Hardware Upgrades

[FourScience]

EDIT: I bought an ATI AIW X800 XT for $315 after MIR off ZipZoomFly.com. :END EDIT

Hey,
Now I'm looking at video cards. I am tired of my 9600 Pro churning only 40 fps with occasional drops in the heat of action when running CS:Source. So, I'm considering a deal I found at CompUSA that runs tomorrow (and for a week thereafter).

ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB AGP: $249.99
ATI Radeon X800 XL 256MB PCI Express: $259.99
Both retail from ATI.

I pricewatch'd these items and came up with $308/$299 for PCI-E and AGP cards respectively, from better dealers like NewEgg.com.

I had been planning on doing an upgrade in Q1 2006, for case, PSU, mobo, cpu cooler, ram, video card....sata drives, almost everything. I don't think it's a good idea to grap the AGP if I want a current-gen mobo (w/ PCI-E)... and I don't feel like upgrading the mobo/CPU just yet. I'll have the budget to do so 6 months from now. So at first it doesn't make sense to grab the AGP model, because I'll have a PCI-E mobo in 6 months, and I can't get the PCI-E without a mobo/CPU upgrade that I want to hold off on. Still, I would love to kick my 9600Pro to the curb.

Something crossed my mind, though: perhaps I should buy the X800 XL AGP and hand it down to my brother or best friend in the Spring? My bro has a decent HP desktop but no video card, so that might give him reason to game again.

What I'm really asking is, for $265 (after taxes), is there a better card I should be getting? Other considerations include noise (don't want it, would replace stock cooling if necessary though).
Thanks in advance,
-4

[FourScience]

Well, I decided to get the AGP model at $250. CompUSA managed to sell me a 1-yr no questions asked replacement plan for $13 (normally $28), so I paid $278.76 in the end. I went for the 1-yr replacement plan because I would like to try overclocking it, and it doesn't hurt to carry insurance whilst I newb it up on the OC action.

I noticed that BestBuy also price-breaked their cards to $250/$270 for AGP/PCI-E. So I figured that maybe this is a global price-cut and so maybe NewEgg/ZipZoomFly would price to compete. ZipZoomFly did, and they now cost $275/$280 for AGP/PCI-E.

I suspect that ATI will suddenly discontinue the x800 XL 256MB and just push their x800 XL 512MB and lesser x850 lines around the $200-$300 price-point. It reminds me of when they dropped the 9500 Pro (a bargain in Spring of 2004) and I got stuck with a 9600 Pro that wasn't as good. They have a "While Quantities Last" free shipping deal on their website for this at $329. If they discontinue it, prices will drop as retailers try to dump their bulk and then rise sharply as it becomes more sought after for a week until they are sold out. That's what happened with the 9500 Pro.

So I might keep the card under wraps for a week and see if there are any better deals. It wouldn't be the first time I bought $100+ equipment and returned it summarily.

The only other thing to note is that the ATI retail card is supposed to have a bland aluminim heatsync/fan casing on the card. It seems, from the outside of the box, that the one I got is now painted, with the red-head chick running from a fiery background. Cheesy to me, but maybe a little cooler than shiny metal.

[Jackson]

Hey Four How's it going?

I just got a X800XL and am pretty happy with it. I know with some tweaking I can get my fps higher on CSS and want to try out BF2.

BTW, what are you running right now? I'm kind of frustrated at the performance that I'm getting. Maybe I expected too much?

AMD 64 3000+ OCed to 1.94 GHZ
MSI NV-4 F 939 Motherboard
2 GB of DDR 3200 Dual Channel
120 GB 7200 RPM Dirve (IDE)
X800XL PCI-E (haven't tried to OC it yet, I'm afraid to)

Word,

-Jackson

[FourScience]

Yo Jackson,
I actually returned the X800 XL to CompUSA this morning. I saw an even better deal on ZipZoomFly.com: ATI All-In-Wonder X800 XT AGP 8X 256MB @ $365 w/ $50 MIR = $315. As this would be $50 more than the X800 XL deal I got, I opted to pick it up. The performance difference is only a 5-10 fps gain depending on the game; the cores are different and the XT carries a higher stock clock rate, with overclock capabilities to match the more expensive X850. In HL2, it's interesting that the XL actually edges the XT in a few settings, so it's not a huge difference but I thought I'd try an AIW card with such a good price.

With that decision, I locked myself into using AGP for another 18-24 months, so I'll be extending my 2-yr old Asus A7N8X Deluxe, Socket A/462 mobo to 4-yrs.

