Recent PC upgrades?

[Chazwozel]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...0&cm_re=Radeon_hd_3850-_-14-102-730-_-Product

Oh yeah, from what I hear these babies pretty much do CPR on older AGP bus systems like mine. 88 bucks sure beats dishing out $700 for an i7 mobo/processor/vid card/RAM and psu.

Anyone else do any recent upgrades to their compy?

 

[Silvanesti]

I just put this in http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121291&cm_re=4870-_-14-121-291-_-Product

It is sweet. I can finally place somewhat recent computer games.

 

[Dave]

My gaming computer is down stairs gathering dust. I hardly ever play games on it any more.

 

[Chazwozel]

My gaming computer is down stairs gathering dust. I hardly ever play games on it any more.

All I really have time for anymore is TF2 and Lef4Dead. My Wii is actually gathering dust. I wish Nintendo would crank out another Zelda/Mario game already! I want my Mario Galaxy 2 damn it!

 

[Shegokigo]

Well I was planning on going with a second GTX295 card in a couple months, but after hearing about the throttling issue and the new Hydra Chip coming out, I've decided to let that play out before making any decisions.

 

[Denbrought]

I will probably change my RAM once I get win7, and I may upgrade my processor, not sure.

 

[Hylian]

I don't really play too many PC games. I mainly play console games (don't hit me) so for me I am doing fine with a laptop for all my PC uses. Granted alter on I have plans of building a sexy gaming machine but for now my laptop handles any PC games I want to play.

 

[DarkAudit]

I just put in a Verto GT220 video card. It's the "low end" of the current generation of cards, but it's a big step up from the 7900 GS I had been running.

 

[Bones]

running a heavily overclocked asus 4850, and it does everything I need for now

 

[Frank]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143190

When my 8800 GTX's burst into flames BFG gave me two of these assholes to replace them. These pricks barely fit into my case.

 

[GeneralOrder24]

My brain insticntivley says "AGP? Ewwwwwww."

But still, bus speeds and extra cores aside, I guess four year old processors are just as fast as today's. With this, you just need to make sure you have a couple of gigs of RAM in that sucker, and you're set.

Isn't technology amazing?

 

[drawn_inward]

I desperately need some more RAM, but I can't really justify the cost; even though it'll be <$80. Poor me. I mean, I'm poor.

 

[Tinwhistler]

For xmas, I'm gonna gut an entire ATX form factor case and replace it with:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131398
ASUS M4A785TD-V EVO motherboard

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103687
AMD Dual core 2.9ghz athlon II

2 gigs of ram.

It'll be a big step up for my future stepson. He'll be going from a system that's pre-agp to this, and it cost me about $225. Even the built in video card on the motherboard (Radeon 4200) is tons better than the pci-slotted one he has now.

 

[Ravenpoe]

It's not an 'upgrade' per se, but I recently put together a new computer. Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz, with a nvidia GTX 260 and 4 gigs of ram.

For christmas, I'm thinking up upping the ram and getting a better CPU, since it's the weakest piece on my system. But everything works, and wonderfully, so naturally I'm hesitant to change anything.

I did just buy a new mouse, though. http://www.amazon.com/Razer-Lachesi...0?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1256073811&sr=8-20

 

[Chazwozel]

My brain insticntivley says "AGP? Ewwwwwww."

But still, bus speeds and extra cores aside, I guess four year old processors are just as fast as today's. With this, you just need to make sure you have a couple of gigs of RAM in that sucker, and you're set.

Isn't technology amazing?

I got the old AMD X2 64 4200 chugging along, 2 gigs of ram, 1 TB 72,000 rpm. I'm running through TF2 at 60 fps. Nice stuff.

 

[Frank]

I wanna know where you got your hard drive from, it's like 10 times faster than mine.

 

[PatrThom]

My last upgrade was replacing 1x120GB and 1x320GB drive with 4x500GB drives in RAID 10, but that was a while ago. Circumstances dictate this'll be the last upgrade I do for a bit.

Well I was planning on going with a second GTX295 card in a couple months, but after hearing about the throttling issue and the new Hydra Chip coming out, I've decided to let that play out before making any decisions.

Not a bad idea to hold off, what with the new ATI 58xx cards kicking NVIDIA's butt on the price/performance front. Especially since a single 5870 delivers performance almost exactly the same as a 295 (which is actually just 2x260 SLI on one card) but the 5870 uses about 60-80W less.

Oh, and did we mention there's already a 5870x2 on the way? Competition sure is healthy out there. And we win.

--Patrick

 

[Cuyval Dar]

My last upgrade was replacing 1x120GB and 1x320GB drive with 4x500GB drives in RAID 10, but that was a while ago. Circumstances dictate this'll be the last upgrade I do for a bit.

