Need some upgrade advice

[onehunga]

Hi folks,

Would be grateful for some advice as to whether I should upgrade now or hold off particularly with the AMD64 processors being relatively new and presumably coming down in price.

My current system is as follows:

AMD 1.4ghz
K7ama mobo
512mb DDR PC2100
120gig ATA HDD 7200rpm
Radeon VE 32mb graphics card
CD writer
DVD-/+ writer
Win XP Pro

At the moment I have no problems with my current setup at all although I realise that my processor and graphics cards are well below what could be considered the usual spec of todays pc's. I mainly use the pc for broadband access, downloading and editing photos, some scanning, maintaining a personal website, usual office applications and flight sims (FS2004 and Precision Simulator). Have never tried any of those memory intensive games that people rave on about.

So the choices I am facing seem to be:-

- pay £300 or so for a bundled mobo and AMD64 3.0ghz processor plus a new graphics card (another £150 for a good'n)and I guess some higher spec DDR ram to avoid any sort of pipeline (another £60-70 for 512mb).

- pay considerably less than above and get a new "full featured" mobo (£50-80 seems to get you USB 2.0, firewire, onboard sound, and LAN), throw in a AMD XP2.8ghz or similar sort of spec processor, plus a new graphics card.

So here is the dilemma I am facing:-

- spend top whack for option 1 but have the option of being able to upgrade later (assuming AMD doesn't play dirty tricks and change sockets/pins again)

- stick to the lower cost upgrade option 2 and get another few years use out of the system and then start over again

One thing that strikes me though which may sway the decision is how much of a performance increase is there to be had with say going from a XP2.8ghz or XP 3.0ghz (with either a 333 or 400FSB)to a AMD64 3.0ghz chip? Do you really get more bang for your buck?

Sorry for the long post. Hope someone can enlighten me or at least steer me in the right direction.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

onehunga,

I would say upgrade now and wait till the new hardware comes down in price before upgrading again. (If you have someone coming to the U.S., have them pick it up and bring it to you.)

CPU: AMD AthlonXP 2500+ Barton Core

Motherboard: ASUS A7N8X-E nForce2 Ultra400 or the MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR

RAM: 2 x 256Mb PC-3200 Micron/Crucial/Corsair (All the same chips.)

Video Card: ATI Radeon 9800Pro w/128Mb or the GeForceFX 5900XT-VTD128 w/128Mb

Keep your hard drive and optical drives, case, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and speakers.

If you could get it in the U.S. then:

2500+ $83.00
nForce2 Motherboard $117.00
PC-3200 $100.00
9800Pro $228.00

Total $528.00 or £277.89 (using Exchange Rate of 1.9)

Take Care,

Richard

[onehunga]

Thanks Richard,

I suppose I was leaning towards those sort of specs in reality due to the high outlay involved in going down the AMD64 route at this stage.

Just some final questions for you:-

1. If I pushed the boat out and went for say an Athlon XP 3.0 at 333mhz does it give you that much more than say a 2.5ghz? What about a 400mhz FSB XP 3.0 then? Or will I not really get much more bang for my buck for the sort of tasks I require of my pc?

2. Will I get good frame rates (with all the FS settings set to max)with the spec you outlined in FS2004? I have read a lot of reports that the scenery is meant to be amazing but to be honest it hasn't really seemed like it on my machine but perhaps it is due to the low spec graphics card I have?

Thanks in advance.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

onehunga,

I do not see the need to spend the extra money to go from an AthlonXP 2500+ (running at 1.83Ghz) to a 3000+ (running either 2.10Ghz w/400Mhz FSB or 2.16Ghz w/333Mhz FSB) when the AthlonXP 2500+ will overclock to 3200+ speeds and more.

Running a 2500+ even without overclocking on an nForce2 Motherboard with 512Mb of RAM and either the Radeon 9800Pro or the GeForceFX 5900XT should get you maxed out on Flight Sim 2k4.

It is an excellent performer for the money.

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. If you want to go faster, a pair of SATA Hard Drives on the SATA RAID would cut down your Disk Access Time in Windows. ;)

[onehunga]

Wow thanks for the quick reply Richard. You should be asleep!! You confirmed my thoughts on processors and the generally held belief that you get little extra incremental increase in power for your money.

RAID is next on the agenda. Need to study up on it though as I don't have any clues about it, but that is what the search function is for!

Thanks again, will save my money for the RAID or next major upgrade.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

onehunga,

Sleep is highly over rated. ;) It was a long night at work, and I was just checking PPRuNe before going to bed. (As I am sure you noticed, I missed your reply 15 minutes after my post.)

Here is some info on RAID by Anand Tech. The article was written back in June of 2001 but the info on what RAID is and how is works is well worth the read:

IDE RAID Comparison (http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.html?i=1491)

With the current reliability rate of Hard Drives, it is an option running Striped Drives without much added chance of data loss.

Take Care,

Richard