Presently I keep on it:
AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton core
512MB (2x256) GEiL Golden Dragon DDR Kit CAS 2 6-3-3
Thermaltake Volcano 11 Xaser Edition CPU HSF
(2) 160GB Maxtor ATA/133 IDE drives
Powercolor Radeon 9600 Pro

I have ( 80mm case fans with a Turbolink 350W psu that came with my X-Dreamer case. I haven't OC'd anything. I plan to upgrade the CPU to an AMD64 when the prices are lower for the Socket A models (around $90 will be good).
EDIT: I know there's no AMD64 for the Socket A, I mean I might grab a 939 board around that time. END EDIT

I'm adding a 512MB stick of the same GEiL Golden Dragon variety so I'll have 3 sticks totalling 1GB. I also have a Zalman CNPS7000B-LED fan on the way, the all copper version. My fiancee bought me a really awesome Lian Li PC-V1000A Plus case as well!

Also in the mail is a Seasonic S12-430 PSU that is very quiet, efficient, and stable. With that I'll be interested in overclocking a few things mildly, starting with the CPU.

I am planning on documenting my new system when I put it together for a LAN for next weekend, and I'll post a link when that happens.

Looking at your system, I think almost all of your specs should be getting you cookin just fine. If you haven't already, run memtest on your RAM in case there's some problems with that. What are the timings/brand on your RAM?

I highly suspect that your bottleneck is with the hard disk though, it's the only piece that might be slow. Where do you see lackluster performance? Your specs should rip through most apps out there. The CPU might not do multitasking extremely well given the relatively low clock rate (mine is ok at this too), but it should be sufficient for a good amount of heavy lifting.

[Jackson]

This is going to sound noobish but what is the difference between intial/startup speed vs what PC wizard is telling me. It's saying that my speed is actually 1005MHZ and the mutiplier is set at 5.

I know I set it in the BIOS at 9 @ 215mhz and windows is saying in "system" that it is currently 1940MHZ.

Is there some sort of throttle control that is software driven? I was suspecting that might be an issue I am having as a possible choke.

I lose fps bad when a grenade goes off right next to me. I have everything turned on including AAx4 and ASFx4 @1024 X 768. I've played around with the settings (lowering them) and could find no real difference in performance.

Strangely enough, my core is reading 1.1V and rarely goves above 90F... This is with the stock HS&F. Something is not set right... it should be 1.45V

As for your choice in cards I was talking with some guys @ Compusa and they discussed that XLs can be OC'ed to perform as an XT and the 420 (or 430 I can never remember) GPU is the same core that is in the X850 series. PCI-E was just a logical choice since I went with the 939 socket. But otherwise there is no real gain with PCI-E... (for now)

...but you got an All-In-Wonder and now I'm jealous   Much goodness can be done with those. I upgraded from an AIW 8500.

However, I was thinking about my HD. Do you think it could my HD? I didn't think SATA really had any true advantages. It has a theoritcal bandwith but like ATA it rarely reaches peak. Plus, I can't afford one of those 10K drives

The brand of RAM I bought is PQI 2x1GB 3-3-3-8 2.5V (haven't looked at the chips yet, I never took off the HS)

Maybe there are just limitations I mean everything does run smoothly but if it slows my system in the thick of a battle I'm afraid to even try BF2. Is there even a demo for it?


 

[FourScience]

I am still learning how to set the speeds properly in BIOS. My friend did that for me last time and now that I will try some overclocking I'll figure it out.

As for throttle control that is software driven, I would only check the Power Options in Control Panel. This should only be on with laptops, so I don't expect this to be the case. Also, check your processor's features to see if it underclocks itself under lighter loads, as some CPUs do that to save on heat. Typically this wouldn't interfere with gaming though.

Grenades, huh? I don't think I ever had a big problem with them.

With your description of the core at 1.1V, it's possible that it's the root. I don't know enough about that yet though.

As for the hd, it shouldn't require SATA at all. SATA or even Raptor SATA drives mostly help with load times. I only mentioned the hd as a possible choke point because I have better performance using 2 drives, and dozens of partitions. I have my games in their own partition which I defrag religiously. It's also on the opposite drive from the system partition so WinXP isn't trying to use the same drive for everything in-game. Still, it doesn't seem like it would cause the slow-downs you are seeing.

Your RAM should be fine too. PQI with CAS 3.0, 3-3-6 isn't super fast, but it's good enough.

BF2 has a very good demo. Try it out.

