Schot 407 Posted June 16, 2008 Share Posted June 16, 2008 Ok I really just can't decide. I'm really trying to buy for the future so to speak and I'm finding the choices very hard to pick from. The Motherboard is bought thank god but now I need to upgrade my CPU and GPU. This is an upgrade to my present system's motherboard, CPU and GPU just so's you knows. Present specs are: Case: Can't remember name. About 4 years old now. Very Large. Genuine Intel® D865PERL Intel® Pentium® 4 CPU 2.6GHz Kingston DDR2 2MB RAM ATI X800 XT Platinum Edition (AGP) CoolerMaster extreme Power 500W PSU The motherboard I have bought is: MSI P35 Platinum Combo CAN $153.00 The trouble I'm having is on deciding to go Duo Core or Quad. So on the CPU front I've narrowed it down to two choices of nearly the same price: INTEL CORE 2 DUO E8400 3.00G/1333/6M/S775 CAN $212.00 or INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 2.40G/1066/8M/S775 CAN $235.00 I'm leaning towards the DUO simply because there aren't a lot of apps that will make good use of quad yet but I'm wondering if it is worth while to go with Quad now and possibly benefit from it with future apps designed for Quad... This one is a very tough decision for me and I could reeeally use some advice on this choice. Next is the GPU and I think this one might be a bit easier. I've done some reading of reviews and comparisons and these are my choices: ASUS PCIE GF8 EN8800GTS 512M BOX CAN $255.00 or ASUS PCIE GF9 EN9800GTX 512M 2.0 CAN $375.00 Oh great.. And I just realized that my motherboard can crossfire soooo... I guess I have the option of 2 of these: SAPPHIRE PCIE RAD HD3870 512M TVO BOX CAN $165.00 x 2 = $330.00 According to some reviews and surprisingly enough it looks as though the EN8800GTS blows the EN9800GTX out of the water in terms of performance and price. One of several comparison reviews shows how very close the 8800 and 9800 perform. So I'm pretty sure the 8800 has safely won my money in that comparison. Comparing the 8800 to two 3870's though... That I have yet to find solid info on but what I have read seems to suggest that Crossfire 3870's will give a large improvement. But I'm really not sure on that one. All in all it looks as though the EN8800GTS is a safe place to put my money. I think, haha. I really need some help on this one! Oh and for the record the Microbytes I link to for parts is where I'll be shopping. It's a local shop here which is awesome. Link to comment
Llama8 8 Posted June 16, 2008 Share Posted June 16, 2008 I'd probably go for the Duo rather than the quad, if I understand it correctly, it's got a higher GHz, higher FSB & more cache per core (6m/2 v 8m/4)? Link to comment
Obsession 0 Posted June 16, 2008 Share Posted June 16, 2008 The trouble I'm having is on deciding to go Duo Core or Quad. So on the CPU front I've narrowed it down to two choices of nearly the same price:INTEL CORE 2 DUO E8400 3.00G/1333/6M/S775 CAN $212.00 or INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q6600 2.40G/1066/8M/S775 CAN $235.00 I'm leaning towards the DUO simply because there aren't a lot of apps that will make good use of quad yet but I'm wondering if it is worth while to go with Quad now and possibly benefit from it with future apps designed for Quad... This one is a very tough decision for me and I could reeeally use some advice on this choice. I took Duo E8400 just because it has been said that it will out perform quadcore processors when doing things that doesn't support multiple cores. So basicly if I would use photoshop a lot or even as a work tool, I would definetly take quadcore. But other than that, I hardly know any other programs so far that uses all four cores, so dual core will out perfom it easily (two faster cores is better than four slower ones when it only uses 1 or 2). Somewhere read article about future quadcores and programs that will be able to use all the power of quadcore and there was tip about buying dual core for now as when those programs comes out, current quadcores are outdated. According to some reviews and surprisingly enough it looks as though the EN8800GTS blows the EN9800GTX out of the water in terms of performance and price. That's true. And it's good to remember that you save lot of money if you get 8800gts which you can use for next time you need to update your graphic card or more RAM or what ever needed. If you don't really care will you be able to play 1900x? full graphics every game, why even bother spend too much money on graphic card as prices drop fast and good graphic cards will perform really well for years even if it's not best on the market at the moment. This is why I bought hd8350 overclocked, best performance for price. Around as good as 8800GS and still lot cheaper. Around 50euros cheaper than 8800 series cards and 100e cheaper than high performance 8800 cards.. and when it seems that it can't handle well anymore, I'll buy another one for really cheap and use crossfire. Link to comment
