I am wanting to upgrade my system.  Here's what I have right now...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current System
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processor 2.80 GHz
2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (On SLI Motherboard)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's my question, would it be better to upgrade the system by getting two new video cards, namely two new GeForce GTX 280's and still keep the Athlon 64 FX-62 processor

or...

would it be better if I kept the two cards I have now and got a new motherboard and processor?  Namely, a 780a SLI motherboard along with an AMD Phenom X4 Quad Processor (9950)

The reason it's so confusing to me is because when I look at my Performance Information Tools in Vista, it shows a score of 5.3.  My processor score is 5.3 and my graphics score is 5.9.  However, I've read so much that says processors don't make that much of a difference in gaming these days though.  Is that right?

your processor is fine, 2.8 GHz is pretty fast, and not a whole lot of programs support quad core, so your duo is fine.

I would get the Video cards.

and this prolly shoulda been posted in the hardware forum

Originally posted by gnomexxx

I am wanting to upgrade my system.  Here's what I have right now...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current System
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processor 2.80 GHz
2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (On SLI Motherboard)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's my question, would it be better to upgrade the system by getting two new video cards, namely two new GeForce GTX 280's and still keep the Athlon 64 FX-62 processor

or...

would it be better if I kept the two cards I have now and got a new motherboard and processor?  Namely, a 780a SLI motherboard along with an AMD Phenom X4 Quad Processor (9950)

 

 

The reason it's so confusing to me is because when I look at my Performance Information Tools in Vista, it shows a score of 5.3.  My processor score is 5.3 and my graphics score is 5.9.  However, I've read so much that says processors don't make that much of a difference in gaming these days though.  Is that right?

Hardware Is Down a section ;p

And It depends on the game your playing. If its your Processor Id update it first. But if your ram is less than a 800 then Id wory about that..

Tell us ALL of your system specks ;p

Originally posted by tvalentine

your processor is fine, 2.8 GHz is pretty fast, and not a whole lot of programs support quad core, so your duo is fine.

I would get the Video cards.

and this prolly shoulda been posted in the hardware forum

I never noticed that hardware section, as much as I've been coming here. 

My bad.

Maybe a mod will move it down.  Ooops.

Thanks for your suggestion though.

your computer is fine. save your money.

Your SLI combo can pretty much slice through any new game out there on high settings.  Getting two 280's would be overkill (if youve got the money to spend go for it)

I would wait for the price on the 280's to go down.  The price of anything electronic gets cut in half in about 6mon-year anyways.

ahh nm, I just read that you already had two 8800's...I was going to recommend just putting another 8800 in there

To be honest, I don't think that you should do anything with your video cards....two 8800's will cut through anything on the market today...How are you set for ram? 

I would swap the motherboard and processor if you really want to upgrade.  However, upgrading isn't necessary.  The reason why would be to save power considering you are running multiple 95w processors.

The 2 8800GT in SLi is reasonably powerful compared to modern cards.

His Processor isn't a Dual core is its a quad core.  Its 2 procs with 2 cores each.

Originally posted by Draenor

ahh nm, I just read that you already had two 8800's...I was going to recommend just putting another 8800 in there

 

To be honest, I don't think that you should do anything with your video cards....two 8800's will cut through anything on the market today...How are you set for ram? 

 

I have 4 gig of DDR2 6400 RAM.  I am running Vista 64 bit, do you think that is enough?  I also bought one of those flash drives that does the ReadyBoost as well.

You know what makes me mad about those 8800's though?  I like to play Vanguard and the STILL have not fixed the bug where the 8800's don't show the weather.  I don't get that.  Oh well.

That's the exact same thing that I have...I don't honestly think that you need an upgrade at all...as nice as it is to go around telling people "yeah, I have four CPU's" it's not something that I can honestly recommend that you spend money on right now if you already have the processor that you do...and for the video cards, as I said, anything more than dual 8800's right now is overkill and more than you'll really need for several years...hell, I have only one single 9800 and can run absolutely anything on its highest settings

Save your money for now I think...maybe look to some other fun and exciting new technology that you are currently lacking in?

As a matter of curiosity...what kind of power supply do you use?  It couldn't be less than 800 watts, and is probably more than a thousand...I know that 8800's require slightly less than 400 each minimum to run...you must have a beast of a power supply in there.