Back to the video cards. The cores break-down as follows:
X800 Pro: R420
X800 XL: R430
X800 XT: R420
X850 XT: R480
X850 XT PE: R480

The X800 Pro is unlockable to run like a X800 XT (the extra 4 pipelines are present), much like how the 6800 can be run as a GT. There are some variances in each chipset that I won't mention here, but I think the X800 XL uses a smaller core that can't be overclocked too much more than working like a X800 XT. Pretty much all of these can be overclocked to working a step higher. The XL is the bargain piece of them all, with the exception of my AIW deal which ends today. If you want to see how these cards stand up with current gen and previous gen, check the THG guide here: VGA Charts VII: AGP Update Summer 2005.

IM me sometime, we are both interested in similar hardware and noobish about the same things as well:
AIM: webtangent
ICQ: 167850509
MSN: webtangent@hotmail.com

[FourScience]

Also, try CPU-Z. It might tell you more about how your CPU and other things are setup:http://www.cpuid.org/cpuz.php

I almost forgot, make sure you have the latest drivers for the X800 XL, the BIOS, and the motherboard.

[Jackson]

Just got talking with Philit, his setup is SLI 6600GTs and he's have a similar problem but he's blaming his ISP ("Sure blame your ISP"   ). Could the lantancy of a server be indicative for videocard performance.

I think you're right, there most likely is a throttle control for idle CPU time. It makes perfect sense. I just thought that was more native with mobile processers.

I wish Windows XP would make a seperate partition for the swap file like Linux. I always felt that is what held XP back. I would like to try a RAID setup but I'll need to do some reading about it first.

I love THWG, that's why I chose the X800XL over other cards. I never like paying for top end cards.

When you get everything together let me know what your benchmarks are. I'm looking for a copy of 3Dmark05 to see if "graphically" I'm lower than the average.  

[FourScience]

Internet connection wouldn't affect the basic graphics. You would see other players skipping around and you might have your screen reset its view once in a while, but not low framerates.

I still don't really think that an AMD64 on a desktop has stepping, so check.

XP let's you manually setup your swap file on a different partition, whether it's dedicated or not is up to you. I seriously doubt your swap file is a big deal though with 2GB of RAM, I rarely need it with 512MB. That's why I never bothered with giving it a different partition.

There IS one other potential issue, and that's power. I'm not an expert on how jumpy voltages affect things systemicly, but what kind of PSU do you have? It's always possible that you don't have enough amps or jumpy voltages. I know my voltages bounce too much, so I'm not adding the AIW x800 XT to my new case until I get my $106 Seasonic psu.

[Jackson]

I just replaced my PSU with a new unit. It's not a name brand like my last one 380W Antec True PSU but my new one rated 520watts.

Video cards pull from the 12v rails right? I know the 3.3v and 5v are 38A and 40A @ 200 watts max. The 12V is 20A @ 250 watts max.

I don't know any tests to check my PSU.

I'll look up something on the AMD64s, I think there are some whitepapers on their site.  

[sK_Cookie]

actually there is another issue that you are forgetting.  You are running AMD 64 that has built in software/packet scans. You need to turn this off on some 32 bit apps inorder to get better performance. Here is how to turn off Data Execution Prevention.  Right click my computer -> properties -> advanced -> click the settings button under performance -> Select the Data Execution Prevention Tab -> choose turn on DEP for all programs except the ones I select -> then add the programs as needed.  So far I only have a few video games that I need to do this with.

[FourScience]

So that's what DEP does? Damn, and I thought it was "harmless."

Sorry to say this, but I wouldn't have gone from a 380W Antec to a no-name 520W psu. 380W from Antec was probably all you needed, and certainly more reliable than a no-namer. No-namers and even some popular (but only well-marketted) name brands have incorrect ratings with iffy voltage regulation and protection.

I narrowed my psu choice to Antec, Enermax, OCZ, and Seasonic in the end. Then I narrowed it to 3 Seasonic models, and I chose the th $106 model over 2 $84 models just to be done with the decision.

[Jackson]

Well, I'll put the old one back in and see if it runs ok. My game system does not have the HDs it used to so you're probably right. I bought the PSU because I thought my video card was not working due to under power from my PSU. It turned out that I had a defective board but I kept the PSU anyway.

Hey Cookie! Sup man? err monster... I'll try out your sugestion. You rebuild your system yet or are you still with the XP 2500+?

[Jackson]

Wait a sec... am I choosing the hl2.exe or steam.exe?

[Balaso]

both?