Simviation Forum - CPU or Video Card

Mar 6^th, 2005 at 7:26pm

Bubblehead Offline
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Got me an AMD 2600+XP Athlon on my Asus A7N8X2.0 Deluxe mobo and 1Gig PC3200. My video is a PNY Nvidia Geforce FX5600 (256MHz). I do a lot of flight sim games and my system could use an improvement however I only have enough cash to do either or. Which will make a noticeable difference in performance - Upgrade the CPU to a 3200+ or upgrade my video to a 6600 GT?

Bubblehead

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Reply #1 - Mar 6^th, 2005 at 10:43pm

chomp_rock Offline
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I think you should get a new CPU, FS is more CPU than graphics card intensive.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+&&GeForce FX5200 256Mb&&1GB DDR400 DC&&Seagate 500Gb SATA-300 HDD&&Windows XP Professional X64 Edition&&&&That's right, I'm now using an AMD! I decided to give them another try and they kicked the pants off of my P4 3.4!

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Reply #2 - Mar 7^th, 2005 at 2:56am

Gixer Offline
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Well this may be time for you to start experimenting with overclocking a bit here!

I am pretty sure with that ram you could get your CPU running at 3000+XP speeds with air cooling.

Myself I would upgrade your G-card first as the FX5600 was a pretty naff card (Worse than the old GF4 Ti4600)

The 6699GT will guve you far far better results than your Ti4600. Also if you play other sims it will make them play and look better too.

If you were to say you were going to swap CPU and mobo etc then I may choose that first but from what you said you have to choose between as upgrade components I would go with the G/card first.

AMD64 3500+ @ 2200MHz 400FSB&&MSI K8N Neo 2 mobo nForce3 chipset&&1gig Corsair XMS PC3200 timings @ 10.2.2.2 &&XFX 6800 Ultra @ 450/1200&&80gig HDD&&Loadsa fans!!!

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Reply #3 - Mar 7^th, 2005 at 4:32am

congo Offline
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Get the graphics card, your next CPU should be a 64 bit one! Wink

I've been running my XP2800+ overclocked on the Front Side Bus from 166mhz to 182mhz for about 9 months now, ( I had an XP2600+ in here before).

I get about the same performance as a 3200+ according to all the benchmarks.

This CPU is a Thorton core, (locked multiplier), your's may be older like my XP2600+ was. My old 2600+ would handle the multiplier up a notch or two, but would sometimes be unstable in games. I didn't really overclock the FSB properly with that CPU so I'm not sure how high they would go on air cooling, but watch the temps carefully if you go that route.

I see that you have PC3200 Ram in there. I have a performance tip that might work for you.

Go into your bios and set the ram to run at the same speed as your Front Side Bus and CPU........ in other words 166mhz or 333mhz DDR. You will have to take it off the SPD setting, and set it to auto or 100% or whatever setting your bios has to syncronize the ram speed with the FSB speed.

Also, manually set the ram timings to 6-2-2-2 or TURBO setting and see if it handles that setting without stability issues.

You can download Everest to test the memory bandwidth and make comparison analysis between configurations.

http://www.lavalys.com/products/download.php?pid=1&lang=en&pageid=3

or by direct download link:

http://www.lavalys.hu/downloads/everesthome151.zip

My system runs about 12% faster with the PC3200 RAM underclocked to PC2700 speed, (in sync with the CPU and FSB). Couple that with a slight FSB overclock and tight ram timings, and you should see a reasonable performance increase without upgrading the CPU. Increasing the CPU multiplier may be possible as well, depending on your individual CPU's capacity for overclocking.

Mainboard: Asus P5K-Premium, CPU=Intel E6850 @ x8x450fsb 3.6ghz, RAM: 4gb PC8500 Team Dark, Video: NV8800GT, HDD: 2x1Tb Samsung F3 RAID-0 + 1Tb F3, PSU: Antec 550 Basiq, OS: Win7x64, Display: 24" WS LCD

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Reply #4 - Mar 8^th, 2005 at 12:39am

Bubblehead Offline
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OK. I got me an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. Now I want to make sure I install this right. I know I need to uninstall the old video card. But the Guide requires that I upgrade my AGP Motherboard/Chipset drivers. Did'nt have to do that when I installed my Nvidia GeForce FX5600. Any pointers or tricks I need to know? My OS is XP

Bubblehead

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Reply #5 - Mar 8^th, 2005 at 7:42am

Gixer Offline
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Get driver cleaner. Do a yahoo search for it and it will point you to the Driver Cleaner site. Read the instructions on it and do what it says to get rid of your old graphics drivers.

My bro has a similar setup to you with a 9800pro and he didnt have to change his mobo's drivers but did have to load new ATI AGP drivers for the card.

AMD64 3500+ @ 2200MHz 400FSB&&MSI K8N Neo 2 mobo nForce3 chipset&&1gig Corsair XMS PC3200 timings @ 10.2.2.2 &&XFX 6800 Ultra @ 450/1200&&80gig HDD&&Loadsa fans!!!

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Reply #6 - Mar 8^th, 2005 at 9:04am

congo Offline
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I think the "guide" might be a tad cautious, I mean, are they talking about EVERY chipset? It probably wouldn't hurt to upgrade your Asus drivers anyway though.

They might come as a set, Onboard Sound, AGP, LAN, etc., thru the Asus update site?

Mainboard: Asus P5K-Premium, CPU=Intel E6850 @ x8x450fsb 3.6ghz, RAM: 4gb PC8500 Team Dark, Video: NV8800GT, HDD: 2x1Tb Samsung F3 RAID-0 + 1Tb F3, PSU: Antec 550 Basiq, OS: Win7x64, Display: 24" WS LCD

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