Gaming Hardware

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I am looking to upgrade my PC in order to make the most of some of the more recent releases - in particular Half Life 2, Doom3 and Farcry. As I live in a small village out in the sticks broadband is only due to arrive here in April. When I have it I am thinking of starting to play some of the newer FPS on line.
I currently have a reasonable spec PC P4 2.66 512mb ram. However what I thought would prove to be a reasonable graphics card GF FX5700 128mb is probably not up to the standard I hoped it would be. I am also looking to upgrade my CRT monitor to something a little more modern - its an old sony model probably from the late 90's
In terms of a graphics card I probably going to try ATI this time round as their products seem to stand the test of time a little longer than NVIDIAs.
I've got about £450 ($700) to spend any ideas?

 

You've already got a reasonable setup. I've got friends who have played the games that you describe on much less.

If you really want to get something better, you ought to be able to get a Radeon XT for that computer which will give you more power than you're going to need.

There's really no need to buy a new computer when you've got the equipment that you describe.

 

Upping the graphics card couldn't hurt though, I recommend either the Radeon 9800 series or the X800 series, they're excellent for Far Cry and Half Life 2, and can still play Doom 3 with most of the bells and whistles.

 

I would recommend upping your ram another 512 Mb and then buy your video card with what's left over. It is roughly $100 Canadian so I don't know what that translates to in pounds. You will thank me later and notice the performance diifference. Just make sure you get the same speed Ram as in your computer now.

 

To be honest, the 5900XT is a much better buy than the 5700.

The reason is that the vast majority of 5900XT's can be re-flashed into a 5950 Ultra. Amazingly enough, at stock speed, you will see a decrease in the temperature of the GPU. In other words, there is absolutely no good reason not to reflash the card.

I reflashed mine into a 5950U, with "relaxed" memory timings. Which basically amounts to 8-4-4-CAS3, when the stock was 7-4-4-CAS2.5. The result is that my memory clocks up to 870mhz (as opposed to the 725mhz, stock). Since performance isn't based on sheer clock speed, I have to clock my memory up to regain bandwidth performance. By relaxing the timings and clocking up, I gain performance (frames per second) over what stock would have allowed me.

The bottom line is about 20%. When I overlocked my stock 5900XT, I could get a 10% performance boost. When I reflashed to a 5950U, I get another 25% on top of that. Which amounts to ~35% performance boost, overall.

We're talking from 30fps to over 40fps. It is noticable, and makes the card worth the buy.
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But the Radeon 9800pro is a better buy, if you're using windows, and your machine will take an Ati card.

 

Hey ejsmith, for us still learning all the computer jargon, how do we reflash and overlock our video cards?

 

I have a MSI FX 5900, and would also like to know how to reflash this card. The MSI Clock applet in the display properties seems to allow for whatever my overclocking needs might be, but this is the first I've heard of being able to flash it to a 5950.

 

Here, Shalladeth:

http://www.cluboverclocker.com/guides/5900%5FFlash%5FMod/

 

I had to look around for the thread. This is the one you want.

I have no idea what brand my 5900XT was. It was the cheapest they had. It's got a normal sized copper heatsink, and long copper-colored aluminium heatsinks on the memory (I suspect it's aluminium, anyway).

Looking down that list, I believe I used one of the ones in the "Several FX5950U BIOSes underclocked to (300/450/750) " selection. My stock 5900XT would do 435/723 without artifacts, in a cool room with very decent case cooling. 450/750 isn't that much of a bump up, so I figured I was safe in trying it. I use NTFS, so I couldn't backup my original BIOS. It was a go/no-go situation. I have a backup Matrox Millenium PCI video card that I could have slapped in there and tried another bios, if I had problems.

Needless to say, I was both surprised and awestruck at the results. Using Aquamark, the card wouldn't stop overclocking. My computer would hang before I got any kind of graphic corruption at all. This told me I was hitting my mainboard's power limit, since my "5900XT" didn't have an auxillary power connector on it.

When you're trying to re-flash, do not download the v5.10 or whatever it is that Guru3d is offering. Nvidia called Guru3d after this massive thread started, and threatened them with a blackout if they didn't pull the thread. Nvidia routinely "leaks" drivers to Guru3d, so they are one of the first sites to have access to updated drivers that have optimized code for games. Guru3d didn't want to lose this "professional relationship". Guru3d told them that word would get around about that kind of a move (deleting/modifying a thread), and it would be far worse (for Nvidia's money-flow) than if Nvidia had done nothing at all. So Nvidia made a NEW re-flasher (version 5.xx, which doesn't allow cross model flashing), and made Guru3d pull the old re-flasher that would do the mods.

It's been awhile since I re-flashed. I believe you have to use version 4.43 or 4.3 or something. The re-flash utility isn't hosted on Guru3d; you'll have to google search for the right one to use. I read about the first 40 pages of that thread and tried to re-flash several times, before I finally figured out that you absolutely have to use an older re-flash utility; and that Nvidia had become pissed about that particular thread. Guru3d's forums have a lot of traffic.

Whatever you do, keep these three things in mind:

1. Your card needs to boot. So if you just slap some 700/920 bios on there, you may have problems.

2. Once you re-flash, DO NOT USE the "automatic" overclock option in the Nvidia drivers. Select manual overclock, and figure out how far it will go. Your computer will lock up, every time you select auto overclock, unless you are watercooling both your gpu and memory.

3. I'm CPU bound on most FPS games. Aquamark and UT2004 didn't show any problems, but I loaded up Deus Ex1 and Jedi Knight3, and they would have some glitches or snow. I found that when D3D first kicked in, there would be one second of funky graphics; where the mainboard was suddenly loaded down to supply power to the card, and just couldn't manage it.

Use Aquamark and 3dmark and all that to test your card, but load up some old game like Unreal Tournament 1999 with AA/AF, and let that card try to destroy itself overnight with 6 bots and easy AI. AA/AF is very important for making sure all the card's memory is used; turn on at least 4x/4x.

 

Agreed! That is, if you still have AGP, if you've already jumped on the PCIe bandwagon, then go to the extreme and get yourself an ATI X850 card for about $500 USD.

 

I'll probably try the extra stick of RAM first. I might leave the new graphics card a little while - it doesn't seem like I am going to get much of a jump for my money at the moment. I've been doing a little home work and I'm hoping that the x800 may come down in price for AGP version now the trend seems to be PCIe.

 

I'd suggest a GeForce 6600GT. Future-proofed, thanks to beloved SLI. And far less expensive than a 6800GT or Ultra, the second of which costs $1K in Australian..

I'd usually say, "Get the game, THEN decide whether to upgrade" but I have (rarely) framerate issues on Medium Quality in DOOM3 with 3.0ghz, 1gbRAM and a 7200, so you will need a upgrade for that game. HL2 is far more scalable though.

 

@Yirimyah (or anyone who can answer), what does 'Future-proofed' mean?

 

It's a term used by someone who has deluded him/herself into believing that the state-of-the-art graphics card they just bought won't be obsolete within the next 2 years.

 

Was it two years? I thought it was 4-5.

It basically means that with a "Future-Proof" card, you'll be able to play the newest 'cutting-edge' games for the next several years without having to worry about your graphics card not being up to the challenge.

 

In this casee, it means that in a couple of years when my nice shiny GPU is old, I can get a new one, at a "old graphics card" price, slap it in next to the other one and play the latest games.