Value (Price/Quality) for Computer Upgrades? 60
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?"
Computer upgrades are worthless (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Upgrades should only be expansions (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Upgrades should only be expansions (Score:2)
I think he just wants others to help him justify a new computer.
Or he can't decide which of the 195 cards to buy... [newegg.com]
(And that is just one vendor)
Let's face it... If there was truly a need then the decision could be made quite logically... and easily.
It is when desire is the main motivator (instead of need) that the decision gets "confusing" and "difficult".
Re:Upgrades should only be expansions (Score:2)
There are always shifts in computer technology. Every computer ever built has become obsolete between the time it rolls off the assembly line and the time it arrives at the customer's doorstep. You'll never make an upgrade without compromise.
My answer to the original poster is essentially this: If you buy an AGP card now, in two years you'll need an entirely new computer.
Re:Upgrades should only be expansions (Score:2)
That really depends on what processor you have, what motherboard you have, how much of a speed increase you can get, and what you use the computer for.
For example, I recently upgraded the processor in one of my systems. (One I use for playing AVI/etc. onto my TV, and doing some video recording.) I had an old 1GHz Athlon chip in it, an
Re:Upgrades should only be expansions (Score:2)
Re:Computer upgrades are worthless (Score:2)
Re:Computer upgrades are worthless (Score:1)
Heh, I just bought a used Sun Netra t1 105 with 512MB RAM, 440 MHz UltraSparc IIi and 18GB SCSI disk for about 110 Euro. This machine has no plug for a keyboard, much less AGP ;-) Management is done by serial console, and you have full access to BIOS
Patience Grasshoppa (Score:4, Informative)
ATI X1300 and X1600 [theinquirer.net]
Nvidia 6800 [theinquirer.net]
Just wait a few more weeks and they will be on the market.
Another problem (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Another problem (Score:2)
Re:Another problem (Score:2)
Mostly. But not always:
effect (v) to accomplish or produce
affect (n) the conscious subjective aspect of feeling or emotion
Re:Another problem (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Another problem (Score:2)
You are the next in my campaign to capture and tag all the grammar trolls on Slashdot.
Shouldn't that be "you are the latest"?
Re:Another problem (Score:2)
Re:Another problem (Score:2)
Congratulations. You have been caught in a troll trap. You are the latest in my campaign to capture and tag all the grammar trolls on Slashdot.
Re:Another problem (Score:2)
Congratulations. You have been caught in a troll trap. You are the latest in my campaign to capture and tag all the grammar trolls on Slashdot.
Shouldn't that be "You are the latest in my campaign to capture and tag all the semantic error trolls"?
You need to get your traps straight.
Re:Another problem (Score:2)
here you go (Score:5, Informative)
Processor:
Athlon 64 3200+ [newegg.com] ($160)
A 2GHz Athlon 64 with 512K cache. As is widely known, these beat the pants off of Pentium 4s.
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ [newegg.com] ($320)
Two 2GHz Athlon 64s with 512K cache (dual core).
Motherboard:
Abit KN8 SLI [newegg.com] ($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 [newegg.com] ($95)
2x 1GB Crucial PC-3200 [newegg.com] ($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 [newegg.com] ($125)
8 pixel pipelines at 500MHz = 4 Gigasomethings
GeForce 6800GS 256MB [newegg.com] ($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 [newegg.com] ($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 [techreport.com] and AnandTech [anandtech.com]; 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 [arstechnica.com], but they don't do hardware reviews).
forgot to say (Score:3, Informative)
But then, there's always something just around the corner, so I'm not sure whether waiting is such a good idea
Biggest roadblock is probably PCI-X (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Biggest roadblock is probably PCI-X (Score:2)
I just bought a new machine with a GeForce 6800 Ult
Graphics card death match (Score:2)
Plus, ATI is pretty free about basic card specs so that anybody can make a driver (though they're not so open about the latest 3d features), while nVidia just releases closed-source binary drivers. So, anyone running a non-mainstream OS (or even obsc
Re:Graphics card death match (Score:1)
Radeon 9700 Pro problems (Score:2)
I bought one of the 9700 Pros a few years back, and was very disappointed. It turned out that there was a compatibility problem with my motherboard, which meant the power supply wasn't in spec somewhere and led to all sorts of instability.
To their credit, Crucial honoured their motherboard compatibility guarantee even though it was something like 7-8 months after I bought the card that the incompatibility became widely known. They let me trade the card up to a new 9800 Pro, which has a much better auxilia
Re:Biggest roadblock is probably PCI-X (Score:1)
The only times when I run into problems with the drivers is if I try to use an old card with a new driver. nVidia has documentation listing which driver supports which cards, but it is simply not accurate, and you have to keep trying until you find an even older driver that does work.
