Qonf needs some advice!

Qonfused

Qonfused

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Well, there's time in every computer owner's life when their own-built baby is aging. It's sad to see this guy decline considering it's been through two years of chaos. Through several new PSUs and a new case, it has stood by me quite admirably. Anyway, I need some advice how I would go about upgrading this beast to keep up with the increasingly taxing graphics that are being pumped out these days.

Current System:
AMD 64bit 3500+ (2.2GHz) 939-pin
Geil 2GB PC3200 RAM
nVidia 7800GT 256MB
Asus A8N-SLi Premium

Now... I recently fell into a little bit of money; about $250. I've been saving up for a while to buy a card from the 8800 series. Being very expensive, I'll need to save a lot more. But if I upgrade my aging 7800GT with a 8800, my CPU will be a massive bottleneck. Also, the 939-pin components are almost obsolete; they will be needing an upgrade soon as well. Sigh. I don't have enough money to be doing a complete overhaul, but I do want a faster system by this fall to be ready for the releases.

tl;dr

What should I do: keep saving for a 8800, but therefore having the CPU a massive bottleneck; or buy a new AM2 motherboard and dual-core CPU for under $250, but therefore leaving my aging video card.

Side question: does DDR1 ram work in DDR2 RAM slots?
 
DDR1 does not work in DDR2 slots.

Your CPU wouldn't be a 'massive bottleneck' but it would drop you a few frames from what the 8800 could be delivering. Assuming it will be running on your current system it's still a nice upgrade from a 7800GT, especially for the newer games. A true CPU bottleneck would be if performance did not go up at all when adding a better GPU. Plus newer games are adding more and more graphics which keeps the card busy and DX10 is supposed to relieve the CPU of some things it used to do. ;)

The GPU is the most important to upgrade and as long as this system and the next one will have PCI-Express your set. And I would upgrade the other stuff later since you seem to be on a tight budget for now.

8800GTS 640MB vs 7800GT Battlefield and Oblivion.

8800GTS 320MB compared with current cards in Battlefield and Oblivion.
 
Nice charts; they help putting things into perspective. Do you know if there's a scheduled drop in the price of 8800s?
 
No schedule but I would think they would this fall if Nvidia's new stuff comes out on time (have not seen any info on it). It is always this way with the GPU market.
 
Yeah, I know. "If you wait for the right time to buy, you'll be standing forever." I know, I know.

Well, I made a list on Newegg. To overhaul my system, it'd cost around $900.

8800GTX: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16814130072
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16820145034
CPU: http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16819103773
MB: http://www.newegg.com/product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813131013

I thought since I only have $250 or so, I can't really upgrade anything at the moment. The MB, CPU, RAM combo will be over, and I still don't have enough for the 8800GTX. So I might be able to get the $900 now through some fast talking and agreeable reasoning. We'll see how that goes. If I'm able to do anything, I'd rather go the MB, CPU, RAM route than just the video card.
 
Not bad. Not bad at all.

Remember that you only have one ATA connector on that board though, so if you have more than one hard drive and optical drive, you'll be kind of screwed until you buy a SATA hard drive.
 
Well Qunfused, Your system may not be aging as you think; The only two components I see, which may need to be upgraded are your CPU and GPU.
You do have a hell of a MB (Thank God) which still has the strength to tackle up coming games in decent frame rate.
The last decent S939 out there is the Optron 185 Denmark. Insert that momma into your MB and get one of those 8800GTS and take your girlfriend out (If you have one) with the money you saved.

Good Luck.
 
I had a similar problem Qonfused. I wanted to upgrade just my X800 graphics card to an 8800. But my system was an AGP slot. So in order to upgrade my graphics card I'd have to upgrade my motherboard too. But since my CPU was also a 939 and I wanted to keep my future options open I decided to upgrade that too. But then I'd have a DDR2 motherboard so I'd upgrade my RAM too.

So then I thought "what the hey" and ended up spending about $950 :) But I am pleased with this new system.
 
