Upgrading motherboard and CPU

billius

Howzit! Last year I bought a Gainward Bliss 7800 512mb AGP card. My current motherboard is an Asus K8NE S745 (or soemthing like that) with an AMD 64 3200 CPU. I'm just wondering how badly this setup is holding my graphics card back. I've read allot about this card needing a very fast CPU to get the most ou of it and my FPS in games would support this!

I'm thinking of upgrading my motherboard to a Asrock Dual Vsta PT880 (the one with both PCI-E and AGP slots) and adding an Intel Core Duo E6600 socket 775. This way I get to keep the AGP card I already have.

Would this be a worthwhile upgrade or am I just wasting my time?

8T8

The Gainward Bliss 7800 cards if I recall correctly where really a 7800GT in disguise not a genuine AGP 7800 which are pretty crippled so it probably would benefit from the newer CPU.

The Asrock board should do the job allowing you to retain the AGP card. There is a supposed Intel price cut at the end of the month on the E6600 so hold off on the CPU for a little bit as you might save some cash.

billius

It's actually the Gainward 7800GS+ Agp card that I have, which I think is actually a 7900. Not that it makes much difference I guess. All I know if that it cost me a fortune when it first came out, now it's fairly cheaper...how do you say...SUCKER!!!

I'll hold off until the end of the month, hopefully the prices will come down. Thanks for the advice!!

Frank Grimes Jr

Great card, had one myself! The swift answer is no, your CPU is not holding you back. I had the 7800GS+ (7900GT) with a P4 3.2. I changed to the Asrock DUAL 775-VSTA anda Core2Duo e6700. 3DMark Scores for SM2.0 and SM3.0 were the same, CPU scores were obviously higher.
FEAR fps scores @ 1024x768 Max everything except Volumetric Lighting @ MEDIUM and Soft Shadows OFF, 4xAA, 8xAF.
P4 3.2
min 27
avg 45
max 61

C2D e6700
min 45
avg 55
max 61

My mistake that I benched FEAR at 1024 x 768 and you can see what a difference the CPU makes at low resolutions. I play at 1280 x 1024, and to be honest the difference in min. fps was 2 -3 (21 - 24 fps) using the same settings on both the P4 and C2D, as you can see max fps were the same, limited by the graphics card.
Oblivion @ 1280 x 1024, HDR ON still maintained an outdoor fps of 20.
I subsequently tested a 7900GS PCI-E with the ASROCK board and the results were pretty similar, (actually a little worse).
It would still be a great budget move though if you needed to go dual core. if you have 1GB of some decent RAM DDR400, you will not need to change to DDRII - bugger all performance difference. Go for a e6300 or the newer, cheaper e4300 if that is priced similar to a x2 3800 AMD. I had no joy overclocking with this board. Its also not useful if you were to go for a PCI-E graphics card in the future because the PCI-E slot is limited to 4x - hence the poor performance of the 7900gs.


Are those fps similar to what you are getting? What kind of fps in games are you getting and resolution your using?
Do you run applications in the background whilst playing games. How much system memory have you?

billius wrote:

Howzit! Last year I bought a Gainward Bliss 7800 512mb AGP card. My current motherboard is an Asus K8NE S745 (or soemthing like that) with an AMD 64 3200 CPU. I'm just wondering how badly this setup is holding my graphics card back. I've read allot about this card needing a very fast CPU to get the most ou of it and my FPS in games would support this!

I'm thinking of upgrading my motherboard to a Asrock Dual Vsta PT880 (the one with both PCI-E and AGP slots) and adding an Intel Core Duo E6600 socket 775. This way I get to keep the AGP card I already have.

Would this be a worthwhile upgrade or am I just wasting my time?

BadCharlie

I have an Asrock Dual sata board. It has both the AGP and PCI-e slot. Got it over a year ago and only in the last week have i ordered a new PCI-e card to replace my existing 7800GS.

Its a good board but not the best for overclocking. I found when i moved from the 3000+ chip clocked at 2500mhz to my newer 3700+ chip with the extra 512kb of cash clocked to 2500mhz with the rest of the hardwear the same. It played better in games, the one i wanted it to improve most was in cs and it did. Now i feel like i should get the dual core AMD chip as im sure this would make even a bigger improvment. I dont feel like going intel at the moment and not willing to part with the cash.

billius

Frank Grimes Jr wrote:

Are those fps similar to what you are getting? What kind of fps in games are you getting and resolution your using?
Do you run applications in the background whilst playing games. How much system memory have you?

I get a little less than that in Fear...if I run it with almost full detail at 1280X1024. I'd say about 24 - 35fps average. It seems I'm not going to get a whole lot of an improvement...at least not as much as I thought, with this upgrade. Maybe I'll hold out a little longer and move to a PCI-Express board with a new Graphics card, RAM and the like. Oh this feckin' PC building is an expensive habbit! I'd say I used to spend less on smoking! :rolleyes: