Dilemma with Upgrade

[ming]

Yeah... I'm having to wait for the newer cpu to come out so that the 3800+ and 4000+ prices come down.

 

[LeeJend]

Sigh, I've lost another consumer whore to the marketing pimps. At least I tried.

 

[LordOfLA]

hehe if the other chips were worth it we'd hve mentioned them by now

 

[Tuffgong4]

even if you go with the higher processor than everyone recommended I'm still wanting to say if you are getting a new graphics card with the motherboard you should really consider getting pciexpress if you want this upgrade to last you a couple of years...or else if you got upgrade your graphics card at anytime you may have to buy a new mobo

The proof is in ATI's recent abandonment of agp. all their new cards, even if they get out to the consumer, are starting off as pciexpress and agp customers only have rumors to hang their hope on

 

[LordOfLA]

No ATI stopped with AGP because their new chipsets are PCI-E only so its a ploy to push people to PCI-E too soon.

Stick with nvidia and AGP for a while longer

 

[Sazar]

ati is developing a bridge chip to bring their pci-e cards to the agp market

pci-e has not caught on as well as hoped and agp is STILL going strong...

 

[Moonwraith]

See now i'm just confused; AGP or PCI-E?

and on processors;

F U L L O U T is for suckers

Sigh, I've lost another consumer whore to the marketing pimps. At least I tried.

You know what? That doesn't help much, but thanks anyways. Nothing says I'm ignoring you - I'm just clinging onto the fact that i've been eying up all these things for months.

 

[sean.ferguson]

personally i like AGP, but im a more old fashioned type of guy
PCI-E i havent heard enough of to form an opinion on yet, also the fact im not a huge gamer so all these fancy PCI-E graphics cards dont interest me. "If it aint broke dont fix it" AGP works and works well so why pay through the nose for something else?

 

[Moonwraith]

Yeah, I'm a fan of AGP (mainly because of the mobo price). I don't think nvidia will phase AGP out for a while anyways.

LeeJend, LordofLA - Are you seriously telling me that the fx-55 isn't worth it, at all purely because of the price?

 

[Moonwraith]

Well according the AMD Road map from anadtech - the next FX or next processor up isn't out till q3 of this year, meaning prices aren't really going to change much.

"The maximum clock speed of any single chip planned for 2005 appears to be 2.8 GHz at present, although there is a slight chance that we could see a 3.0 GHz chip at the end of the year. What this means is that those of you that went out and splurged on an FX-55 are going to be very close to the maximum performance available for games for the next year."

 

[Moonwraith]

Ok - So taking into the account, the FX-55 only runs a whole 400mhz faster than the 3500+, it doesn't seem worth it. (not taking into account cache here)

But to me..this is like saying upgrading from my 1.8 (Athlon XP 2200+) to the 2.2 (3500+) isn't worth it..

You know what? Apart from the odd helpful pointers from this thread; I'll go off and ponder this one myself.

Thanks, or something.

 

[Sazar]

a64 3500+ smacks teh living snot out of the athlon 2200+

doesn't seem worth it but it actually is

and then you can genrally oc the winchester cores to about 2.4/2.5 ghz pretty easily as well so its worth it even more...

fx processors in lieu of a balanced system really doesn't make much sense to me...

why bother having a bleeding edge processor and not back it up with a bleeding edge gfx card? heck an fx-55 in a dual ultra SLi setup would be the way to go honestly speaking..

you have to decide what you want and then figure out what other solutions you can try... once you have done that you are good to go

 

[Tuffgong4]

to me when it comes to processors I always choose the platform you want first, and then pick all other parts you would need and finally choose what speed or rating of processor you can afford.

if you are stuck with pc2700 and you buy am fx - 55, you will get slowed down...if you go down to the 3800 or 3500 and upgrade your memory to ddr400 you will be in better shape cause all parts of your system will be running well...

the system will only be as fast as your slowest part...

 

[Moonwraith]

Cheers - to the pair of you. Yeah Sazar, you're right. and tuffgong4 even more. To afford a decent set of RAM I'll be knocking down the processor. E.g. I can only just afford a 3800+ instead of an fx-55, but as the 3800+ is over double the price of the 3500+ for only a 200mhz gain, I think 3500+ will be it.

on that subject: Corsair 1GB DDR XMS3200XL Platinum TwinX (2x512MB) CAS2 (2-2-2-5)
Or
1 GB of the ballistix pc3200 ram?

 

[Tuffgong4]

corsair makes a mean memory, and I have not heard enough info about the ballistix...so I can't really help with the memory...but if I were purchasing I would get corsair

 

[Moonwraith]

Oki doki - I know a lot of people talk about the ballistix. I do like that set of RAM though.

To please the masses, my realisation and my wallet (slightly) My PC's gonna be a completely kick ass 3500+ system.

Any more inputs on mem before i order this week?

 

[cryogenic]

Everything I've read about the Corsair XL has been absolutely glowing... The fact that it runs @ 2-2-2-5 just makes it that much better. I run 3200LL in my AthlonXP system and it's worked great. My vote goes for the Corsair. I also agree that there's no way in heck that the 3800 or 4000+ are worth more than double the price of the 3500+. And even more asinine is the price of the FX-55. I just can't justify that. Go with the 3500+ as it seems to be one of the best deals in the A64 world right now. As far as video cards, without hesitation I'd pick the GT over the Ultra. Heck, half of the GT's will happily run at Ultra speeds, so why pay the extra money? Like you're going to notice 10fps anyway. From the benchmarks I've been seeing, the Ultra doesn't really start to run off and leave the GT in the dust until you start cranking up AA & AF at higher (1280x1024 and up) resolutions.

 

[Moonwraith]

The ultra's only an extra 50 quid where i'm looking anyways (300 -vat) - and it's overclocked in the box as it were, so I can push it further when/if i need to one day.

Cheers for the ram advise though Will get that ordered and all the other stuff.

 

[ming]

Yeah, I'm a fan of AGP (mainly because of the mobo price). I don't think nvidia will phase AGP out for a while anyways.

LeeJend, LordofLA - Are you seriously telling me that the fx-55 isn't worth it, at all purely because of the price?

I would also think the FX-55 is too expensive. OK, it's got 1mb cache, but it's only 0.2-0.4Ghz faster than the 3700+ and 3400+ models which you can find for much cheaper.

 

[RickyC]

When are people going to realise that Mhz aren't the be all and end all of processor performance!!!

Even Intel have wised up to the fact.

Read the reviews, look at the benchmarks, the FX-55 is still one hell of a chip and if your lookin' for the fastest AMD it's the one to go for. Only if your rich though