I want an envied PC

rhirud · Apr 14, 2005

An fx57 is 64 bit! I'm not sure if it's venice cored, which can handle 2GB a lot better than the other AMD cores - for most AMD chips 1GB is better.

But you've forgotten to put a physics processor in your shopping list.

As for which graphics card to get-

If you will only be playing ut2004 for the next year - there is no benefit in getting anything faster than a vanilla x800 - for 1/3 of the price of a fully blown x850.

Save the money and in a year's time, you'll be able to buy better than an x850 for the money you've got left.

azcn2503 · Apr 14, 2005

FX57 will be san diego cored, which will have a revised memory controller, and will be manufactured using the 90nm process. I want top notch performance!!

You're probably right about the graphics, though... prolly...

Tournament0 · Apr 14, 2005

rhirud said:
An fx57 is 64 bit! I'm not sure if it's venice cored, which can handle 2GB a lot better than the other AMD cores - for most AMD chips 1GB is better.

But you've forgotten to put a physics processor in your shopping list.

As for which graphics card to get-

If you will only be playing ut2004 for the next year - there is no benefit in getting anything faster than a vanilla x800 - for 1/3 of the price of a fully blown x850.

Save the money and in a year's time, you'll be able to buy better than an x850 for the money you've got left.

There will be better cards out by that time.

JaFO · Apr 14, 2005

I doubt that dual-cores will create a significant improvement in performance.
It certainly won't be x2 of a single core, because too many algorithmes depend on each other. So you can't really move 'physics' to core 2 and 'AI' to core 1 as both would have to wait for each other.

Even if you manage to split the load between them then the next bottleneck is going to be the memory which means that buying the right type of memory really is going to matter this time ...

I think that when it comes to buying/upgrading a new pc the best price/performance is usually offered by whatever is 1 step below the fastest possible.

AMD vs Intel isn't as obvious like it used to be as high-end AMD cpu's are just as expensive as the Intel cpu's.

edhe · Apr 14, 2005

@ Tournament0

Jafo - no, the kind of performance increase will not be 2x, it could be equated to SLI style large improvements, on the whole, just not everywhere.

As for gaming chips... AMD is the way. Unless you're OGL when Intel & Nvidia are the beast, if you're using Directx the proven choice is AMD and Ati. SLI is another situation which is still to have a competitor..

The_Head · Apr 14, 2005

SLI is hardly worth it atm. Only gives benefits worth caring about in Half Life 2 and Doom3 iirc.
1Gig Graphics card. Now thats just insane

.

T2A` · Apr 14, 2005

SLI isn't worth it yet, which is why ATI haven't done anything about it. Who wants to spend $1000 on video cards for a few extra frames in Doom 3? Only the very few insane, I would think. By the time the next generation stuff comes out, that $1000 in video cards will have been wasted because you'll have to buy two more new cards to keep up.

I agree with getting an X800 now to run anything in the immediate future well and waiting until the really nice cards come out in a year or year and a half. I mean, seriously... Do you really need to run Doom 3 at 1600x1200 with AA and AF? No, you don't.

The_Head · Apr 14, 2005

Not really. Only if you wanted to show off that your wallet is bigger than your brain.

Bot_40 · Apr 14, 2005

I pretty much agree here. Two 6800s won't really do anything truely special in any games that are around at the moment unless you have some sort of AA fetish

Also, imo, it seriously wouldn't be worth going for the dual 6800s for any next gen game (UE3 included) simply because in 12 months time you will prolly be able to spend the same amount of cash on a single card that is 4x as powerfull anyways.

Ignotium · Apr 14, 2005

i'd like to see what's up with the friggin LongHorn
Then i'll see what to get or not to get

note for dummies: longhorn = first 64bit OS ever

carmatic · Apr 14, 2005

yeah, i jumped on the 64bit bandwagon early, got myself a very very early version of the athlon64... well that was just about a year ago , and sooner or later i should be getting a vastly different processor... the athlon64 still hasnt run any 64-bit code yet, and im too lazy to learn linux or anything that will make use of the 64bit instructions, so yeah im just waiting for windows xp 64bit... not so sure its called 'longhorn' tho, its not supposed to be windows xp anymore...
after windows xp 64bit is rolled out, maybe theres a patch out there to change ut2k4 to 64 bit? like theyve done a demo or something showing ut2k4 running in 64bit... that will be seriously seriously sweet

Ignotium · Apr 14, 2005

carmatic said:
after windows xp 64bit is rolled out, maybe theres a patch out there to change ut2k4 to 64 bit? like theyve done a demo or something showing ut2k4 running in 64bit... that will be seriously seriously sweet

????

no, no patchs will be needed; to change ut2k4 to 64 bits, you need a new engine, not a patch

edhe · Apr 15, 2005

UT2k4 engine is 64bit capable. And can run on *nux servers at 64bits on opterons.

Stratoos - you do realise that the winxp 64 bit OS is probably the Last OS to upgrade to 64 bit?

So, do some research

Tournament0 · Apr 15, 2005

The_Head said:
SLI is hardly worth it atm. Only gives benefits worth caring about in Half Life 2 and Doom3 iirc.
1Gig Graphics card. Now thats just insane .

I agree, SLI is not worth it, and, in my opinion, it will never be worth it.
1GB graphics cards, it will happen, ATI are making a 512MB card at the moment, it's inevitable.

I also agree with Turn2Ashes and Bot_40.

edhe · Apr 15, 2005

/me wonders who cares about the above's opinion.

Fact is, SLI is there for those gamers that earn silly money, and the pros who'll spend on it. It's also there for other reasons - CAD, CG and Dev work, it's not just gaming

It does give a nice upgrade path, i would consider it if buying a new system at the moment, stick in another card about 6 months down the line before the 18 month rule comse into affect.

You have to remember that the GFX card Tech is always ahead of the Current Games tech.

The possibility is there, also, hopefully, of having 4 GPUs on an sli setup.

azcn2503 · Apr 15, 2005

I don't like nvidia

Bot_40 · Apr 15, 2005

I think I vaguely remember hearing somewhere Unreal Engine 3 will require 1GB of video memory to run at full detail.
This doesn't really surprise me at all tbh. UT2k4 has mainly 1024x1024 textures, UT3 will have 2048x2048 textures for a lot of the content so that takes up 4x as much memory already, then when you add in rgb normal maps on top of that you can double it again. Suddenly instead of 128MB you need 8x as much memory - 1GB.

edhe · Apr 15, 2005

Ati will have a competitor to sli well before Envy's out.

Renegade Retard · Apr 15, 2005

edhe said:
/It does give a nice upgrade path, i would consider it if buying a new system at the moment, stick in another card about 6 months down the line before the 18 month rule comse into affect.

:tup: That's my plan with my SLI board. I'll be throwing another 6600GT in there later this year.

BTW - Windows XP 64 may be out sooner than you realize. The beta has been out for quite a while, and a buddy of mine who is an "insider" has a copy of what he says is actually the final release, it just hasn't gone public yet.

The_Head · Apr 15, 2005

edhe said:
Fact is, SLI is there for those gamers that earn silly money, and the pros who'll spend on it. It's also there for other reasons - CAD, CG and Dev work, it's not just gaming

If your doing CAD work and the like you wouldn't buy a gaming card. You would buy a card designed for CAD work. Like The NVidia Quadro series......

StraTooS said:
note for dummies: longhorn = first 64bit OS ever

LOL. Computer n00b. Linux has been 64bit capabable for quite a while now. iirc they were 64 before te Athlon64's where out. And before anyone had really heard of the Opteron. ALso WinXP64 is out end of May

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