That time has come again!! (PC stuff)

[goldstar0011]

I need a new graphics car basically.

I've got C&C: Tiberium Wars, Resident Evil 4 and Rainbow6: Vegas

C&C runs below par for me
RE4 not tried yet
Rainbow6 won't run!!

My system:
P4 HT 3GHZ
2GB DDR RAM
AGP GeForceFX 5900XT
Plenty of HD space

My RAM and CPU meet system requirements for the games but the graphics card does not at all for Rainbow6 and is not best for C&C.

I have no plans to upgrade to PCIe so it's AGP all the way, need something to last me couple years or so cause then I might upgrade.

I play BF2 alot so would like something that would allow me to play high settings on that.

Budget is £100 but can go higher if worth it and I want nvidia only

 

[Allan]

http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...37&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11137,42220000,12

Bout the best you will get for that money on AGP i reckon and will play those games.

 

[goldstar0011]

I've seen plenty of those but am told 7800 would be better as it has a 256bit memory bus

no idea what it means but it has to be better

 

[Ed]

wow, thats crazy under £100 for a 7600 and still AGP - mad! my agp ia only 4x however

 

[Allan]

Yeh but the price difference is astronomical between the 2 cards, for example:

http://www.dabs.com/productview.asp...Mode=1&NavigationKey=11137,379800000,42220000

The 7600GS are more a budget version of the 7800. Trust me the 7600 will do a good enough job. I currently run all my games on a 6600GT with no problems at all.

 

[goldstar0011]

If I can get a 7800GS cheaper is it worth it?

May mate was going on about it being 256bit memory bus compared to the 128bit for the 7600GS, whats that mean?

 

[Allan]

Just like ram in your pc. Thats the ram on the card, just means it can handle more information at once.

If u can source a 256mb 7800 cheaper then yeh it would be worth considering as it will be better, however if you can't then the 7600GS will be a good card.

 

[goldstar0011]

Right

Been really looking into cards etc

It seems like I should move to pci-e really, does DDR RAM work in mobo's work on DDR2 mobo's?

 

[Ian]

Right

Been really looking into cards etc

It seems like I should move to pci-e really, does DDR RAM work in mobo's work on DDR2 mobo's?

No, you need DDR2 modules.

 

[goldstar0011]

Anyone know of a decent PCI-e mobo that takes DDR1 then and my CPU?

This?

All change, got a new mobo coming that will handle pci-e and all my current components until I upgrade later to full Core 2 stuff.

So, links to decent PCI-e graphics cards are welcome now

 

[Ed]

Just change the whole lot, there is little point holding back on a component thats worth not alot on its own,

 

[Dragonmaster_uk]

you wouldn`t happen to know what sovket the mother board is would you i think there may be a motherboard that does that processor ddr 1 ram and both agp and pci-e graphics or something like that i`ll see if i can find it again

 

[goldstar0011]

ED- thats the plan later but funds needed elsewhere, at least a small upgrade would tide me over for now, might even just join the 360 or PS3 community instead

 

[goldstar0011]

BFG GeForce 7950 GT for £100 any good?

Maybe not, ebayer seem bit iffy!
Link

 

[James]

In January I upgraded to an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300, its apparantly the most overclockable one of the lot, and it's quite a well priced one too, I also got a motherboard that supports both AGP and PCIe and also supports both DDR and DDR2 RAM, this gives me a nice upgrade path when I can afford to but for now it's running very nicely with a legit Vista Home Premium install.

I bought C&C Tiberium Wars over the weekend so when it arrives i'll let you know what it plays like!

Here's the screen print of the order (I bought from Micro Direct):

 

[Ed]

add £100 for a nice gpu and away you go!!

 

[James]

I forgot to mention it's also faster than Ed's twin Athlon MP2800+ system (He did buy that a few years ago though, but it's not a snail by any means!)

 

[Ed]

Certaintly is and james cost 5x less as well.. I built mine in 2004, both CPUs cost more than james whole new pc.. even then my spec was pretty old, but its held up well

 

[Allan]

The Core duos are leading the CPU race by a mile at the moment, however AMD are working on a rival CPU.

I am currently on an AMD64 3200+ however i will be moving back to Intel soon.

 

[goldstar0011]

Am not too up on the Duo CPU's yet, so is yours better than my 3ghz P4HT?

R6 Vegas says it needs 3.5ghz recommended, would yours be ok?

 

[James]

The best way to find out is to benchmark it - download SiSoft Sandra 2007 from here:
http://www.download.com/SiSoftware-...571.html?part=dl-SiSoftwar&subj=uo&tag=button

And do the CPU benchmarks, let me know what you got

Okay, here are my results:

Processor Arithmetic Benchmark:

SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
Dhrystone ALU : 16298 MIPS
Whetstone iSSE3 : 11370 MFLOPS
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Performance Test Status
Run ID : JAMES-PC on 10 April 2007 at 20:02:12
NUMA Support : No
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 2
Multi-Core Test : Yes
Cores per Processor : 2
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : P0C0T0 P0C1T0
System Timer : 3.6MHz
Number of Runs : 64000 / 640

Processor
Model : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
Speed : 1.79GHz
Performance Rating : PR6100 (estimated)
Cores per Processor : 2 Unit(s)
Type : Dual-Core
L2 On-board Cache : 1x 2MB ECC Synchronous, ATC, 8-way set, 64 byte line size, 2 threads sharing

Features
SSE Technology : Yes
SSE2 Technology : Yes
SSE3 Technology : Yes
Supplemental SSE3 Technology : Yes
HTT - Hyper-Threading Technology : No

Processor Multimedia Benchmark

SiSoftware Sandra

Benchmark Results
Integer x8 iS-SSE3 : 97835 it/s
Float x4 iSSE2 : 51383 it/s
Results Interpretation : Higher index values are better.

Performance Test Status
Run ID : JAMES-PC on 10 April 2007 at 20:03:46
NUMA Support : No
SMP Test : No
Total Test Threads : 2
Multi-Core Test : Yes
Cores per Processor : 2
SMT Test : No
Dynamic MP/MT Load Balance : No
Processor Affinity : P0C0T0 P0C1T0
System Timer : 3.6MHz
Rendered Image Size : 640x480

Processor
Model : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
Speed : 1.79GHz
Performance Rating : PR6100 (estimated)
Cores per Processor : 2 Unit(s)
Type : Dual-Core
L2 On-board Cache : 1x 2MB ECC Synchronous, ATC, 8-way set, 64 byte line size, 2 threads sharing

Features
SSE Technology : Yes
SSE2 Technology : Yes
SSE3 Technology : Yes
Supplemental SSE3 Technology : Yes
HTT - Hyper-Threading Technology : No

The performance rating is PR6100, which I think equates to your processor running at 6.1GHz, so i'm assuming yes it is better lol

 

[goldstar0011]

All is good now!

7800GT pci-e for £75, R6 Vegas runs nice!! C&C runs on highest settings for all and BF2 has some improvement!

Game on!!

 

[Allan]

Good show mate, glad you got it sorted.

 

[goldstar0011]

Oh ye!

These games are awesome, go get them people!!