worth going 64-bit?

[tris-]

im looking to make my PC a bit more faster again. atm i am using a 2400xp@133mhz fsb (plus 512mb ram) and the a7n8x-x board. my g-card is now top notch.

is it worth me spending £300 on 64bit cpu, new mobo, more ram and new PSU. or spend £200 on a new XP chip and more ram? i am thinking spend the extra £100, but is it really woth it? do i really need 64-bit!

 

[inactionman]

Upgrading to 1Gb Ram and an XP mobile (a 2500-M, for £68 an easy overclock seeing as how the multiplier is unlocked, and you can use 200MHz fsb on your mobo) would prob be best for you. Get a good cooler as well.

The next upgrade would have to be 64bit tho, prob best to wait for good socket 939 (Nforce 4) mobos to come out with PCI-Express though.

 

[MrBlack]

I've got a S754 3400+ at the moment. It shifts, I'll give it that, but inactionman has a point. The mobos available are being revamped at quite a rate at the moment. Even my socket is now obsolete.

Soon enough (maybe now even,I haven't looked that hard recently) there'll be a board with DDR-2 support and 2 x16 PCIe slots, if you ever felt the need to do SLI 6800s.

Gaming-wise, the only reason you might want actual 64-bit processing is Far Cry. Even then, you have to download a patch for it. Oh and there's the minor detail of needing a 64-bit OS as well. Win XP-64 isn't due for release until early 2005 now.

The only guarantee is that 2 weeks after making your choice, you'll either be thinking "Damn, I could have spent that £100 on beer!" or "Shit, this isn't much improvement on my old system!"

 

[tris-]

well with those last 2 quotes, MrBlack, it seems like a waste of time

 

[Collino]

interesting. I was looking at these too..

I think as inactionman said.. wait for PCI express and the fast FSB boards to come more mainstream. No rush to get 64 as you won' really need it till early 2005..

 

[tris-]

if 64bit isnt worth it yet, what about going P4? or is that still same performace as a 3000+xp, 1GB of ram, 333 mhz bus etc.

 

[inactionman]

It's about the same, but more expensive. Looking to the future, P4's don't perform as well in D3, and probably most future games, as the on-die memory controller on the A64 seems to seriously improve memory bandwidth and latency!

Basically I'd just suggest upgrading your processor and memory for now, or do you *really* just want to spend money!

 

[tris-]

well it comes down to this. my dad wants to upgrade his, i want to upgrade mine.

my dad would love to have what i got now and will give £120 for it (mobo, cpu and memory).

if i upgraded just mem and cpu it would be £179. if i upgraded the whole system, got £120 from my dad i could buy a decent bundle from somewhere like oc:uk. a decent bundle is about £300.

so - full system would cost £180, cpu and mem would be £1 less

 

[tris-]

just at the mo, my cpu and mem seems to be a bottleneck. maybe if i got the 3000+ barton and 512mb more it would increase, but i dont know to be honest.

 

[inactionman]

In that case you might want to get (from dabs, they are cheaper at the mo):

Gigabyte K8N PRO mobo (£79 inc vat)
Boxed Athlon 64 2800 (£101 inc vat)
Corsair 2x512MB 184Pin DIMM PC3200 DDRRAM Non-Parity CL2.5 (£117)

Total: £297 inc delivery

If you can go £10 more expensive you can get a 3000 instead of the 2800.

That is a very good motherboard, although you could save if you need to (get an nforce 3 150 mobo) but you lose on chip ethernet, it becomes PCI ethernet instead, up to you. I have the version with all the bells & whistles (K8NSNXP).

 

[tris-]

this board looks ok

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_This_Week_Only_25.html

 

[inactionman]

Good mobo, basically the Asus version of the one I mentioned.

 

[tris-]

meh dabs are sold out on most stuff

 

[Uriel]

I upgraded from an Athlon XP2000+ to a AMD-64 3200+ & Asus K8V SE Deluxe the other week for about £200. Although the S754 isn't exactly cutting edge a bit of research convinced me that it would cost a similar amount to buy a decent NForce 2 mobo and cpu or at least enough so that the additional spent on the above made far more sense long term.

General consensus seems to be that, for gaming at least, an A64 setup is generally a better buy than similarly specced Intel kit. I know benchmarks need to be taken with a pinch of salt but in Anand's Doom 3 CPU roundup the A64 3000+ trumps the P4 3.2EE and costs a fraction of the price. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=7 From my experience, Farcry flies even in 32bit mode compared with my old XP.

