PC Upgrading Discussion

[Damian Henderson]

SLi vs Crossfire, about same really, all depends on the drivers but you will get good performance with either Nvida SLI or ATi Crossifre.

The GTX280 is better then the 4870 1gb yes but 2 4870 1gb's in crossfire is better then a GTX280 and you want to save money and be more future proof so maybe just get the 4870 1gb and then buy another one next year or whenever you need the extra performance.

Some mobo's here's:

Sli:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142585

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/139415

CF:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145751

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(29126)Gigabyte-motherboard-GA-X38DS4--LGA775-Intel.aspx

 

[Tim Ling]

TBH Abdul, with the racing games available right now, the ATI will render them with ease. It seems AMD/ATI have also got their act together with the drivers, so a 4870 will work nicely, and makes a crossfire setup possible in the future.
GTX280's are nice, but have nowhere near the price/performance ratio of the ATi. Also the new drivers from ATi are supposed to allow GPU acceleration for programs such as Adobe Photoshop CS4, which NVidia are making harder to get.

 

[Damian Henderson]

Good thoughts from Tim.

One thing you can get with Nvidia and not fully with ATi is PhysX, there's allot of games that support it now:


http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_physx.html

http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_physxgames_home.html

PhysX is designed specifically for hardware acceleration by powerful processors with hundreds of cores. Combined with the tremendous parallel processing capability of the GPU, PhysX will provide an exponential increase in physics processing power and will take gaming to a new level delivering rich, immersive physical gaming environments.

 

[Peter Duivelaar]

I need some advice about my computer

The coming race for the championship is at Nordschleife.
But everytime I load the track I get a minidump, except if it is a really good server with no drivers in it.
All the other tracks I have to drive at the lowest settings.
I want to know if I can change something to my computer or it is time to buy a new computer.

This is my computer:
Pentium 4: 3.0 GHZ
2 GB Ram
ATI Radeon x1650 Pro 512 MB
80 GB Hard Disc

 

[Krister Larsson]

I have almost the same setup but the X1950 (and a lot more hard disk) and that has served me up to now. So I guess it's basicly the graphics card you should think about upgrading.

 

[Oliver Amos]

Is it the same as this?

http://forum.racedepartment.com/gtr-evolution/6878-gtr-evolution-runtime-error.html

It crashes for me using a 8800gts 640mb

 

[Peter Duivelaar]

Is it the same as this?

http://forum.racedepartment.com/gtr-evolution/6878-gtr-evolution-runtime-error.html

It crashes for me using a 8800gts 640mb

No, that is not the problem.
If I higher the settings on other tracks, than I also get a minidump error.

 

[Neil Gault]

well if you already have the settings as low as they can go then about all you can do is make sure your system is running at it's peak. Defrag the night before the race and reboot it before the race also make sure you have nothing running in the background that is not needed.

 

[Christopher Aponte]

if you have the big budget, then i normally say go for a new one
like this budget for example
http://tweakers.net/reviews/1027/3


other than that maybe a small graphics update....
but i do prefer to step up on the next generation...seeing your pc must be around 2 years old maybe?....especially seeing that your CPU will be a bottleneck

 

[Marcel Hulsbergen]

I need to know the budget first to give any advise, i surely would go for a new computer.

The X1650 can be compared to the NVIDIA GeForce 7600 series which is kinda about 2 years old, simracing asks a lot from the video card.

Upgrading the video card does not make much sense as your P4 will be a bottleneck as also your memory will be.

I would suggest to buy some new components and build it together yourself, it is very easy to do.

But tell me the budget then maybe i can give a more specific advise.

 

[Maurice Hurkmans]

I also had a P4 3Ghz until a week ago with a Nvidia GeForce 6200 as a graphic card.

My budget wasn't too big but for less then €700 i got a Quad Core (Intel Q8200). Graphic card which is standard built in is a ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO. Speed difference is really, really noticeable. Graphic is probably not top of the bill but much better then my old one and i really notice the difference. Gaming is even more enjoyable for me now.

 

[Marcel Hulsbergen]

700 euro's is a good budget, mostly when i upgrade, this means all components in my case, costs arround 500 euro''s.

 

[Peter Duivelaar]

I am thinking of this system:

http://www.norrod.nl/ws_a_index.asp?A_id=34472

Is this a good computer?

 

[Damian Henderson]

Yes it's good and allot better then your current PC. The Radeon HD 3650 is not the best video card though but it is allot better then your current card.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_3650/12.html

Can you build your own PC or do you need to buy the PC together?

 

[Marcel Hulsbergen]

I am thinking of this system:

http://www.norrod.nl/ws_a_index.asp?A_id=34472

Is this a good computer?

I would prefer to build it yourself.

I see the specs are different on that site, look in the description there is a
NVIDIA® GeForce 7100 gpu integrated, and below thay say it has a ATI Radeon HD 3650.

The motherboard is very cheap, i think you can build a better pc for this money.

 

[Damian Henderson]

I think it's a ATI Radeon HD 3650 in it for sure, motherboard is very cheap but ok for someone who cant build a PC but as said if you can build your own pc you can get allot better system

 

[Lee Downham]

One thing I would consider doing if this is mainly a gaming rig is going as fast as possible on the CPU clock speed and sticking to dual core rather than quad cores ... ie. invest your money in clock speed not more cores.

The reason I say this is that my 4 x cores are rarely all utilised when I sim-race, usually only 2 x cores are, and if there is ever any stuttering (eg mid ohio with changeable conditions), its because one of these cores is heading up near 100%.

My cores run just below 2.9ghz since a recent spate of minidumps prompted me to successfully test lowering my overclock slightly, but I believe getting them over 3ghz would keep me stutter free, even at mid ohio :good:

BTW ... hope you getting a better machine does not mean that you will get even faster yourself mate

EDIT: Build your own system, or at least order one to your spec which can be built from a specialist PC tuning type of shop - choose the parts yourself and don't end up with crappy trade offs like the big manufacturers often do to their machines.

 

[Dave Stephenson]

budget isnt really a huge issue on this sort of upgrade. the performance increase for datatransfer accross the north /south bridge and the faster mordern ram etc will be so large that you will see a marked improvement even with a budget machine.

buy the parts yourself and get a tech savvy mate to put it together if your not comfortable with it. as long as you move to current gen gear and standards, ddr2, pci-e, lga775 or AM2+ for cpu socket, you'll be able to upgrade as cash allows on the other components, although it is important to get a balanced system.

@lee i smell q6600, admittedly mine doesnt use all the cores for the racing but it means my other stuff thats running doesn't intefere with it either.

 

[Christopher Aponte]

Patrick
if you don't fancy assembling your own pc and you do prefer to buy a complete build one....you can go here another way
you can also order online your own components from shops like 4Launch ( www.4launch.nl ) and select from them to assemble the pc for you....it may cost extra 30 euro's or so...but at least you got a pc with your own specification

 

[Peter Duivelaar]

I have another question:
What is better: Intel or AMD?
And would it be better to have a dual core with high clock speeds than a quad core with lower clock speed?