j-dogg

K, here is my thing. I can plunk down the cash for a top of the line DFI LP system right now, no questions asked. However, here is the dillemma.

All the games I play are older games, and I'm REALLY good at them. I don't need the latest and greatest. Two of those games run great on a P3 1ghz.

I have a Socket 754 Athlon 2800 machine with NForce 3 here, and I need a decent AGP card for it. I thought about the HD3850, however I am worried the CPU would be a bottleneck, even an Athlon 3700.

Do I get a decent AGP card, grab an Athlon 3700 w/2gb DDR or plunk down the cash for a DFI AMD760 LP setup?

67_GTO

If I were you, I'd prob get an entirely new system. The AMD760 you're talking about sounds like complete overkill. I'm sure you could get a great AMD X2 system with DDR2 and PCI-E for less than 500 bucks, maybe even 400 or 300. All that stuff is cheap right now.

What games exactly are you talking about? UT2K4 I know, but anything newer?

j-dogg

All of the Valve series, using the Source engine. My current machine, XP2600 w/Radeon x1600 Pro 256mb ddr2 plays most of the Source games at ridiculous FPS at 10x7. I play CoD 2 and CoD sometimes. Some new game will come out and I'll probably want to be able to play it. I like the new Call of Duty game coming out though, and a bunch of guys from work are gettin it too and I want to be able to wax their asses.

The whole DFI LP AMD760 deal is nothing for me to plunk down that kind of cash, I get the hustle I just have no need to upgrade....yet. But in the future I may do it, and with the economy in the tank and retailers lowering their prices for Christmas, I've thought about just doing a full upgrade, and I even have the perfect case for it all.

There's nothing wrong with my current setup, and if anything, I can always stuff a decent card in the Athlon 64 and keep it as a fileserver and something for the noobs to game on at LAN's.

Jobistober

Before I built a new system a year ago, I was running an old AMD 64 3700+ and 2Gb DDR and an X800XT for the longest time. Decided to put an X1950Pro in it to spruce things up and the cpu bottleneck was horrendous... performed worse than with the X800 in it.

If I were you, I'd wait... for the same reasons as stated above. Besides, if you don't really NEED one, you might as well wait and get more for your dollar later.

s1ugh34d

A nice DFI LP P35 board and a 45nm Dual core will run you just around 300 bucks, an 8800GT and a couple gigs of ram another 20 or so. Now with some half decent tweaking, you could get the beast to like 3.4GHz and have some fast machine for $500.

Or you could hold out. AGP lost the war, I say go big.

reflux

Quote: Originally Posted by s1ugh34d A nice DFI LP P35 board and a 45nm Dual core will run you just around 300 bucks, an 8800GT and a couple gigs of ram another 20 or so. Now with some half decent tweaking, you could get the beast to like 3.4GHz and have some fast machine for $500. Or you could hold out. AGP lost the war, I say go big.

Could go for an E8400 and clock it to 4ghz...most of them will do that kind of speed no trouble.

Still, socket 775 is being replaced in the next year and it doesn't bode well for an upgrade path.

piscikeeper

i wouldn't wast the time to upgrade an agp system. i moved to pci express this year from a 3200+(socket 754) and 7600gt. i was just more cost effective to do a one-shot upgrade and be done with it.

s1ugh34d

Quote: Originally Posted by reflux Could go for an E8400 and clock it to 4ghz...most of them will do that kind of speed no trouble. Still, socket 775 is being replaced in the next year and it doesn't bode well for an upgrade path.

Shhhhsh. I just got my 775 running well. I need that DFI P35 board for this quad, my striker 680i sucks at clocking it.

an upgrade from 754 to 775 is quite the upgrade, IMO it is well needed.

j-dogg

I'll build be a DFI AMD760 Phenom machine. First SLi system that isn't 3dfx haha.

Thanks.