Originally posted by gnomexxx

I am wanting to upgrade my system.  Here's what I have right now...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current System
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processor 2.80 GHz
2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (On SLI Motherboard)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's my question, would it be better to upgrade the system by getting two new video cards, namely two new GeForce GTX 280's and still keep the Athlon 64 FX-62 processor

or...

would it be better if I kept the two cards I have now and got a new motherboard and processor?  Namely, a 780a SLI motherboard along with an AMD Phenom X4 Quad Processor (9950)

 

 

The reason it's so confusing to me is because when I look at my Performance Information Tools in Vista, it shows a score of 5.3.  My processor score is 5.3 and my graphics score is 5.9.  However, I've read so much that says processors don't make that much of a difference in gaming these days though.  Is that right?

You don't need to upgrade anything, the GTX 280 graphics card would be a too little improvement to your twin 8800 GTX cards to be worth the cost.

You could upgrade your RAM though to 2 or 4 GB if you haven't already.

Originally posted by Draenor

That's the exact same thing that I have...I don't honestly think that you need an upgrade at all...as nice as it is to go around telling people "yeah, I have four CPU's" it's not something that I can honestly recommend that you spend money on right now if you already have the processor that you do...and for the video cards, as I said, anything more than dual 8800's right now is overkill and more than you'll really need for several years...hell, I have only one single 9800 and can run absolutely anything on its highest settings

 

Save your money for now I think...maybe look to some other fun and exciting new technology that you are currently lacking in?

 

As a matter of curiosity...what kind of power supply do you use?  It couldn't be less than 800 watts, and is probably more than a thousand...I know that 8800's require slightly less than 400 each minimum to run...you must have a beast of a power supply in there.

It's a Thermaltake 750.  My brother-in-law helped me put it together.  He said it was big enough.  Is it not?  I haven't had any problems with the power supply at all though.  And I've got three hard drives, two DVD-Roms, and a Sound Blaster Titanium PCI-e sound card with the face plate in there.  Everything seems to run alright.

I was thinking about getting a solid state drive.  They're pretty expensive though.  And not all that big.  But I noticed when I play games like Warhammer Online and LotRO, sometimes they "hitch" or whatever and when they do it seems like the hard drive light is usually flashing.  It might be my imagination though.  But I thought a solid state drive might cut down on some of that.

I play EQ2 also, and when I am in Greater Faydark it seems to really hitch at times.  I have to turn the settings down there.  Or at least turn the shadows off, most of the time when I do that it fixes it.

I just dream of the computer that runs through everything like a hot knife through butter.  It makes me mad to buy a game and have it spaz out when I'm playing.  I wonder what people who have average computers do when they buy those games.  I guess turn the settings down until they look like stick figures, I dunno. 

Originally posted by Jefferson81

Originally posted by gnomexxx

I am wanting to upgrade my system.  Here's what I have right now...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current System
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processor 2.80 GHz
2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (On SLI Motherboard)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's my question, would it be better to upgrade the system by getting two new video cards, namely two new GeForce GTX 280's and still keep the Athlon 64 FX-62 processor

or...

would it be better if I kept the two cards I have now and got a new motherboard and processor?  Namely, a 780a SLI motherboard along with an AMD Phenom X4 Quad Processor (9950)

 

 

The reason it's so confusing to me is because when I look at my Performance Information Tools in Vista, it shows a score of 5.3.  My processor score is 5.3 and my graphics score is 5.9.  However, I've read so much that says processors don't make that much of a difference in gaming these days though.  Is that right?

You don't need to upgrade anything, the GTX 280 graphics card would be a too little improvement to your twin 8800 GTX cards to be worth the cost.

You could upgrade your RAM though to 2 or 4 GB if you haven't already.

 

 

Well, if I decided upon the graphic card way I was going to go ahead and get two of them. 

I'm sort of leaning towards just sticking with what I got for now after reading these posts.  I just wish I could figure out why some of the games I play keep hitching every so often.  It's freakin' annoying as hell.

Originally posted by gnomexxx

Originally posted by Draenor

That's the exact same thing that I have...I don't honestly think that you need an upgrade at all...as nice as it is to go around telling people "yeah, I have four CPU's" it's not something that I can honestly recommend that you spend money on right now if you already have the processor that you do...and for the video cards, as I said, anything more than dual 8800's right now is overkill and more than you'll really need for several years...hell, I have only one single 9800 and can run absolutely anything on its highest settings

 

Save your money for now I think...maybe look to some other fun and exciting new technology that you are currently lacking in?

 

As a matter of curiosity...what kind of power supply do you use?  It couldn't be less than 800 watts, and is probably more than a thousand...I know that 8800's require slightly less than 400 each minimum to run...you must have a beast of a power supply in there.

It's a Thermaltake 750.  My brother-in-law helped me put it together.  He said it was big enough.  Is it not?  I haven't had any problems with the power supply at all though.  And I've got three hard drives, two DVD-Roms, and a Sound Blaster Titanium PCI-e sound card with the face plate in there.  Everything seems to run alright.

