razor_ro

hey guys,.... just need some advice on what to upgrade on my pc... i can't really decide what i need first, .... my current specs are on my signature... ok this is the plan,.... i wanna get these next for my pc but i cant decide which ones to get first, an audigy soundblaster 2 ZS (i need this for 2 reasons, the sound and firewire port for my new digital video camera ), a new motherboard that supports the latest athlons (3400+ XP and up) and i dont need onboard sound/gfx, after that i will be able to upgrade my HD's to SATA and be able to support 8x AGP, or an ATI Radeon 9800 PRO or XT PRO model (AIW would be nice) and (optional) dvd-writer, preferably a plextor....the only games i plan on playing in the near future are DOOM3, HL2, Farcry and Stalker and would like to play them at a respectable framerate with decent quality settings (1280x1024x32 w/ 4x fsaa and 4x anisotropy filt.) i know thats hard to say since they are not released yet but an idea would be nice, and i also use my pc for software developing....(i use 3dsmax and photoshop the odd time), right now i run all games at 1024x768x32 w/ 2xq fsaa and 2x aniso filt. which is not bad but i just tried out the latest Farcry demo and made my pc show its age,.... runs at like 12-20fps with those settings , anyways anyone have any advice or tips? if you have any suggestions please feel free to say em and if you suggest a motherboard whats the lest deal going for them? thanks people,.... appreciate it

RaZoR

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Sazar

if I was you I would wait for a little while before making any decisions...

both socket 754 and 939 for the athlon64 are viable options... the 754 being the current best route to take since only the fx51 exists...

for gfx cards as well... the latest/greatest from nvidia and ati have both taped out and are in the works to be introduced in the next month or two with a likely 2x performance delta over the previous gen... ie r300/nv30[35]

this is not likely to be the case all around... certain areas the delta will be much smaller... and other areas likely to be more (perhaps) but thats the gist of the performance we are talking about..

I dont even want to think about the price of those babies either...

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Dubbin1

Get the motherboard first and build up from there. Think about getting the Abit NF7-S

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Goatman

I was going to suggest the Abit NF7-S, that way you won't need the Audigy 2. The onboard sound is amazing with the Abit board, and it's got firewire and USB 2.0.

So update your mobo, then wait for the next gen of gfx cards to be released.

ming

What is the point in making a small upgrade on a Mobo? You'll be wasting your money on that IMO. Why not just wait a little longer and go for an AMD64 board instead?
I've got an Athlon XP2100+, which I underclocked to 1500+ because I don't need the speed. Mine will last me for another 2 years or so depending on how I use it. It runs all games perfectly well.

I'm waiting for the BTX boards to come out before I decide which board to get.

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razor_ro

thanks for the replies guys,.... but ming, i have aquestion for you? why on earth have you underclocked your cpu? doesnt make any sense to me... you say it will last longer? so what , .... use the speed you bought it at and if it dies out another chip (maybe even better than that) is close to $100 CDN....but i do agree with you about the motherboard,.... it does seem like a complete waste to just upgrade the mobo,... i think i am gonna go with the audigy 2 zs.... it just makes sense to get that first,.... thanks guys

RaZoR

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Xie

if you didn't need the speed why did you get a 2100+ and not a 1500+? and why upgrade just clock your cpu to its norman running speed :P ... or even o/c it.

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ming

Truthfully, I underclocked it last summer because I thought the cpu temp got a bit too high for comfort. Then I found that there wasn't too big a difference in loading time on most apps that I use so I left it as 1500+.
As time goes by, Windows will slow down due to all the junk that is put into the registry, and that's most probably the best time to up the speed. However, I usually format and put a new copy of Windows in every 6 months or so, depending how messed up the older one or not.

The other reason why I underclocked is that I don't want to be spending too much money every year on minor upgrades. My intention is to only buy new hardware when I truly need it. When I purchsed my mobo, the cpu came as part of the package.
Theoretically, when time comes and I need to push the cpu speed up, this should last me another 2 years unless an New app that I need has HUGE requirements on system resources.

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Xie

maybe would could do a trade ... my 1700+ for your 2100+ ... be like an upgrade for you and for me

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ming

LOL. no thanks.

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Xie

ouch ... the sting of rejection ...

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