Well I was planning on going with a second GTX295 card in a couple months, but after hearing about the throttling issue and the new Hydra Chip coming out, I've decided to let that play out before making any decisions.

Not a bad idea to hold off, what with the new ATI 58xx cards kicking NVIDIA's butt on the price/performance front. Especially since a single 5870 delivers performance almost exactly the same as a 295 (which is actually just 2x260 SLI on one card) but the 5870 uses about 60-80W less.

Oh, and did we mention there's already a 5870x2 on the way? Competition sure is healthy out there. And we win.

--Patrick

Sorry, but Nvidia is clearly better, because ATI/AMD has had drivers that weren't up to the standards of people who know nothing about them. So therefore, ATI/AMD cards will always suck.
You know, despite that Nvidia is notorious for cards that are obscenely inefficient and overpriced.

 

[Frank]

I'm with the hate on Nvidia crowd, the cards I have perform, but I have to clock them way down or it's crash every 20 minutes playing a game. The drivers are ass and the only reason I stick with them is because BFG continues to upgrade them every year or so after they start on fire with brand new and up to date cards.

 

[Silvanesti]

Sorry, but Nvidia is clearly better, because ATI/AMD has had drivers that weren't up to the standards of people who know nothing about them. So therefore, ATI/AMD cards will always suck.
You know, despite that Nvidia is notorious for cards that are obscenely inefficient and overpriced.

I've read this six or seven times. I still dont have a fucking clue what you're trying to say.

 

[Shegokigo]

Everytime I've bought an ATI card, shit has hit the fan in my systems.

Everytime I replace them with a Nvidia card, I have a solid working set-up for years.

There's some different perspective for ya.

 

[bhamv3]

The extent of me upgrading my computer is "buy a new laptop cooling stand."

One of these days I should ask you guys for a walkthrough to build my own gaming desktop rig.

 

[Chazwozel]

Everytime I've bought an ATI card, shit has hit the fan in my systems.

Everytime I replace them with a Nvidia card, I have a solid working set-up for years.

There's some different perspective for ya.

This is my first ATI card, and it completely blows away all the Nvidia cards I've owned. I downloaded WoW last night to try out the graphics. Yeah, I was getting 30-45 fps in Dalaran during peak hours from an AGP slot card! My old 7600 gs shit bricks in Dalaran.

---------- Post added at 06:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:07 AM ----------

Sorry, but Nvidia is clearly better, because ATI/AMD has had drivers that weren't up to the standards of people who know nothing about them. So therefore, ATI/AMD cards will always suck.
You know, despite that Nvidia is notorious for cards that are obscenely inefficient and overpriced.

I've read this six or seven times. I still dont have a fucking clue what you're trying to say.[/QUOTE]

He's being sarcastic. Nvidia has a prettier logo so a lot of fanbois who know nothing about performance rate ATI/AMD stuff poorly. There's a big misconception that ATI cards are hard to configure and their drivers don't work right. I think ever since AMD bought ATI they've surpassed Nvidia.

In general, I've always liked AMD stuff more than Intel. It's cheaper and often just as fast or faster with overclocking.

---------- Post added at 06:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:10 AM ----------

The extent of me upgrading my computer is "buy a new laptop cooling stand."

One of these days I should ask you guys for a walkthrough to build my own gaming desktop rig.

Just go to Alienware.com and configure their most expensive model. It'll price out the newest bells and whistles etc... Write down the parts, go to newegg, and order them individually. Save like 1,000 bucks off the pretty little Alienware case and logo. Right now if I wanted to upgrade to an i7 core or AMD Phenom II, it'd run me about 800 bucks from newegg. New mobo, processor, vid card, 4 gigs RAM, and power supply as opposed to a 3,000 dollar Alienware system with the same shit.

 

[Morgoth]

Your piece of junk's got nothing on my beast.

 

[Shegokigo]

Your piece of junk's got nothing on my beast.

You must be looking for the NSFW thread, it's right over yonder.

 

[PatrThom]

AMD has traditionally had better picture/graphics quality.
NVIDIA has traditionally had better framerates.
They have also traded back and forth some on both of those fronts, but for the most part those two sentences pretty much sum it up.

NVIDIA will be coming out with new stuff pretty soon, but they can't afford to make any mistakes. If their next product doesn't provide some serious competition, they're probably not going to be able to come back from the deficit.

--Patrick

 

[Cuyval Dar]

AMD has traditionally had better picture/graphics quality.
NVIDIA has traditionally had better framerates.
They have also traded back and forth some on both of those fronts, but for the most part those two sentences pretty much sum it up.

NVIDIA will be coming out with new stuff pretty soon, but they can't afford to make any mistakes. If their next product doesn't provide some serious competition, they're probably not going to be able to come back from the deficit.

--Patrick

Eeeyup.

 

[Shegokigo]

I'll take Framerates, thanks.

 

[figmentPez]

I'll take Framerates, thanks.

