Upgrade advice wanted

[Hidden Hippo]

Read and searched (including benchmarks) - Yep

Timeframe - ideally within the next couple of weeks

Budget - ideally no more than £250 unless its absolutely necessary

Usage - Gaming

I've been using my current system (E6600, AB9 Pro, X1900XT) for the past 2 years and its starting to get a little old and struggle with the higher games, particularly at my resolution. I'm wanting to upgrade the graphics card and ram.

Obviously I'm going to go for a DX10 solution and as such will be getting Vista so I can make use of it (plus I can get student prices - £70 for a full Vista Ultimate upgrade).

At the moment I'm thinking of getting the HD4870, an additional 2GB ram (G. Skill 800Mhz 5-5-5-15) and Vista Ultimate. I'm planning on using the 64-bit version.

Does anyone else have some suggestions as to possible upgrades? Are there any problems with current drivers for Vista 64-bit? It's been out for a while so I'd have thought they would be a little better, but I decided it would be useful to make use of all the ram,

Thanks in advance.

Edit: My real debate is between the HD4870, 9800GTX+ and the GTX260, although OcUK have the 9800GX2 on sale for £215 at the moment.

 

[DSF]

What size display are you using?

 

[Hidden Hippo]

24" BenQ FP241W running at 1920x1200.

 

[betasub]

Hahaha, I've just started a thread in the Graphics forum on a similar dilemma over gfx cards. I'm looking to replace my HD2900 and sale prices on 9800GX2 seem to make it a contender with the new gen cards (4870 and GTX 260).

I guess case and PSU isssues could rule out the 9800GX2 for some.

FWIW my experiences with ATI drivers on Vista64 have been nothing but good. Is there any particular issue you are worried about, or is this because of the old gripes lingering on from Vista's release?

 

[Hidden Hippo]

Generally just old gripes, particularly with the 64-bit version of Vista, which has always suffered from driver/software problems.

 

[betasub]

ATI's monthly driver updates have gained them a lot of approval, and Vista64 has benefited from being the focus of their improvements. A lot of Vista64 "issues" from release have been addressed, whether by SP1 or drivers - it's good to be up-to-date!

 

[Hidden Hippo]

Righty - I think I'm gonig to roll with the 4870 - there are heat issues, but they're a lot more easily fixed than some of the horror stories I've heard about some of the GTX series (fans falling off etc). I expect these are the minority, but the GTX260 is the same price as the 4870 and doesn't perform quite as well is pretty much equal, if anything slightly inferior.

I've also found out that I can get an upgrade to Vista 64-bit for £70 (full version) because I'm a student, so will definately be upgrading that.

Edit: Out of interest - is it recommended to mix different brands/sizes of memory? I could get a 2x2GB GeIL kit for £45 running at 800MHz on 5-5-5-15 timings, which is the same as my current ram. However, my current ram is 2x1GB G. Skill - would I have problems if I got this kit and added it in, giving 4 sticks total (6GB), or would you say to get a 2x2GB kit and just ditch the old stuff?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Well if you get the 2x2GB kit, you could always test it with your current setup. In theory you should have no problems, but in a few un-occasional circumstances the RAM modules may not like each other or your motherboard may not like all four RAM slots in use or etc... Check out Abit forums/support and see if anyone has had any troubles or success with mixing RAM.

 

[Hidden Hippo]

Would there be any performance loss with unmatched modules? I'm currently running the 2 1GB modules in dual channel, but would putting in two different modules prevent dual channel from working properly, or are each pair separate entities when it comes to that?

Thanks for the reply though - it's only £40 so I'll probably go for it anyway - worst case scenario I don't use my old ram and potentially get another 4GB kit to give 8GB total.

One other annoying question - does RAID 0 actually offer any real world improvement in gaming? I know that in Windows load times and synthetic benchmarks there is an increase in performance, but I'm guessing it isn't worth the hassle for gaming.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

There wouldn't be any performance penalties from running different sized sticks.

RAID 0 isn't going to improveme gaming performance, although it may lower load times in between levels. As far as your framerate is concerned, there won't be a difference. Load times and clever streaming are used to hide the slow performance of disk access. A game's content is going first be loaded into graphic and system memory.