I was thinking about getting a solid state drive.  They're pretty expensive though.  And not all that big.  But I noticed when I play games like Warhammer Online and LotRO, sometimes they "hitch" or whatever and when they do it seems like the hard drive light is usually flashing.  It might be my imagination though.  But I thought a solid state drive might cut down on some of that.

I play EQ2 also, and when I am in Greater Faydark it seems to really hitch at times.  I have to turn the settings down there.  Or at least turn the shadows off, most of the time when I do that it fixes it.

I just dream of the computer that runs through everything like a hot knife through butter.  It makes me mad to buy a game and have it spaz out when I'm playing.  I wonder what people who have average computers do when they buy those games.  I guess turn the settings down until they look like stick figures, I dunno. 

Everquest 2 is processor intensive-- Also it doesnt utilize dual cores (look at your task manager when it's running.)

Seriously;  you could have 3 Gx280s and it would still hitch in Greater Faydark, the game uses CPU almost exculsivley.

I would suggest the new mobo/cpu but I I was thinking that a new hard drive might be all you need. (10k)

Originally posted by fungistratus

Originally posted by gnomexxx

Originally posted by Draenor

That's the exact same thing that I have...I don't honestly think that you need an upgrade at all...as nice as it is to go around telling people "yeah, I have four CPU's" it's not something that I can honestly recommend that you spend money on right now if you already have the processor that you do...and for the video cards, as I said, anything more than dual 8800's right now is overkill and more than you'll really need for several years...hell, I have only one single 9800 and can run absolutely anything on its highest settings

 

Save your money for now I think...maybe look to some other fun and exciting new technology that you are currently lacking in?

 

As a matter of curiosity...what kind of power supply do you use?  It couldn't be less than 800 watts, and is probably more than a thousand...I know that 8800's require slightly less than 400 each minimum to run...you must have a beast of a power supply in there.

It's a Thermaltake 750.  My brother-in-law helped me put it together.  He said it was big enough.  Is it not?  I haven't had any problems with the power supply at all though.  And I've got three hard drives, two DVD-Roms, and a Sound Blaster Titanium PCI-e sound card with the face plate in there.  Everything seems to run alright.

I was thinking about getting a solid state drive.  They're pretty expensive though.  And not all that big.  But I noticed when I play games like Warhammer Online and LotRO, sometimes they "hitch" or whatever and when they do it seems like the hard drive light is usually flashing.  It might be my imagination though.  But I thought a solid state drive might cut down on some of that.

I play EQ2 also, and when I am in Greater Faydark it seems to really hitch at times.  I have to turn the settings down there.  Or at least turn the shadows off, most of the time when I do that it fixes it.

I just dream of the computer that runs through everything like a hot knife through butter.  It makes me mad to buy a game and have it spaz out when I'm playing.  I wonder what people who have average computers do when they buy those games.  I guess turn the settings down until they look like stick figures, I dunno. 

 

Everquest 2 is processor intensive-- Also it doesnt utilize dual cores (look at your task manager when it's running.)

Seriously;  you could have 3 Gx280s and it would still hitch in Greater Faydark, the game uses CPU almost exculsivley.

I would suggest the new mobo/cpu but I I was thinking that a new hard drive might be all you need. (10k)

LOL .... suggesting he gets a faster HDD so he doesnt lag in EQ2 when you just said its his processor made me laugh.

@gnome: just turn off Anti aliasing in all games to help with the "hitching" I have it off in every game i play because i dont have the best processor but i have a good GPU, and i dont lag or hitch in any of my games (even with graphics at max). I dont notice any difference in graphics with AA either, so you will notice no difference in graphics, or a VERY small change in graphics.

I LOL'ed when you said to turn off AA cause it doesn't make a difference... Of course it makes a difference. Especailly if you have a nice monitro to play on.  And if this guy spent the money I imagine he spent on his system, he doesn't want sub-par graphics like the shittly box you are probably playing on.

Improving his hard drives (2 x10k's)  would increase read speed, this might eliminate the hitching. In ALL of his games, not just EQ2.

I was telling him that EQ2 is a game that runs exclusivley on CPU and that even if he upgraded his cpu, it would have to be a faster clock speed, the number of cores you have doesn't matter because EQ2 doesn not untilze multiple cores. Having a 3.5 Ghz single core would be better than a 2.5 dual core.

If you want to spend money on a new mobo and cpu for one game-- have fun- but newer games aren't going to need such a workhorse as they usually split the processing between the gpu and cpu. (More-so on the gpu side).  Your grpahic cards are top of the line, no need to upgrade.