What variation of framerate? Highest average? Highest minimum framerate? Steadiest? Depending on the game and which generation of cards, I'm pretty sure that ATI and nVidia have traded wins in all of these categories. The card that gets the highest average FPS is not always the smoothest. There have been times when the "fastest" card also had the most spikes and dips in framerate.

 

[PatrThom]

Gonna get my Geek on...sorry, y'all.

I'll take Framerates, thanks.

The current generation of ATI cards (the 58xx series) will easily out-framerate the current crop of NVIDIA cards (the 2xx series), but this is because the ATI cards are an entire generation newer. The reason for this disparity is that NVIDIA hasn't released their new 3xx series (based on 'Fermi' core) cards yet. NVIDIA seems pretty confident that the 3xx will outperform the 58xx, but of course there haven't been any public tests done yet...just public mudslinging. I'll tell you this, though...if it doesn't, NVIDIA will probably end up going under or getting bought by someone at a discount. Or, more likely, they'll leverage their CUDA (or OpenCL) compilers and end up as the manufacturer of specialized HPC coprocessor cards (like PhysX) for things like Stock Market analysis, Petroleum exploration, and other GPGPU 'holy grails.'

The short of it is that, for right now, ATI holds the triple crown for image quality, performance-per-watt, and framerate. So if you need these things, and you need them right now (and you don't want to get there by merely lowering your graphics settings), the 5870 is the way to go. If you can afford to wait (or can't afford to switch), then by all means wait to see what NVIDIA releases (3xx in Q1 2010), or even whether Larrabee is all that Intel says it will be (likely Q2 of 2010).

Like I said, right now might be a lousy time to be a GPU maker, but it's a great time to be thinking about upgrading your graphics card...unless you're using AGP (that would be me ).

--Patrick

 

[Chazwozel]

Gonna get my Geek on...sorry, y'all.

I'll take Framerates, thanks.

The current generation of ATI cards (the 58xx series) will easily out-framerate the current crop of NVIDIA cards (the 2xx series), but this is because the ATI cards are an entire generation newer. The reason for this disparity is that NVIDIA hasn't released their new 3xx series (based on 'Fermi' core) cards yet. NVIDIA seems pretty confident that the 3xx will outperform the 58xx, but of course there haven't been any public tests done yet...just public mudslinging. I'll tell you this, though...if it doesn't, NVIDIA will probably end up going under or getting bought by someone at a discount. Or, more likely, they'll leverage their CUDA (or OpenCL) compilers and end up as the manufacturer of specialized HPC coprocessor cards (like PhysX) for things like Stock Market analysis, Petroleum exploration, and other GPGPU 'holy grails.'

The short of it is that, for right now, ATI holds the triple crown for image quality, performance-per-watt, and framerate. So if you need these things, and you need them right now (and you don't want to get there by merely lowering your graphics settings), the 5870 is the way to go. If you can afford to wait (or can't afford to switch), then by all means wait to see what NVIDIA releases (3xx in Q1 2010), or even whether Larrabee is all that Intel says it will be (likely Q2 of 2010).

Like I said, right now might be a lousy time to be a GPU maker, but it's a great time to be thinking about upgrading your graphics card...unless you're using AGP (that would be me ).

--Patrick

Well like my OP thread. The highest you can really go with AGP slot is the Radeon 3850. I'll tell you after a week of owning it, I don't think I'll ever go back to Nvidia again.

 

[PatrThom]

Actually, PowerColor was supposed to release a 4770 for AGP, but it looks like they decided to go with only a 4670 instead. The 4670/3850 trade blows on most games, but while the 4670 has newer technology (directx 10.1) under its hood and uses less power, the 3850 still wins with better MLB compatibility and #fps in games more likely to be played on a system that has AGP onboard.

--Patrick

 

[Chazwozel]

Actually, PowerColor was supposed to release a 4770 for AGP, but it looks like they decided to go with only a 4670 instead. The 4670/3850 trade blows on most games, but while the 4670 has newer technology (directx 10.1) under its hood and uses less power, the 3850 still wins with better MLB compatibility and #fps in games more likely to be played on a system that has AGP onboard.

--Patrick

The 3850's got 10.1 direct x

 

[Espy]

Just ordered this: 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 SATA II 7200RPM 32MB W/ Perpendicular Drive Technology for my mac pro. Gonna take out my 250 HD that it came with as the OS drive and replace it with this little beast. I will then have 2 1.5tb drives ,a 500g and a 750g in my tower. I am excited.

 

[PatrThom]

The 3850's got 10.1 direct x

So it does! What was I thinking? Ah, here we go. It's that the 4xxx series or higher is required to support OpenCL, not DX 10.1. FWIW, if I wanted OpenCL support, I'd avoid the 4xxx series anyway due to certain hardware power issues.

--Patrick