Also, as far as having to upgrade again once PCIe and S939 settles down I think that's true almost whenever you buy. I mean, there's a whole load of stuff around the corner but I imagine not only will it slip, it will cost a small fortune. The top S754 chip at the moment is a 3700+. I imagine that'll be fast enough for at least a year or two. But, as always, don't upgrade unless you need to or have money to burn

 

[inactionman]

Tried ebuyer, komplett or scan? Happens on big sites, they tend to keep low inventories on the good stuff, ang high on the crap (cheap) stuff!

 

[inactionman]

Scan are doing a cheap deal on memory today only. £100 for 2x 512Mb of PC3200 RAM.

 

[tris-]

i got the cpu boxed from ebuyer. cost £110 3000+ A64 2X512MB pc3200 for £117 on ebuyer. one mobo from OC:UK for £103.

 

[Bodhi]

I'll wait for Intel to bring their 64-bit desktop processor out tbh. I'm not so keen to go 64-bit that I'll be touching anything PikeyWare have to say about CPU's thankyouverymuch.

 

[MrBlack]

Perhaps my last post was a little too negative. I'd say the kit you've bought is an ideal upgrade. It's always a tricky business trying to recommend upgrades, though.

I've settled into a pattern of upgrading cpu/mobo/RAM/video once per year with what I consider to be the price/performance sweet spot at the time. I doubt many here would claim to always go for the best, as the best costs twice as much for a 5-10% performance increase and then the cost will drop to half what you paid within 3 months.

The rapid development in sockets and chipsets recently has made it harder to choose. You should only go for a socket you know is end-of-life (such as 754) if you're sure that the performance will be good enough for you for as long as you want the money you're spending to last. I spent £530 on the A64-3400/1GB/K8NNXP/9800 Pro about 8 months back. I expect it'll last me another 8(ish) before I move on, when I'll llook to spending a similar amount.

Ok. A bit verbose, but the question you need to ask is "How long do I want this £300 to last?"

 

[tris-]

well i also spent £150 on a graphics card too. i dunno, perhaps a year or so. usualy my stuff lasts good for over a year. not this time though, i bought it half way through the life cycle :/

 

[tris-]

well board came this morning, its pretty damn nice . i think i will probs need a new PSU as mine is 350W.

could anyone suggest a decent rating? or just buy a 650W and be done with it?

 

[Ch3tan]

A quality 350w PSU should be fine, what is this obbsession with mega watted PSU's?

My shuttle runs fine on a 250w PSU.

 

[tris-]

well the 12V rail is about 22-25Amps i think, should be fine?

edit: i also have a 9800pro aswell, as you know it takes some juice to run it

 

[Ch3tan]

I have a 9800 pro as well, a p4, one hard drive and a dvd drive. All that runs fine on a 250w psu even if I overclock.

 

[Ono]

My shuttle runs fine on a 250w PSU.

That wouldn't run a GF6800 Ultra.

 

[Ch3tan]

And thats why I have no plans to get one

My point was his 350w PSU should be fine.

 

[inactionman]

well the 12V rail is about 22-25Amps i think, should be fine?

edit: i also have a 9800pro aswell, as you know it takes some juice to run it

You should be fine! Ah the never ending cycle of upgrades!

If you are short of power, the Antec TruePower 430W PSU should do you. I have the 550W version, it's great!

 

[old.user4556]

A quality 350w PSU should be fine, what is this obbsession with mega watted PSU's?

Agreed on this point, ever since I bought a Geforce 256 DDR about four years ago everyone has said "ooooooo you wanna get yourself a warp drive dual kilowatt PSU to even stand a chance of running that" - but I was fine on a 200w PSU back then and no problems on a 350W psu for my 9800 Pro and 6800 GT which is overclocked beyond the 6800 Ultra. We're not talking a special 350W, just a standard AOpen one that came with a case. When I moved to an Enermax 350w, the same 'the rails aren't very stable on an Enermax' crap was being punted around on forum discussions. Been fine for 4 years now.

After looking on the web, there is the same scaremongering about overclocking the 6800 GT - "if you're gonna overclock to ultra speeds, you're gonna need a beefy PSU".

Sorry, but bollocks.

G

 

[tris-]

all instsalled with zero probs. man, even windows quicker now