remember when 10k was ridiculous in 3dm2001?). Otherwise, you could upgrade your memory and increase your fsb to get better performance @ same clock speed. You could try to go 11.5x200 with PC3200 ram or something like that.

Where there's a will, there's a way-even when it comes to screwing up.

 

[Red_Baron]

Yeah, I guess I shoulda mentioned that. I've got an ATI 9600pro. I've played around with overclocking it and have been able to bring my Sysmark01 scores to slightly over 13000 but with the Sysmark03 scores, they suffer greatly. Seeing all these scores in the 4000's for Sysmark03 makes me crave for some extra horsepower, either with a new CPU or possibly video card...

 

[justaguy]

If you have the funds, a 9700 or 9800 would get you some decent gains in the benchmarks.

Where there's a will, there's a way-even when it comes to screwing up.

 

[Spitfire_x86]

Why Sysmark score is so important to you? Better sysmark score neither improve your typing speed or load web pages faster.

----------------
<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A></b>

<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig & 3DMark score</A></b>

 

[Vapor]

I dont see how 1GB would be an exception, especially in the enthusiast community, seeing as we are generally the power users, shouldn't we also have the more powerful computer setup (namely having 1GB+ of RAM). How is having 1GB so unfathomable to you?

RDRAM = ENEMY

 

[Red_Baron]

I have found at a local computer shop an oem 9800pro made by Sapphire for $439 (Canadian) which falls within my $500 budget. I always though that most software now was more CPU dependant, at least for games that I play and with a CPU/MB upgrade i'd be getting more bang for my buck. Is this not normally the case?

 

[lhgpoobaa]

well everything varies. Some games like more cpu than video.
Others its the other way around.

CPU wise though you are doing very well.
Mem bandwidth is a little limited, but not too bad, so the limiting factor will be the graphics card.
Consider the R9600pro has 4 pipelines and 128bit mem bandwidth compared to the R9800pro that has 8 and 256bit.

Your scores will go WAY up and u will be able to play any game in high resolution with high levels of AA and Ansio enabled.


<b>I am not a AMD fanboy.
I am not a Via fanboy.
I am not a ATI fanboy.
I AM a performance fanboy.
And a low price fanboy.
Regards,
Mr no integrity coward.</b>

 

[Red_Baron]

Ok, sysmark score isn't that important but I do want to be able to run the main game that I play fluidly and seeing a higher score will give me more comfort knowing that my computer will be able to handle what I throw at it. I'm big into MS FS2004 and would like to have a quick upgrade, within $500 Canadian which will help to run the sim smoother. Or to be more exact, while taxiing an airplane around more complex airports which I have purchased and being able to run with a higher level of AI traffic and not have any stutters due to low frame rates. I know MS FS2004 is very CPU dependant, needless to say, that's why I asked if the CPU/MB upgrade would be beneficial.

 

[Guest]

>How is having 1GB so unfathomable to you?

Well, it isnt really; typing this on a 1.5 GB machine
Yet 2 GB next year or there about seems unfathomable to a lot of people here

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

 

[justaguy]

I have never used any MS FS game, so I am not sure how much the graphics card upgrade would help there. What I do know is that your 3D benchmarks would go up a good bit. My guess is that the sim would reflect a performance gain, but maybe not as much as the benchmarks.

Where there's a will, there's a way-even when it comes to screwing up.

 

[Red_Baron]

Well, I benchmarked my system with PC mark 2002, 3dmark 01 and 3dmark03, and I was surprised at my results, To start with, PC Mark came back with scores of CPU: 6685, Mem: 4397 and HDD:779. After comparing against 2.4G and 2.6G Intel CPU's I come pretty much in between although I do get smoked in the memory comparisons. Would a memory upgrade to PC-3200 or PC-3500 make much of a difference? 3dmark01 came back with 11087 and 3dmark03 came back with 3320 with a cpu score of 515. I haven't done any comparisons, but I guess this would be considered typical with an un oc'd video card?

 

[justaguy]

Here's how you figure out where your bottleneck is (CPU or Graphics). If your game runs smoothly at lower res. or with less options, it's your vid card. If it's always choppy, look at memory and cpu. Great video cards will usually make up for mediocre systems (within reason).

The reason that the Intels kick a$$ in memory performance is the QPB-Quad Pumped Bus. I don't know much about it, but it drastically widens the memory bandwidth-you have nothing to be ashamed of. I think that your system benches where it should. I believe without double-checking that your MBoard is an NF2 right? If that's right, you have two solutions for upgrades that would help. As far as evaluating which is better for you, well that's on you.

1. To get the most of your board/cpu combo, you'll need to open up the FSB. Get yourself two identical PC3200 modules (my experience is they don't have to be dual-channel certified, but it can't hurt) and put them in and adjust your CPU settings to ???x200. A multiplier of 9.5 or 10 should work regardless, 11-11.5 is possible if your temps stay ok and your mobo can up the voltage high enough. Sounds like you're already up there for clock speed, so you must have this part pretty well in hand. The key point is that opening up the FSB from around 133 (PC2100) to 200 (PC3200)will help your memory performance and help your machine do more at the same clock speed.

2. This will probably help more in your flight sim, but it'll cost you more too. Get ahold of a more high-end video card. It's either that or turn off some of the graphics options. Check Tom's 7/2003 VGA Buyer's guide to see the difference between your card and the big dogs-you'll see that it's substantial.

Where there's a will, there's a way-even when it comes to screwing up.

 

[Red_Baron]

Well, I took your advise and got a new video card, a Sapphire R9800Pro. This puppy smokes, and while doing so has increased the temp inside my case by 5 - 7 degrees. But I was expecting an increase as i read this card runs hot. What I wasn't expecting though was that once the computer had been on for a few hours, the computer would reboot if I tried to play FS 2K4 and hung while benching 3Dmark01. With that happening I took all my bios settings down to default where it appears everything is working stably now, but of course I took a slight performance hit... Aquamark came back with 36939 (an increase of 11255 points) with the overclock, 30000 and change at default.

Next on my wish list is some better ram.

Thanks for all your help!!! It's been greatly appreciated.