fRACTAL 0 Posted June 16, 2008 Share Posted June 16, 2008 The only form of 9800 worth buying is the 9800GX2, the 9800 GTX looses out to the 8800 GTS and GTX in every review I've seen. ~Doom Link to comment
Timotheus 416 Posted June 16, 2008 Share Posted June 16, 2008 Not a lot of time so I'm going to be short 1) E8400 > Q6600. They give you better value at the moment. 2) 8800>9800. They're cheaper and essentially the same chips. 3) crossfire 3870: nice, but hold on a few months. ATi is releasing their new line up in 1 month. They're supposedly killer value. Link to comment
stubbie 21 Posted June 16, 2008 Share Posted June 16, 2008 The only form of 9800 worth buying is the 9800GX2, the 9800 GTX looses out to the 8800 GTS and GTX in every review I've seen. ~Doom Exactly my understanding of the situation. However if I was going to buy two cards then crossfire is a better bet than SLI so that would mean the Sapphire 3870 would be best. But not all games will perform better with two cards. Its a current dilemma, and really depends on your budget. And as mentioned dualcore will outperform quadcore for games atm. If it was my money I would go dualcore with a single 8800GTX (the 8800GTS is second best) stubbs Link to comment
Knuckles 904 Posted June 16, 2008 Share Posted June 16, 2008 I'm hoping to buy a new pc soon also so I'm wondering what's the difference between crossfire and sli ? and is the aegis physX card worth the money? Link to comment
Schot 407 Posted June 16, 2008 Author Share Posted June 16, 2008 Mainboards these days are either Sli ready or crossfire ready. Sli meaning you can have 2 Gforce cards and Crossfire meaning 2 ATI cards. All about branding. As for which is better? Ha! Good luck to that one. I've always been ATI kid personally. Just kinda happened that way. On top of that I had chosen a Crossfire ready mainboard though at the time of choosing I wasn't aware it was crossfire. I was more concerned about DDR2/DDR3 compatibility as well as quad core upgradability. Seeing as it's crossfire I'll be sticking to ATI cards. For the CPU I'm gonna go with the advice given and pick the INTEL CORE 2 DUO E8400 3.00G/1333/6M/S775. Thanx guys! I think the deciding factors are that most apps will do better with this choice. If I were to take the quad now then by the time apps become quad compliant my present day quad would be dreadfully obsolete. Thanx for pointing that out Obs. So now the question for me is if I should get ATI's 3850 or the 3870. Judging by this comparison table of the two it looks as though the 3870 has definite benefits and the price difference between the two is minimal from where I'll be buying: SAPPHIRE PCIE RAD HD3850 256M TVO BOX $143.17 $139.00 SAPPHIRE PCIE RAD HD3850 512M TVO BOX $149.35 $145.00 SAPPHIRE PCIE RAD HD3850 1024M TVO BOX $194.67 $189.00 SAPPHIRE PCIE RAD HD3850 ULTIMAT 512M TVO BOX $159.65 $155.00 SAPPHIRE PCIE RAD HD3870 512M TVO BOX $169.95 $165.00 I have to admit that the 3850 1024M is tempting. General idea here is that I'll buy one of those now and maybe around November I'll buy a second of the same kind and Crossfire them. Link to comment
Timotheus 416 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 I'd still go for the 3870 schot, it's just faster. The extra 512MB is only useful when you run your games on high res monitors (24" and the like). But the new 4XXX lineup from ATi is coming, this month I think, so it may be worth it to wait just a bit, prices may drop or a new GPU might peak your interest Link to comment
Schot 407 Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 lol Oh this is going to be painful... I was beginning to get a feeling I should wait after reading your previous post Timo. There's abit of talk going around the net about that very same point. That ATI will be releasing soon and that prices will likely be dropping. Ugh! Well... I guess I could wait but I think someone better tie me and my wallet down, lol. You see I've had my new motherboard setting on my desk beside me for a couple days now and, well... There's something that I'm itching to know about my present card though. My X800XT PE. I've done some searches but can't seem to find a comparison of my card to the more recent ones. Any idea as to how much of a performance gain I would get if I were to switch the X800 for a 3870? Just as an example. *throws wallet in safe* Link to comment
