Upgrade Questions

[elziko]

Looking into upgradingmy computer but keeping the original RAM to keep the
price down. I'm gonna get:

Asus K8N-E Deluxe Socket-754 nForce3
AMD Athlon 64bit 2800+ (Newcastle)
Sapphire Radeon 9600XT Ultimate

1) I'll be using 512Mb of PC2700 RAM. Is this going to be a bottle neck? I
intent to be using this system winth Win XP MCE and games such as Half Life
2 when its out.

2) How well will the graphics card keep up with all the latest first-person
games?

3) Does this motherboard allow for a significant future upgrade of
processor? Does anyone know what the max clock speed in can handle is?

TIA

 

[Cuzman]

" 1) I'll be using 512Mb of PC2700 RAM. Is this going to be a bottle neck?
"

Yes, it will be a bottleneck. You'll need PC3200 to get proper performance
from an Athlon64.


" 2) How well will the graphics card keep up with all the latest
first-person games? "

Not that well. Far Cry, Doom3, and future games based on their engines will
show you that the 9600XT is becoming a low-end card. HL2 looks like having
a more forgiving engine, so a 9600XT should run it pretty well. However,
when you're done with that game, you may struggle with any other new FPS.

You can compare the gaming performance of a number of cards in the following
two articles:

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphic/20041004/
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/over2k4/index.html


" 3) Does this motherboard allow for a significant future upgrade of
processor? Does anyone know what the max clock speed in can handle is? "

The 3700+ looks like being the last skt754 CPU. AMD's roadmap will run on
skt939 for the near future. If you're looking for maximum upgradeability,
you should wait for the recently-released skt939 3000+, 3200+ and 3400+ to
arrive on UK shores. You can then weigh-up the choices between the sockets.

 

[kony]

Looking into upgradingmy computer but keeping the original RAM to keep the
price down. I'm gonna get:

Asus K8N-E Deluxe Socket-754 nForce3
AMD Athlon 64bit 2800+ (Newcastle)
Sapphire Radeon 9600XT Ultimate

1) I'll be using 512Mb of PC2700 RAM. Is this going to be a bottle neck? I
intent to be using this system winth Win XP MCE and games such as Half Life
2 when its out.

2) How well will the graphics card keep up with all the latest first-person
games?

3) Does this motherboard allow for a significant future upgrade of
processor? Does anyone know what the max clock speed in can handle is?

TIA

IMHO, trying to cut costs by reusing 512MB of PC2700 is not
a good idea. Sell the memory if possible and get 1GB of
PC3200. Your video card is going to be a bottleneck but
after it, the memory will be effecting framerates too.

 

[Mike Walsh]

Since there is only a 19% difference in speed between PC2700 and PC3200 RAM you are not likely to notice a diffence in performance with the different memory, especially if the CPU has 1 MB L2 cache. Memory speed is not as important as CPU speed, the amount of memory, the amount of L2 cache, or hard drive speed.

Looking into upgradingmy computer but keeping the original RAM to keep the
price down. I'm gonna get:

Asus K8N-E Deluxe Socket-754 nForce3
AMD Athlon 64bit 2800+ (Newcastle)
Sapphire Radeon 9600XT Ultimate

1) I'll be using 512Mb of PC2700 RAM. Is this going to be a bottle neck?

--

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Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.