We are young but getting old before our time... · 2008-07-06 17:08
…we’ll leave the TV and the radio behind.
I’m having a crisis of conscience here. Fairly warned, though, you may need to present your dork badge to read on, or at least have some formal background in geekonomics. Let us proceed…
I have been mulling over the idea of rebuilding my computer, which I so lovingly and painstakingly built back in early ’06. The compy isn’t dated, per se, unless you consider playing Crysis at the highest settings in Dx10 the standard. Which is ridiculous, because no one had done that yet. But i digress…
My current setup works quite well for my needs: music, movies, WoW, and internet porn. But lately I’ve started to notice some hitches in performance. It’s possible that with the umpteen programs I run at any time might be the cause of this slowdown, but I remember the good ol’ days, when the compy was a pristine system, without hidden processes always running and old remnants of bloatware scattered all over C:/. Those were the days when I could run anything, without worry of stutter or lag. But not anymore. Not even after I recently wiped and reformatted C:/. Is it possible that even after a proper format I still have old data ghosted on the drive? I recently had an interesting and highly dorktastic discussion with one DPatch about this, but I won’t go into detail because it will quickly go over all of our heads. Suffice it to say that ghosting is a distinct possibility.
I don’t think thats the cause of the performance issues, though. Actually, I thought it was my video card at first, but after swapping the old card for a brand-spanking-new one, I’m still having issues. The poor compy has crashed a few times over the past couple of weeks, and I’m starting to think that it’s either an overheating issue, or a power issue. I’ve cleaned and dusted the inside of the case, and all the fans seem to be working okay, but I still lose power. So, I’ve decided to up my power supply to a 750W brick, which oughtta be more than adequate considering I don’t do Crossfire or SLI. I am running 5 HDDs and a few disc drives, but usually not all at once. However, most of the slots on the motherboard[PCIx, SATA, memory, ect] are full. Is is possible that I need a more robust motherboard? If so, shouldn’t I go ahead and upgrade to a better, more compatible processor?
And THAT is precisely the question I get hung up on. Processor…AMD or Intel? Really the only two manufacturers in the business for Joe Cosumer, so which do I choose?
A few years ago, that would have been a no-brainer. AMD ftw! I’ll admit, I’m a bit of an AMD fanboi, but I have good reasons. AMD is the underdog, fighting against the evil empire that is Intel. AMD has less money, fewer resources, and a pathetically small piece of market share to operate with, and yet they still make a decent chip. Or, they did…
See, AMD recently unveiled their new Phenom multi-core processors, and frankly, they aren’t even beating the Core 2 Duos Intel started pimping out 2 years ago!
So it comes to this: buy a more expensive top-of-the-line AMD chip, or go with a cheap-o middle-of-the-road Intel chip for less than half price [plus the cost of my soul, which will then belong to Intel as well]? Support the underdog’s inferior hardware [goodness knows they need the money], or save a buck and sell out? Principles vs economics. Brand loyalty vs common sense. Ugh…
Buy the Intel processor (perhaps Core 2 Duo E8400?..go quad core if you want to be more future proof) and buy the latest AMD/ATI Radeon 4870. The 4870 beats the new Nvidia GTX 260. It doesn’t beat Nvidia’s top of the line GTX 280, but that thing is way too expensive (price/performance ratio is terrible). The 4870 is a great card and that way you are still putting some money in AMD’s pockets.
Don’t forget about a decent motherboard. That’s your most important piece (besides the power supply). I’m hoping you didn’t skimp and buy a non-name brand psu.
— Dave P. Jul 8, 09:59 PM #
Already went with the Radeon HD 4850 for $100 cheaper. I think the main difference is that the 4870 uses GDDR5 memory while the 4850 uses GDDR3.
Also, check this shit out: http://www.tgdaily.com/html_tmp/content-view-38283-135.html
— Brandon Jul 9, 07:56 AM #
HD 4850 is a good buy. The 4870 has a higher core clock and around 80% more memory bandwidth due to the GDDR5. The HD 4870 gets about 6 frames per second more in Crysis (according to one test).
The HD 4850 is still better than Nvidia’s 8800 GTX and on par with the 9800 GTX. You should be happy with its results.
I’d recommend going Crossfire with another 4850, but I know that’s not your goal at this point.
I’m not too surprised Nvidia is supporting PhysX on ATI cards. Nvidia now owns PhysX and should do its best to increase adoption by users. I guess we’ll see what happens.
What did you do about a motherboard? Memory? DDR2..DDR3??
— Dave P. Jul 9, 04:41 PM #
Nothing yet, as far as mobo, memory, etc. Just had my gutters replaced so I need to put the kibosh on any more spending at the moment. Plus I want some time to ruminate over this whole upcoming purchase.
— Brandon Jul 9, 08:53 PM #