I don't get why they just don't keep support for older cards in the driver, and I see this issue as another reason why an open source driver would be
Re:Biggest roadblock is probably PCI-X (Score:2)
I highly doubt this. The vast majority of machines out there aren't used for intensive gaming, and outside of that and a few graphics/engineering niches there hasn't been much of a reason to upgrade a video card in years.
I'm still using the same video card I've had for 6 years (largely because it has all the tv capture/out features I need and okay 3d performance but is completely fanless and silent).
Re:Biggest roadblock is probably PCI-X (Score:2)
Re:Biggest roadblock is probably PCI-X (Score:2)
Re:Biggest roadblock is probably PCI-X (Score:2)
The only good news is I received a phonecall tonight informing me the problems went away after some unknown program reported it would delete some files.
The unknown program is part of the Catalyst stuff (based on research I've done.).
ATI needs to get their act together on their drivers. They can be exceedling difficult to install, even for experienced users; and their quality is questionable at best.
PCIe not PCI-X (Score:2)
Re:forgot to say (Score:3, Interesting)
It is this sort of thing that makes it hard to justify major upgrades. I've never replaced the motherboard without having to replace the memory, CPU, hard drive and video card in order to get an acceptable performing upgrade. Any motherboard upgrade I did witho
Re:forgot to say (Score:2)
In the last 15 years, graphics cards have moved through ISA, EISA, VESA, PCI, AGP, and PCIe. AGP actually lasted a comparatively long time. Memory has changed just as often, and generation-old memory usually costs three or four times as much as new. A new CPU slot seems to come out every six months; there are a half dozen CPU slots in widespread use right now.
Hell, even power sup
Re:forgot to say (Score:2)
Re:forgot to say (Score:1)
Re:forgot to say (Score:2)
AGP is a hack specific to graphics cards, whereas PCI and PCI-E are general expansion buses. You can only have one AGP card in a machine, but several PCI-E cards. It's good to see AGP go.
Re:here you go (Score:2)
Re:here you go (Score:2)
Not that I've ever ordered from them myself, living on a different continent as I do.
my agp card (Score:1)
Re:my agp card (Score:2)
When I had time for it, I played HL2 at 1680x1050 with no problems.
Ars Technica (Score:2, Informative)
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/system-guide-
They have everything you need to know, current and accurate.
Video cards confuse me (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Video cards confuse me (Score:2)
Re:Video cards confuse me (Score:2)
He was talking about linux, mr. sooper genious.
Re:Video cards confuse me (Score:2)
As for Linux, what's so unusual about getting a decent video card for linux? Many distributions offer accelerated drivers that take advantage of newer video chips, and buying a better video card can also get you an overall better image even in regular 2D and text useage. My 6800GT looks pretty good in Linux, gives me
Re:Video cards confuse me (Score:2)
You like to write, you don't like to read.
I'm not even sure how to respond to your "newer hardware has better drivers" confusion. First, that's usually just wrong. Second, he was complaining that no version of fedora core has any support for any version of any nVidia card. Buying a more expensive nVidia card doesn't change that situation in any way.
Re:Video cards confuse me (Score:2)
Nvidia is an EXAMPLE. If you had the reading comprehension of a snail, you'd see the point I was making is that it's important to do the research BEFORE buying. Duh. The thread parent specifically mentioned that he knew nothing about video cards, he bought a $50 "upgrade", and then it wouldn't do what he wanted it to do.
Well no shit. Buying random crap and putting it into your computer, then blaming the manufacturer because you didn't read the specs and match it to the hardware compatabili
Re:Video cards confuse me (Score:2)
Never fear! (Score:2, Informative)
The Geforce 6800GS is available in AGP [evga.com].
Last good AGP cards (Score:2)
Now is actually not a bad time to get a new system, especially if you go with an AMD cpu. Every component is at a "mature" point in their lifecycle and that means you're not paying for bleeding edge tech, and you hav
Just buy memory (Score:2)
Drives are a seperate entity. You can add a 300GB SATA disk with a SATA IO card to a PIII type system with no problems, and take that disk into a future machine too. So thats a safe investment. So are DVD
go for a DDR2 machine (Score:2)
Some words about longevity - the two parts of a system I recommend NOT skimping on are the power supply and the memory. Get the best of each you can. 'Best' in terms of po
Macs (Score:2)
I heard if you want a faster CPU, you have to buy a new board, memory, video card/chip, and maybe even hard drives!
Just imagine, if you wanted to upgrade your video card! You'd have to get a new board, memory, video card/chip, and maybe even hard drives.
Oh wait. That's the problem you're having.
My favorite argument about Macs (especially iMac styles) are that they are not upgradable. Upgradability is a myth.