I have a very similiar system to you Qonfused, 3800+, 2Gb DDR, A8N Sli-Premium, and i previously had an X1800XT which i was very happy with, but wanted a little more (and i hadn't bought anything for my pc for some time, so couldn't help myself). I ended up buying a 640mb 8800GTS, and so far am very pleased with it.

On the bottleneck side of things, my 3800+ is running at 2.75, and whilst it's obviously still not as quick as the Core2Duo's, it really doesn't hold back the cards performance much at all.

If it were my choice, i'd buy the CPU that Barney suggested (which i've also been toying with the idea of buying) and buy an 8800, rather than upgrade everything. I know it'd be nice to have a Core2Duo etc, but i really don't think that there'd be a particularly noticeable improvement over an X2 939. I think there is a decent amount of life in that combo yet, and you could save yourself some money.

That's just my 2cents worth anyway.
 
Thanks a lot for the posts guys. Unfortunately, I went ahead with my plan. I always like to future proof myself, so I ordered the MB, CPU and RAM last night. I decided the jump on the MB, CPU and RAM so early because of the deal that was available on Newegg at the time. I ended up saving $50 on the total purchase; if I would have waited on prices, I don't think it would have equaled that. I plan to purchase the 8800GTX down the road when the price drops a little more... I know it's not going to drop significantly but I still have a weird feeling about buying a $500 video card.

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. I just simply hate being cornered with S939... I always like being able to have options.

The MB, CPU and RAM came to $300 after instant rebates and and combo deals, which I think was a steal. Hopefully that 8800GTX price tag will fall a bit before October.

Again, thanks for the posts -- I didn't even know there were dual cores available for S939!

:D
 
Wow, that is a steal mate. Tbh, if i had ever come across a deal like that over here (never going to happen, equivalent of 150GBP for all those components !) then i'd have jumped on it as well. I hope you are pleased with them.

I think i'll be going for one last blast with 939 before i retire my combo, i'm kinda attached to it xD

Nvidia may have newer cards out by the time you are looking to get an 8800GTX, so you may have an even better variety to choose from, and arguably better performance for the money you spend.
 
Nvidia may come out with newer cards, but lemme tell you this; it'd be mighty long time (10yrs) before these 8800 loose momentum.
These 8800 are way ahead of their time and will tackle games like chewing gum for very, very, very, very long time.
even then (When 8800 (GTS and GTX) cards get a little slower) we can always pair the up.
 
The parts came today around noon and I had it up and running around 2PM. A little long, but I was being a noob and screwed up the pins on the CPU (>_>). Anyway, right away I could tell the difference over my previous processor. The start up time was dramatically decreased, loading games, while already short, got faster. Also (something I didn't expect), my FPS in most games doubled. I don't know why, but I'm not complaining (DOUBLE THE FPS, DUAL-CORE GEDDIT). I might not need that 8800GTX so soon after all. Maybe the FPS increase was a cross between the CPU and RAM. Either way, it was the most beneficial $300 I've ever spent.
 
I bought that same exact processor a month or so ago for my new system. It's excellent.
 
You know you can clock that momma at 3GHz (231x13), HT Multiplier at 4x to keep memory bus frequency under 1000?

Pretty easy too.

Good Luck.
 
I really doubt that the 8800's will still manage to be great cards in comparison to future graphics cards. The next generation of cards will be even better obviously, and within a couple of years the 8800 will be old news.
 
TheDan said:
I really doubt that the 8800's will still manage to be great cards in comparison to future graphics cards. The next generation of cards will be even better obviously, and within a couple of years the 8800 will be old news.
Click to expand...
That very well may be true. Pretty much how it has been with all GPUs. Only one I remember somewhat defying that pattern is the 9700. ;)
 
Remember the last powerhouse 8x AGP 6800GT card? Even when these 8800 came people (Like me) rather loved their 6800GT and, it was still kicking it and wouldn't change rather soon to 8800?
I very much doubt the 8800GTX/GTS will be obsolete in two years. We will still use these cards for the next ten years.
Even if one of them isn't power enough we can still double up, thanks to the newer MB chipsets now you can take advantage of full speed sli mode.
 
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