Timotheus 416 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 System comparable to yours with X800PE 3dmark05 = 5815 System comparable to your new one with 3870 3dmark05 = 15k-18k As you can see here, ingame performance will be double that of your X800PE, maybe even more (since I don't know which X8xx it scales to). The 3850 comes in a good 200 FPS lower, to a total of about 1600. Not bad either... 3870 CF vs single 3870 3870 CF vs SLi 8800GT Link to comment
Schot 407 Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 Oh that's perfect Timo. You've laid my concern to rest. So I guess now it's a waiting game for me. After doing a bit of digging I found tons of rumors about the yet to be released next gen ATI series the 4800's. Tomshardware seems to have a fairly believable article on these new babies but as is said not much is known as yet about 4800. ATI Radeon 4800 Launch Details. One thing seems certain and that is the launch dates and general pricing. On several articles I've read the 4850 to launch tomorrow, June 18th at a very affordable price tag of around the $200 mark. If that's true then I don't mind waiting at all! The 4870 looks like it's going to rock though it's expected Launch is next month, July, at an also very attractive price somewhere around $250-$300. I'm very tempted to wait for the 4870 but I'll keep a close eye out for some reviews. Hopefully we'll see some reviews of both cards VERY soon. And since I'm waiting for the video card I may as well wait before buying my CPU and see what turns up in that department as well. This waiting is killing me! Link to comment
stubbie 21 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 This waiting is killing me! Mate, you can wait forever trying to get the best value for money with computers. Hardware is constantly changing and improving. What is best this month can be superseded next month. At some stage you just have to bite the bullet and buy something. stubbs Link to comment
Schot 407 Posted June 17, 2008 Author Share Posted June 17, 2008 Oh it's so true stubbs. Especially where pc's are concerned, ugh! But but... Tomorrow's bullet looks so much more tastey, lol. Granted, I had not planned to spend until September. It was only because I set foot into that evol pc shop that I already did some spending. So I'm actually well within expected spending time scale. See! Like how I rationalize that? At this point it's really going to depend on the reviews for ATI's 4800s being released this summer. I'm definitely commited to the 4800s so it's just a matter of which it will be. The first of them to be released tomorrow if facts hold up. The entire series is expected to be out within July. Hopefully reviews for the entire series with pricing will be out soon though. Link to comment
gogoblender 3,068 Posted June 17, 2008 Share Posted June 17, 2008 This waiting is killing me! Mate, you can wait forever trying to get the best value for money with computers. Hardware is constantly changing and improving. What is best this month can be superseded next month. At some stage you just have to bite the bullet and buy something. stubbs Exactly....say it again Stubbie! gogo Link to comment
th3undon3on3 0 Posted June 20, 2008 Share Posted June 20, 2008 They're the same two processors I've been looking at, and I'm going for the E8400 for exactly the same reason as you. In terms of GPUs, I'm looking at the 1GB Nvidia 8800GT. CAD and all that. Still trying to figure out the rest of the components. Link to comment
Schot 407 Posted June 20, 2008 Author Share Posted June 20, 2008 I'm with you on that undone. Looks like a great deal for a CPU. I'm still clutching tightly to my money! Hehe. I spoke with one of the techs at the local pc shop yesterday and he said they should have the 4850 within 2 weeks. Woohoo! Here's a few reviews that have been released about the 4850 for those curious: tomshardware.com review coming soon... techpowerup.com 4850 review xtremesystems.org 4850 review guru3d.com 4850 review Link to comment
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