A little advice please........

[Oberbefehlshaber]

Hey, I havent been on here in a while but I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice. I bought an Alienware PC in 2006 and havent done anything to it, and I was wondering what you guys would identify as the weak point in my system, or if its even worth upgrading anything at all and just buy a new PC in a year or two. Here are my specs.

Intel D 3.4Gz, 800Mhz

4Gb 667Mhz (my motherboard does not support a higher Mhz)

X1900XTX 512Mb

thanks for your help, advice would be great.

[★Bandiera Rossa☭]

Hey, I havent been on here in a while but I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice. I bought an Alienware PC in 2006 and havent done anything to it, and I was wondering what you guys would identify as the weak point in my system, or if its even worth upgrading anything at all and just buy a new PC in a year or two. Here are my specs.

Intel D 3.4Gz, 800Mhz

4Gb 667Mhz (my motherboard does not support a higher Mhz)

X1900XTX 512Mb

thanks for your help, advice would be great.

:hmmm: I don't know...you didn't really post that much...it would probably work for Empire Total War tho.

[Oberbefehlshaber]

What else would you like to know? I can get a GeForce 9800 GX2 for $250 but is it worth it with the memory and processor i have or should I wait a couple years. ( I have a 700W power supply)

[Strelok]

"Intel D" is the Intel Pentium DUAL-CORE right? If it's single core then it's weak. If it's the dual core and it is running at 3.4GHZ that is still pretty good. The GPU is weak, your RAM is solid, and your CPU is not bad.

If I was in your situation (and the Intel D is a dual core) I would get a good GPU upgrade, not sure about the 9800GX2 though. Do games like ETW even support SLI cards? Something like a GTX260 is a good card.

[★Bandiera Rossa☭]

What else would you like to know? I can get a GeForce 9800 GX2 for $250 but is it worth it with the memory and processor i have or should I wait a couple years. ( I have a 700W power supply)

9800 is a very good video card, Is this upgrading for etw?

[Strelok]

9800 is a very good video card, Is this upgrading for etw?

Depends on the "9800". The 9800GT is an 8800GT. The 9800GTX is like an 8800GTX. The 9800GX2 is SLI 8800GTS G92 512's in one card. I hate when people just name the series name, because the difference is big : )

[OccamR]

"Intel D" is the Intel Pentium DUAL-CORE right? If it's single core then it's weak. If it's the dual core and it is running at 3.4GHZ that is still pretty good. The GPU is weak, your RAM is solid, and your CPU is not bad.

I think it's a Intel Celeron D, and yeah, they're single core.
Definitely upgrade the cpu to a dual core, that would be that best value upgrade.

[Freddie]

I would say your CPU is a piece of crap and needs replacing ASAP.

If you don't believe me check out these CPU charts granted it's just one game but compare how badly the older Pentiums get on against the Core 2 Duo's! Even with overclocking your CPU won't get anywhere near ther performance of the Core 2 Duo's at stock.

Pentium D 3.2 Smithfiled 15 FPS
Core 2 Duo E8400 55 FPS

.

[Oberbefehlshaber]

The Intel D is 2 hyperthreading pentium 4s (so yea its dual core) it came out JUST before the core 2 duo. About the 9800 X2 ($250) it benchmarks close to the 4870 X2 ($450) which is like the fastest card out, so I would say the 9800 X2 is a good deal no?

[Oberbefehlshaber]

I would say your CPU is a piece of crap and needs replacing ASAP.

If you don't believe me check out these CPU charts granted it's just one game but compare how badly the older Pentiums get on against the Core 2 Duo's! Even with overclocking your CPU won't get anywhere near ther performance of the Core 2 Duo's at stock.

Pentium D 3.2 Smithfiled 15 FPS
Core 2 Duo E8400 55 FPS

.

yea, I'll have to look into that.

[Roman Clone]

Depends on the "9800". The 9800GT is an 8800GT. The 9800GTX is like an 8800GTX. The 9800GX2 is SLI 8800GTS G92 512's in one card. I hate when people just name the series name, because the difference is big : )

I thought the 9800 GTX was more related to the GTS 512?

[Freddie]

I thought the 9800 GTX was more related to the GTS 512?

It is, the only thing the 9800GTX has in common with the 8800GTX is the GTX suffix. I made the mistake in a previous thread saying the exact same thing (9800GTX = 800GTX), remember the 8800GTX came out before the 8800GTS G92 so the 9 series was just a refreshed G92 core. Nvidia are now recycling it again with a small manufacturing process and calling it the GTX250 and slapping a premium on it.

BTW the HD 4870X2 > 9800GX2, the 9800GX2 has reportedly been suffering from 'micro stuttering' problems (the frame rates in games drops down really low for a moment) which is something that's plagued Nvidia dual cards since the 7950GX2. The HD 4870X2 should have around about a 20% advantage over a 9800GX2 varying of course from game to game (Crysis favouring the SLI based card and Bioshock favouring the Crossfire card).

[Yojimbo]

Depends on the "9800". The 9800GT is an 8800GT. The 9800GTX is like an 8800GTX. The 9800GX2 is SLI 8800GTS G92 512's in one card. I hate when people just name the series name, because the difference is big : )

If thats a p4 thats the weak spot. your card isnt amazing but it will do the job.

Also theres a 9800+ which is a die shrink.

[M.E.]

Hey, I havent been on here in a while but I was wondering if you guys could give me some advice. I bought an Alienware PC in 2006 and havent done anything to it, and I was wondering what you guys would identify as the weak point in my system, or if its even worth upgrading anything at all and just buy a new PC in a year or two. Here are my specs.
Intel D 3.4Gz, 800Mhz
4Gb 667Mhz (my motherboard does not support a higher Mhz)
X1900XTX 512Mb
thanks for your help, advice would be great.

It depends what you want of your PC. To me, this is still a decent-looking system (until very recently I was playing RTW [on large unit size, medium-high settings; up to 1024x768; and no M2TW for me back then] on Intel P4 2.4gHz (500MHz), 1Gb DDR, Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro; this is what you call crap, Freddie ). I'm sure you are able to play RTW, M2TW, and many other games at medium-high (up to very high) settings. If you are in no hurry to switch to playing on high resolutions and high and/or ultra-high settings, then you could stick to this system for a little longer. In the mean time you could get more cash and purchase a better system later on.

[Freddie]

It depends what you want of your PC. To me, this is still a decent-looking system (until very recently I was playing RTW [on large unit size, medium-high settings; up to 1024x768; and no M2TW for me back then] on Intel P4 2.4gHz (500MHz), 1Gb DDR, Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro; this is what you call crap, Freddie )

That's almost identical to my old computer except for I had the P4 2.4 (800 FSB). I also had the Radeon 9600 Pro and it was one of the best cards I've ever owned, I bought it to replace my FX5600 and the difference between the two was amazing, the graphics on the Radeon looked so much sharper and cleaner then the GeForce card.