Choose an upgrade!

[theotherguy]

Okay, I was thinking about upgrading my computer to support all of the new upcoming games and for college and I was wondering what I should do.

My system is as follows:
MSI K8N-neo motherboard with 1 AGP slot and several PCI slots
Radeon 9800 Pro
AMD athalon 64 3400+
2 Gigs ram
130 Gig HD

so, should I choose:

option 1: ---Upgrade this year
This year I will have enough money to upgrade my GPU to an AGP ATI x1600 and upgrade my CPU to an Athalon 4800+

pros: cheap and I upgrade fast
cons: no PCI-E support, won't last me long

option 2:---Upgrade early next year
Early next year I could buy a new motherboard and a Dx10 card, but not upgrade anything else

pros: Dx10 and PCI-E
cons: my processor might not cut it

option 3:--wait for two years
In two years I will be getting enough money to completley overhaul my system, and I figured that I might wait this long with the system I have.

pros: massive overhaul of everything
cons: I have to ride it out on vista with a subpar dx9 card

 

[Asus]

Is your CPU Socket 754 or 939?

 

[giant384]

its a huge waste of money to buy a x1600 with a 4800+ gpu would bottleneck severly and asus its seems he has 939 since he never talked about a motherboard upgrade

 

[Javert]

option 3:--wait for two years
In two years I will be getting enough money to completley overhaul my system, and I figured that I might wait this long with the system I have.

pros: massive overhaul of everything
cons: I have to ride it out on vista with a subpar dx9 card

Here's why Vista shouldn't matter. I do not recommend purchasing Vista until after its first Service Pack (inevitable) is released. So I would not even purchase Vista until after your system overhaul. As Vista is "targeted" to release early next year, by Fall 2007 SP1 is out just in time for your new system.

I would recommend a 64-bit system with PCI-e and Dx 10 at least. Go Dual if you have $$$ to burn.

 

[BeaverMon]

When I saw the topic of this thread, I thought it was a fun 1 where if you could only afford 1 upgrade for your system, what would it be. lol

 

[Dario D.]

If you're okay with waiting a little, I think early or mid next year would be the ideal time to upgrade, giving the next-gen games time to come out, and the price of good hardware to drop (as opposed to brand-new hardware).

About this time next year, GeForce 9 series should be coming out (according to rumors from nforcershq.com) and 8 series should be coming out about November of this year, so that will provide two good price-drops.

Keep in mind, also, that current GF7 series (and ATI X1800/FireGL) will probably (although I am not certain) only run UT2007 and Crysis at medium settings. At E3 this year, UT2007 Onslaught was running at about 25 fps on a new Dell, with a 7-series card, and Crysis was running very, very choppy at EA's booth (maybe 5 fps when I saw it), on probably insane hardware.

So, if you buy now, you're going to pay a fortune and only be able to run the first next-gen games "well enough"... but if you wait, and enjoy the games that are out right now (there are a lot of good ones, aside from the usual high-profile FPS games), you can wait till hardware prices drop greatly, and hopefully scoop up a midrange 8 series or 9 series (unless you go ATI) for about $250, and a good mainboard/CPU combo for about the same.

If you buy now, I really think you'll be disappointed once the next wave of next-gen FPS games come out, also considering that there aren't that many good games right now that even need anything higher than a 6600GT to run well.

I'm running a 6600GT 128, with an Athlon XP 2800+, and am getting by just fine, running HL2 at 1280x1024, 4xAA, 8xAF, at about 80fps indoors (45 fps outdoors) --- FEAR at 1024x768, Medium Textures (no noticeable difference), at around 40 FPS --- Oblivion at 1024x768, Med Textures (no noticeable difference), at around 30 fps outdoors (50-100 indoors and dungeons).

There may be a few worthy titles coming out before the end of the year, but if you wait till the beginning of next year at least, they'll still be there, and you'll get a much better deal on hardware with even higher specs. Also remember, that unless you really, really like the franchises, most of the next-gen games probably won't be much better than their current-gen counterparts as far as gameplay, and how worth-it they actually are. UT2007 looks like an *exact* clone of UT2004 (give or take some most-likely generic new game-modes), and Crysis is most likely an almost exact clone of FarCry, minus having a new look. Of course, none of this applies if you just *love* good graphics, or find these games *right* up your alley.

In my humle opinion, while most of these franchises are enjoyable, the only *truly worthwhile* FPS franchises I can think of (in my tastes) are Half-Life (which comes with Counter-Strike also), Battlefield (which will have a current-gen new title later this year; Battlefield 2142... but that doesn't even count, because it won't be unplayable until the fifth path, once all the gameplay is removed and nerfed), then Oblivion (unless enemies that level up with you turns you off, making leveling and questing much less meaningful). I liked the other current-gen great-grpahics titles, like FarCry, FEAR, and Unreal, but they're disposable to me, while only these three stand out as worthwhile... and none of them have any next-gen titles on the current horizon.

Personally, with these things in mind, the only thing I'm waiting to upgrade for is UT2007, because I'll be porting my mod to it (and then, of course, Supreme Commander, if even needed); but I'm waiting till the last moment I possibly can, to get good hardware for the job, at the lowest price possible. If you upgrade now, which is certainly an option to you, you'll have to do it again real soon, and more importantly, there won't be anything demanding of your new hardware for you to play while you wait for the next-gen wave of next year, since you can do it all fairly well with your current system... so you might as well wait.

Edit: oops. too long.

 

[hneaz]

I'm running a 6600GT 128, with an Athlon XP 2800+, and am getting by just fine, running HL2 at 1280x1024, 4xAA, 8xAF, at about 80fps indoors (45 fps outdoors) --- FEAR at 1024x768, Medium Textures (no noticeable difference), at around 40 FPS --- Oblivion at 1024x768, Med Textures (no noticeable difference), at around 30 fps outdoors (50-100 indoors and dungeons).

wtf?!!! im running an athlon xp 3000+ and 6600gt and im getting 35 FPS on HL2 at 1024 *768 resolution with no AA or AF!!!!

 

[Fliko]

If you can wait and are satisfied with your computer go for 2 years.

All features work with Windows Vista on DX9 from what I've heard.

 

[sinkoman]

Don't see what's subpar about a DX9 card :/

 

[DEATH eVADER]

I would say upgrade early next year, thats when DX10 comes out. But you did mention you don't have a Pci-e board, and your processor won't cut it.

So when you can upgrade your processor, mobo, and graphics, then go ahead.

 

[giant384]

theres really no point in waiting for dx10 next year i mean vista will have so many bugs in vista and by the time the 1st service pack comes out there might be a few games that have dx10 in it