 

[Hidden Hippo]

Will have a look at those sticks then - only going to be £20 loss if they don't like each other so its not a big problem. Plus it gives me plenty of space to upgrade to 8GB later on in life.

 

[Roguestar]

RAID-0 does nothing for real-world performance.

If you decide to use the 2x2GB sticks, why not sell the 2x1GB sticks? I doubt you'll really ever use more than 4GB of memory, even with Vista Ultimate . Or you could just go the whole hog and buy 4 2GB sticks now .

 

[Hidden Hippo]

Not sure I can really afford 4 2GB sticks at the moment - the 4870 isn't that cheap yet. I'll probably go with the 4GB anyway, looks nicer and has room for more.

As an aside, has anyone benchmarked the new 1GB HD4870? OcUK are claiming they will get some in stock tomorrow (although they said that last week as well) but I can't seem to find a benchmark, even on here.

£dit: Alternatively I could just get another 2x1GB kit the same as the one I've got, run 4 sticks (assuming you can run dual channel on 2 pairs) and then leave it until I upgrade the processor/motherboard when Nehalem comes out. As you say, even Vista Ultimate won't need 4GB ram (I'm not even using 2GB in XP when gaming, even in Crysis).

 

[Roguestar]

Well, I've not seen any benchmarks for the 1GB version but we can reasonably assume (as with 90% of cards with slightly more memory than their otherwise identical model counterparts) that it'll basically perform the same as the 512MB version except it'll do slightly better at much higher resolutions such as 1920 x 1200 due to being able to use a larger frame buffer. If you're gaming at a mid-high res like 1600*1200 or 1680*1050 and up, it'll start to help.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: Hidden Hippo
Edit: My real debate is between the HD4870, 9800GTX+ and the GTX260, although OcUK have the 9800GX2 on sale for £215 at the moment.

This one has still got me, and the debate (re: 4870 vs GTX260) rages across various threads in AT's Graphics Forum.

The GX2 is tempting me with its sheer grunt at the older games I play...

For OP: ebuyer.com seem to have responded to OcUK's deal on the Leadtek GX2 - they've just added a selection of eVGA GX2 cards to their listings.

 

[Hidden Hippo]

OcUK have also dropped some of their GTX260 prices to bring them more in line with the 4807 - I think I'l still go with the 4870 though - the GX2 would require a new PSU (I think) and the GTX260 is often beaten by the 4870. The other thing that confuses me is that OcUK are apparantly the only ones selling the 1GB version - I can't see it listed elsewhere.

I am running a 1920x1200 so in theory it should help, but I'd quite like to see a benchmark first.

Edit: Apparantly Ebuyer have them, but on the menu it says available for pre order, but in the product details it says for delivery tomorrow - thoroughly confused about thta. On the plus side they're £20 less than OcUK on that card.

 

[MarcVenice]

Don't think you need a 1gb version. I'd stick with the 512mb version, and upgrade to 2x2gb, I think you can run your 2x1gb sticks alongside btw, but overclocking might take a hit. How high do you have your e6600 clocked ?

BTW, £70 isn't all thet cheap for vista ultimate, or well, I bet you could spend less on just Home Premium. Ultimate isn't needed really, Ive got it ( for free ) and I never used anything that comes with Ultimate, but doesn't come with Home Premium.

 

[Hidden Hippo]

There's only a £10 difference between Ultimate and the cheapest one the company offer - the cheapest I've found it in the retail sector is £110 for the OEM version, but this one can be installed on another motherboard if I upgrade, so trumps the OEM in that respect.

With regards to overclocking - I'm currently just running it at stock speeds - at 1920x1200 the graphics card will likely be the bottleneck in just about anything I'm playing at the moment so I don't see any point in overclocking currently.

I was doubting the 1GB version too - the 512MB version is insane as it is and unless they've changed the bus a 256-bit probably won't be sufficient for 1GB vram (much like 128-bit wasn't sufficient for most 512MB cards). The other problem is that without benchmarks I've no idea whether it suffers from this or not.