advice on upgrading?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charles Herold
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Charles Herold

I've been trying to avoid upgrading my PC but with the release of the
next generation of PC games like Far Cry and Painkiller I'm thinking
I'm going to have to do something. And since I don't really know that
much I'm hoping I could get some advice I did actually get an nVidea
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra but while that helps it doesn't seem to be
enough. I'm thinking I may just need to double my memory to 1 GB. My
MB, an Intel Maryville D850MV takes RDRAM, which appears to be the
most expensive memory around, so I was wondering if it would make
sense to change the MB to something that would take cheaper memory.
And whether if I did that I could or should keep my current CPU (Intel
P4 2.00 GHz). That is, is the P4 good enough if I have more memory or
as long as I'm taking everything apart should I just go whole hog.
Price is definitely a consideration, but I don't want to fall into the
trap of a stop-gap solution that will require additional trouble and
expense down the road.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 
I've been trying to avoid upgrading my PC but with the release of the
next generation of PC games like Far Cry and Painkiller I'm thinking
I'm going to have to do something. And since I don't really know that
much I'm hoping I could get some advice I did actually get an nVidea
GeForce FX 5700 Ultra but while that helps it doesn't seem to be
enough. I'm thinking I may just need to double my memory to 1 GB. My
MB, an Intel Maryville D850MV takes RDRAM, which appears to be the
most expensive memory around, so I was wondering if it would make
sense to change the MB to something that would take cheaper memory.
And whether if I did that I could or should keep my current CPU (Intel
P4 2.00 GHz). That is, is the P4 good enough if I have more memory or
as long as I'm taking everything apart should I just go whole hog.
Price is definitely a consideration, but I don't want to fall into the
trap of a stop-gap solution that will require additional trouble and
expense down the road.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Click to expand...


Either way you're in for a soaking. Why waste money upgrading for 2 games?
You haven't mentioned why you think you need to upgrade. If those 2
games and DX9 centric and you video is not that's a minor problem. Games
are written to run on medium machines of which yours is an upper
medium machine so those games should work as well as all your other
applications.
 
Because it's clear that Far Cry represents the new generation of games
and that I'm going to have to upgrade soon or resign myself to not
being able to play any of the new PC shooters on anything but fairly
low quality settings. And since I review games for a living I like to
try and see the games the way they were meant to be seen.

One can't put off upgrading forever, so the question is, do you wait
until the most high tech games run somewhat poorly on a medium
setting, or do you wait until the most high tech games run somewhat
poorly on a low setting? Why get to that point before upgrading?
 
If you're going to be playing state-of-the-art games like Far Cry, you would
basically have to upgrade ALL of your hardware to match their relative
speeds. In other words, you may want to consider taking the cheaper route
and getting a new computer.
 
Because it's clear that Far Cry represents the new generation of games
and that I'm going to have to upgrade soon or resign myself to not
being able to play any of the new PC shooters on anything but fairly
low quality settings. And since I review games for a living I like to
try and see the games the way they were meant to be seen.

One can't put off upgrading forever, so the question is, do you wait
until the most high tech games run somewhat poorly on a medium
setting, or do you wait until the most high tech games run somewhat
poorly on a low setting? Why get to that point before upgrading?
Click to expand...

There's a lot to be said for reporting how Far Cry runs on your oc'd
platform. That said I'd ditch everything starting with m/b, cpu and
memory then video, then drives. RDRAM was always over priced, the cpu is
okay but a 3.0 would be better ditto the Ti4200 but it doesn't support DX9
directly.
 
How would it be cheaper to get a new PC? I've got a state-of-the-art
video card, an acceptable sound card and plenty of hard drive space,
so the most I would need is MB, CPU & memory. And how could buying
those three things be more expensive than buying a whole new computer?
 
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