I would imagine the greatest performance gain overall would come from cpu and mobo upgrade but it's going to be really expensive.  And if it doesn't create much noticable difference your going to be blushing.   That's why I would suggest the 10k drives as they are really cheap.  50 bucks a piece I think and a great place to start.

Turn off AA... noob.

intel core 2 duo or quad core are what you should be using.

There is no reason to upgrade your video card as no game pushes an 8800, there is no reason to upgrade it.

Originally posted by fungistratus

I LOL'ed when you said to turn off AA cause it doesn't make a difference... Of course it makes a difference. Especailly if you have a nice monitro to play on.  And if this guy spent the money I imagine he spent on his system, he doesn't want sub-par graphics like the shittly box you are probably playing on.

lol your makeing fun of my computer now because of a small comment i made .... thats funny. Reread my post, like i said i can run anything on max settings. GG Reading comprehension. And i never noticed a difference with or without AA, you might see it differently, i really dont care.

Improving his hard drives (2 x10k's)  would increase read speed, this might eliminate the hitching. In ALL of his games, not just EQ2.

there are plenty of other people running 7200 HDDs and they expirience no hitching.

I was telling him that EQ2 is a game that runs exclusivley on CPU and that even if he upgraded his cpu, it would have to be a faster clock speed, the number of cores you have doesn't matter because EQ2 doesn not untilze multiple cores. Having a 3.5 Ghz single core would be better than a 2.5 dual core.

If you want to spend money on a new mobo and cpu for one game-- have fun- but newer games aren't going to need such a workhorse as they usually split the processing between the gpu and cpu. (More-so on the gpu side).  Your grpahic cards are top of the line, no need to upgrade.

I would imagine the greatest performance gain overall would come from cpu and mobo upgrade but it's going to be really expensive.  And if it doesn't create much noticable difference your going to be blushing.   That's why I would suggest the 10k drives as they are really cheap.  50 bucks a piece I think and a great place to start.

Turn off AA... noob.

and in the end you suggest the same thing i did.... gg

 

EDIT: and i just tested AA in Lineage 2, and noticed ZERO Difference in graphics. I was going from "none" to "x4" and noticed no change in spell graphics or regular running around graphics.
 

EDIT: and i just tested AA in Lineage 2, and noticed ZERO Difference in graphics. I was going from "none" to "x4" and noticed no change in spell graphics or regular running around graphics.
 

Depending on the resolution that you're running at, the 'jaggies' that AA takes care of will not be as apparent.  Lower resolutions will show them much more readily than higher.  If you want to test the effect of AA find an area that has a lot of 'straight' lines such as wide staircases, regular architecture and the like.  Diagonal lines are where you see the most difference with AA.

As far as the stuttering that was described in previous messages, this could be due to a number of issues.  It could be that the hard drive is heavily fragmented and needs defragged which is easily fixed.

It could be that there's a latency issue between the client and server that's causing the apparent graphical lag due to requests not being fulfilled until the last moment.

There could be applications that're running in the background that are using an inordinant amount of CPU or causing lots of disc access that's delaying reads for the client.  Bring up the program manager and shut down programs that're not needed when running the application that's lagging.  Shut down tray apps... browsers, whatever else you have up and running at the time.

It could also be an issue with your video driver.  Get the latest video driver from www.nvidia.com as there were some performance issues with the drivers released a few months ago but the newer ones solve those problems.

I hope that something here helps you with your issues.  Please let us know how it's working for you.

Sincerely,

Sarkazmo

 If I was in your shoes and felt the urge to upgrade I'd go with a intel quadcore and sli mobo or the new shangai AMD cpu's and a AM2+ motherboard. Unless you game at very high resolutions suchas 2560*1600 and to a lesser extent 1920*1200 your cpu will be your bottle neck.

Originally posted by gnomexxx

I am wanting to upgrade my system.  Here's what I have right now...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current System
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual Core Processor 2.80 GHz
2x Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX (On SLI Motherboard)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's my question, would it be better to upgrade the system by getting two new video cards, namely two new GeForce GTX 280's and still keep the Athlon 64 FX-62 processor

or...

would it be better if I kept the two cards I have now and got a new motherboard and processor?  Namely, a 780a SLI motherboard along with an AMD Phenom X4 Quad Processor (9950)

 

 

The reason it's so confusing to me is because when I look at my Performance Information Tools in Vista, it shows a score of 5.3.  My processor score is 5.3 and my graphics score is 5.9.  However, I've read so much that says processors don't make that much of a difference in gaming these days though.  Is that right?

The second choice is right........lol