DescentBB

Hey all,

This is probably a very opinionated subject, but I'd like to see what everyone's thoughts are. I'm looking for a new Gfx card and memory for my PC. Now, before someone suggests that I buy some liquid-nitrogen-cooled-budget-busting-neon-glowing contraption, let's try for something a guy with a somewhat limited budget can afford, say <$200. I want something that's good, utilitarian, has great compatibility, and will crank out the FPS. Possibly a SLI capable, that way if I upgrade to an SLI mobo, all I have to do is add a card, which will cost less at that time, and get a big boost in performance. As far as the memory goes, what does everyone think for a good high speed RAM? Single Gb stick or two half-gig sticks?

Here's my mobo:

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/ ... EL=MS-6712

I'm running an AMD 1.85 Ghz processor, there's no point in getting the next step up processor, as you can see it'd only be a .2 Mhz increase and the board would be maxed out. I know I should get a new mobo, but my PC gets upgraded a few parts at a time, and the mobo won't be likely to be replaced until a lot later this year.

You can't get a SLI video card for that motherboard. All SLI video cards are PCI-E cards; they don't do it for AGP. You need to get an Nforce4 chipset with PCI-Express support and a PCI-E video card to match, both come with a huge price premium, I do not recommend SLI right now and I donâ??t see anything that will change that opinion any time soon, the value is just not there.

You mentioned $200 as a budget. That $200 for just the video card, correct? I'd suggest a 6600 GT at this point. ATI's new midrange lineup is all PCIe at this point I think, so it's either the 6600 GT or the older 9800 Pro.

Your motherboard doesn't have dual channel to worry about, so one big stick of ram or two smaller sticks doesn't matter. Get whatever's cheaper. Also, if you're going to be upgrading the mobo/CPU later this year, get DDR400 now. That way you'd get the most out of your new machine if you where to get a new CPU that used DDR400, like a Athlon 64 or older socket P4s.

Krom wrote:I do not recommend SLI right now and I donâ??t see anything that will change that opinion any time soon, the value is just not there.

Unless of course you have $600 to blow and don't care, right?

Forget SLI. Don't waste the money on a motherboard that supports it. SLI is a total wank. It only works in some games, and driver support for others will be a long time coming, and for older games, a single 6600GT is overkill.

See the [H]ardOCP diatribe on the subject: I agree with them.

A dual-GFx solution is a retrograde step from a single card option. It's never going to be economic: If you buy an SLI motherboard right now, you'll pay a huge premium, and *maybe* you can buy an "old" 6600GT (The same make and model!) in about a year (but I doubt it), by which time, adding the extra amount you spent on the motherboard, plus the new card will amount to roughly what it'll cost to upgrade to a card which will outperform an SLI 6600GT setup.

With your system, it'd also be a waste of time to buy premium high-speed RAM. Just get 2 x Generic 512MB DDR400. Single sticks of 1GB are far more expensive than dual sticks of 512.

If you get generic no brand RAM you will probably regret it till the next time you upgrade, cheap RAM = unstable systems.

cheap ram to Mobi is like stupidly overpriced crap ram to the rest of us.

Krom wrote:If you get generic no brand RAM you will probably regret it till the next time you upgrade, cheap RAM = unstable systems.

x2

Vindicator wrote:

Krom wrote:If you get generic no brand RAM you will probably regret it till the next time you upgrade, cheap RAM = unstable systems.

x2

x3

Yes, the $200 is for the Gfx card alone; and I'm glad to hear the SLI is a waste of time, I wasn't looking forward to the hefty current initial purchase price. Yes, Mr. P, the idea definitely is to get something of fair/good quality now that will function as a quality part in the future upgrade. I really haven't started digging into mobo's seriously yet, I spend plenty of time researching them to get the best performance for the $$. As for GPU recommendations, so far I've seen one mention of ATI's 6600 GT and 9800 Pro. I've noticed a shift in the last couple of years towards ATI being the GPU of choice from nVidia, when it used to be that Nvidia was the shiz. Any other recommendations for a gfx card?

As for the sticks of mem, I've already got 3 sticks of budget RAM, and have never had any troubles with them (as you can see the mobo only has 3 slots, so I gotta get rid of those to make it to a GB. Anyone wanna buy some RAM?). I also believe that you get what you pay for, so is there any benefit to higher $$ ram other than a potential increase in stability? Or a difference in spreading the RAM across two sockets compared to one fat chip in a single socket?

Actually, the 6600 GT is a Nvidia card. It's generally about 10-15% faster then a 9800 Pro, and can be had for a little over $205 in the AGP version, and as low as $187 for the PCIe version. The 9800 Pro is still a nice card(if you get the 256 BIT and not the 128 BIT), but still costs $205. No reason not to get the 6600 GT

So you could actually save some money on a graphics card by upgrading your motherboard to PCIe now rather then later, and since you're buying memory now the only other expense would be a new CPU. Probably more then you wanted to spend now, but later on it will become more and more difficult to find a new motherboard for your AGP card. That's up to you and your budget though.

Other then stability, there are small speed gains with higher quality memory depending on it's timings. A 2-2-2-5 memory is fastest, but expensive. A more reasonably priced 2-3-3-6 memory would still be faster then the cheap 2.5-3-3-8 or 3-4-4-8 crap. I'd say that at the very least get a CAS 2.5 RAM, but spring for some type of CAS 2 if you can.

With your current mother board there would be no paticular reason to buy two sticks over one stick, but almost every new CPU platform you might upgrade to uses dual channel memory, and for that you want two sticks.

PCI-E is actually worthwhile, but the SLI thing is all hype. If you want to upgrade your vid card, dont get a second one, get the latest so you can take advantage of new features. Games today will never require 2 vid cards to be taken fully advantage of anyway.

If you want a good mobo with all the bells and whistles and a good upgrade path, I would like to suggest you this:

http://www.msicomputer.com/product/p_sp ... m&class=mb

That's a nice board. After a little bit of looking, I found that board with a AMD 64 3000+ for about $260. It'll be a bit before I can scrounge up the cash for the board/cpu, memory (2 sticks as advertised by Mr. P @ $200) , and Gfx card (add another $200). That's $660 at this time, I rounded up for shipping. It looks more like I'd be better off just waiting 'til later this year and purchasing these things all at once for the upgrade. AGP seems to be on the way out, and that's what I would likely have purchased for my board; but now PCI-E seems to be the new hot thing that folks will be building hardware for. By the time I get around to having the cash, these items will have fallen in price a little and will be more affordable. *sigh* I wanted to get a new toy, but da**it, logic, and budget, have won again. Something I noticed while browsing the AMD 64 3000's was that they all had different "cores". ??? What's the diff between Winchester, Barton and Newcastle?

Barton cores are old Athlon XPs, New Castle is a 130nm Athlon 64, and Winchester is a 90nm Athlon 64. So you're only looking at the New Castle and Winchester models. If memroy serves, the Winchester core doesn't have any real performance advantage over the New Castle cores, but it consumes considerably less power and emits a lot less heat. Hopefully the New Castles will start disapearing as they shift to 90nm parts.

BTW, get if you get all your parts from one store shipping shouldn't be to much.