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Value (Price/Quality) for Computer Upgrades?
Sierpinski asks: "I am currently researching a new video card, and seeing that PCI-Express has pretty much taken the industry by storm, I have not been able to find a relatively recent (late-model so to speak) AGP card. If I get a PCI-Express card, I'll need to upgrade my board. If I upgrade my board, I doubt my CPU (slot 462) will still be usable. As much as price is a factor, compatibility is as well. I've run into problems in the past where X memory wouldn't work in Y boards, etc. Does anyone have a spec list of the main components (board, CPU, memory, video card) that are recent (ie 6800GT PCI-Express), and work well together?"
Unless you want to add ram, or add another HDD the whole concept of PC upgrades is useless. Assuming that the technology hasn't moved on (pic-express was the example you gave but there is a new roadblock every year), you end up spending half the cost of your original pc, and end up with a whole lot of worthless components.
Wait a couple of months till you have saved enough pennies. Get those pennies together and buy a whole new computer. Use the old one to download with bitt torrent, a server or as a fiddly linux box. Upgrades are pointless. Don't bother.
Here:
ATI X1300 and X1600
Nvidia 6800
Just wait a few more weeks and they will be on the market.
It is only because there is currently a shift going on from AGP to PCI-Express that he can't just buy the latest vid card and be happy.
Upgrades you can do simply. Adding more HD space. Adding optional extras like a dedicated soundcard or adding a burner. These are expansions though not really upgrade as the original hardware will not change.
Memory is trickier. If you got a free slot adding more is easy enough but I rarely found it economical to ditch the old memory and add new strips. ALWAYS get a new computer with all the memory in as few slots as possible. Memory upgrades make a big difference but are costly when you first go to throw memory away.
CPU upgrade, well no. NEVER. Ever. Unless your really really thight and bought the cheapest CPU possible and can now get the most powerfull of the same make for a cheap price it just ain't worth it. Overclock the succer, save up and when it does a Itanium buy a whole new setup. Primary reason? You will often find that the most powerfull processor in your old hardware will be limited by the rest of the computer.
As for wether you should move to PCI-Express. The same problem existed when we moved from regular PCI to AGP. I would just bite the bullet and get a new machine. Give the old one away or use it as a server (get to know linux?).
Buying a top of the line new vid card with agp hardware is I think not worth it. Either just save up or learn to be happy with your current hardware. I always find that compromised upgrades tend to be more expensive because you need to do them far more often.
Getting a spanking new machine could last you 2-3 years. That new agp vid card at most a year.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you do find a good AGP card, and decide to keep your current MB, RAM, and CPU for a little while longer... then your new AGP graphics card will only be good until you get rid of your current equipment, because your next MB will likely have PCI-express.
Might as well stick with what you have now for as long as you can... and then upgrade your MB, CPU, RAM, and graphics card all at the same time when you can afford it. Then at least your new graphics card could theoretically last you through a few motherboard upgrades.
Here's where the 'sweet spots' in terms of performance/price are, in my opinion; choose depending on your budget. (Of course, if your goal is to waste money, there's plenty of components available at or near $1000 prices, as well, but they don't provide much more than a 20% or so performance increase over the $200-300 options.)
Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).
Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI ($110)
SLI doesn't carry much of a price premium any more these days, so it can't hurt to have the extra upgrade capability. Other brands like DFI, Asus, MSI, EPoX, are fine as well.
Memory:
2x 512MB Crucial PC-3200 ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 ($170)
Two is so you can run them in dual channel mode. Other good brands include Corsair, Kingston, Mushkin, OCZ.
Video card:
GeForce 6600GT 128MB ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings
GeForce 6800GS 256MB ($190)
12 pipelines at 425MHz = 5.1 Gigasomethings. This also has double the memory and memory bandwidth of a 6600GT, so it'll handle higher resolutions and antialiasing levels much better.
GeForce 7800GT 256MB ($270)
20 pipelines at 400MHz = 8 Gigasomethings. This is almost exactly double a 6600GT in many respects (double the pixel pushing power, memory, and memory bandwidth).
If you want to find things out for yourself, I recommend browsing around at The Tech Report and AnandTech; I've found these two to consistently have the highest quality reviews and comparisons out there. Their system guides don't completely suck, either. (Neither do Ars Technica's, but they don't do hardware reviews).
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
AMD will be migrating to DDR2 and a new socket in a few months, which means if you want to upgrade after that, you'll have to switch CPU, motherboard, and memory, again (not the video card, though -- PCI-E will hopefully be around for a while yet). And then in late summer / early fall, Intel is coming out with their new architecture, which I expect to solidly beat AMD's Athlon 64s in many respects.
But then, there's always something just around the corner, so I'm not sure whether waiting is such a good idea, either.
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
The part of a machine that gets upgraded/replaced most often these days is the video card, since new generations are released an average of every 6 months, and unlike with most other improvements in PC capabilities (especially CPU), the applications take advantage of the new features and capabilities almost immediately. (Many games nowadays are released with graphics quality options that will make the game unacceptably slow on any current hardware, in order to allow the game to "grow" with new graphics cards that make those quality options not kill performance. One example is Doom 3's highest texture quality, which required a 512M video card - almost none existed at Doom 3's release, and very few exist even now. A few years from now 512 will probably become the norm.)
:)
As a result, even if AMD changes socket types soon, it doesn't matter that much since the CPU is likely the last thing the OP will want to upgrade in the new system he buys. I don't think I've ever upgraded a CPU without getting a new motherboard, and I go MUCH longer between CPU upgrades than video card upgrades.
As to reccomendations - I think the original article poster is probably being paranoid about compatibility problems. As long as you stick with reputable motherboard and memory vendors, such problems are rare. I can only think of one such problem with one model of motherboard and a particular memory configuration, I don't even remember WHICH mobo that was though. (It was an older Athlon XP AGP board though.) Go to NewEgg, browse around, and read the customer reviews.
As to video card, I'd personally stick with NVidia rather than ATI. Even when ATI was well ahead of NV in performance, their drivers were so shoddy (especially in Linux, but their Windows drivers are horrifically inconsistent too) that buying ATI was like putting a V8 into a Yugo - wicked fast until you crash and burn. The one place I still hear compatibility horror stories is with ATI drivers - Game X works with ATI drivers older than version A, while Game Y requires drivers newer than version B which is higher than A. (Hasn't ATI ever heard of regression testing?) As a result I know multiple people who had to switch driver versions on a regular basis depending on which game they were playing. I've NEVER had to revert to older drivers to make anything work with an NVidia board.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It has been a while since I used their advise, but I have always found it appropriate. If you want specs for computers, check out the Ars Technica System Guide
2 00511.ars
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-
They have everything you need to know, current and accurate.
machinator omnis sine licentia
The Geforce 6800GS is available in AGP.