Ok, lets have some fun! I need your expert help... I am not very knowlageable in this area. I know alot about cars and racing, but not about PCs.
My set up:

(2) Intel Xeon 2.0 GHz Processors both hyperthreadable making 2 real procs and 2 virtual procs

(1) PNY Nvidia 128 MB ram Geforce FX 5700 with DVI and VGA outputs

1.5 Gigs of Rambus DRAM

1680x1050 res 21" Gateway Monitor

eDimensional 3D glasses

G25 wheel setup

As you can see, my set up is decent, but I think I need a better Video Graphics Card to run LFS and GTR2.

Any idea?

I don't want to spend more than $300, but the less the better.

THANKS!

Shrubba

I guess your mobo only has AGP?

Yeah is ur mobo AGP or PCI-e?

He's running Rambus RDRAM *shivers*, so of course it's AGP.

Yeah, it's AGP. Is that bad? I really don't know...
I am guessing that AGP is getting harder to find a good Graphic card in?
nVidia still makes some though, right? Which one would you suggest?

oh, and Forbin, is Rambus RDRAM bad? I don't know...

Thanks again every one!

Shrubba

Quote from shrubba :

Yeah, it's AGP. Is that bad? I really don't know...
I am guessing that AGP is getting harder to find a good Graphic card in?
nVidia still makes some though, right? Which one would you suggest?

oh, and Forbin, is Rambus RDRAM bad? I don't know...

Thanks again every one!

Shrubba

Well in that case, the best AGP card u can buy is the 7800GS, its basically the same as the PCI-E 7800 series except for AGP.. think its pretty cheap too

not quite - the AGP examples tend to be the poore quality cards and are often underclocked

i said basically.. not exactly :P Of course an AGP card is gonna be worse then PCI-E but yeh.. a 7800GS would be his best get

To save me starting another thread thought I'd just ask for advice here too

I've held off for ages on buying a AGP card because I was planning on upgrading to PCI-E. Things haven't quite worked out the way I planned this year so don't have the funds to go spending too much money.

Anyway what I'm looking for is a half decent AGP card on a budget. Currently I have a AMD 2600+ Socket A, 512mb DDR, 350W PSU and currently a GeForce 440MX. Looking to spend around £80.

Keiran

Quote from Munza :

i said basically.. not exactly :P Of course an AGP card is gonna be worse then PCI-E but yeh.. a 7800GS would be his best get

well, actually it shouldn't be slower - even a 7950GT (not sure about the GX2!) wouldn't use all of the bandwidth (at least in one direction), however they like to charge a premium (either because they know you'd rather pay the AGP Premium than buy a whole new mobo just yet, or because they want you to upgrade to sell you another graphics card), but they are, although i'd imagine the AGP would still be (ever so) slightly slower

@ ^ You could go for a 6600GT (about £55), or a better bet, an AGP 6800GT

the problem with my 7950GX2 is that both cards actually run @ 8x PCI-E. This is because PCI-E slots r 16x so they both cant be 16x, therefor making it slower then 2 7950GT's

Quote from shrubba :

oh, and Forbin, is Rambus RDRAM bad? I don't know...

It basically never delivered on what they promised and tried to charge everyone under the sun huge licensing fees. They also had an exclusive agreement with Intel that RDRAM would be the old type of RAM for the P4, at least in the first year of the P4. After that, Intel immediately switched to DDR SDRAM but a bit of damage was already done. It wasn't a bad thing for AMD though, as they gained a lot of marketshare in the process.

Quote from Munza :

the problem with my 7950GX2 is that both cards actually run @ 8x PCI-E. This is because PCI-E slots r 16x so they both cant be 16x, therefor making it slower then 2 7950GT's

from what i've read the 8x lanes really make very little speed difference

Oh, and the 7900GTX is quicker than a 7950GT, the 7950GT is just and unpgraded 7900GT, and is trading under the name 7950 to make people think it's the GX2, or of similar speed

Quote from Jakg :

@ ^ You could go for a 6600GT (about £55), or a better bet, an AGP 6800GT

Had a look around for AGP 6600GTs and they seemed to be about £155 new :s. I'm sure they were cheaper than that when I saw them half a year or so ago .

Quote from keiran :

Had a look around for AGP 6600GTs and they seemed to be about £155 new :s. I'm sure they were cheaper than that when I saw them half a year or so ago .

rofl - look again somewhere else - my mate just sold his AGP 6600GT for £60, which is more than it was worth, i just sold two PCI-e 6600GT's and only got £100, whoever is selling them for £155 is having a laugh

http://www.savastore.com/produ ... 9874&pid=45&tid=3

Savastore is the only place I can really find it up for `sale`, although they have no stock.

The Xeon 2ghz won't do it these days. With a better gfx card you will have the same framerates, or thereabout, but you can run at your monitors 'real' resolution so that would be nice..

I think I'd save some more $ and eventually buy a whole new system based on the new Core 2 Duo processor and a nice 7900GT type gfx card..

Edit: it wouldn't matter if you'd have 16 xeon 2ghz cpus as games always only use ONE core.

Quote from keiran :

http://www.savastore.com/produ ... 9874&pid=45&tid=3

Savastore is the only place I can really find it up for `sale`, although they have no stock.

wierd - seems to be a shortage of AGP 6600GT's new...

eBay seems to be your best bet then

EDIT - to ^, why buy a C2D and a 7900GT, when you can wait a "while" and get DX10 cards?

Everybody's talking about Geforce. I think Radeon X1950XTX would be faster sometimes (at least in single card mode). But it depends on the game and what AA, AF settings and what resolution. Also 1900XTX can be (and is sometimes) faster.

I was thinking about getting a new PC later, but currently i would probably go to GF7900GS for a decent speed/money ratio.

If you want to compare cards try this...
http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

EDIT: But those cards are PCI-E only

Here's what I did!!!

Bought a new system all togeather!
EVGA Socket 939 Micro ATX motherboard with SLI and 4 Memory slots
AMD 3200+ CPU (haven't overclocked it YET! )
nVidia 7600GT sli GPU
1.5gb Ram (only 133mhz, but free, soon to be remedied)
80gb HD (again, not top of the line, but free)
Ultra Modular PSU (flippin cool, waiting on it still)
plus a cool case, some lighting, uv braided wires, fans, fun stuff

thanks for all the help... now LFS runs so clear, that it nearly feels like I am there! Now I just need those eDimensional 3d glasses....

Shrubba

Not a bad setup, the only thing that is holding your framerates back in LFS (though not by much, and your probably getting very high framerates anyways) is your cpu. I wouldn't recommend upgrading it but just an fyi so you know.

Good luck with your new setup.

About my CPU... i have read that the one i have is good for overclocking. I just have to do a little more research before I feel comfortable attempting it. I also need to look into cooling... i am told by all the companys out there that I need to upgrade my heat sink with, you guessed it, one of theirs! So i don't know which one to get... although I think I have narrowed it down because case and mobo size is a mojor constraint.
Zalman CNPS8000, MCX64-V, OCZ tempest, or Zalman CNPS7000B.

Shrubba

none of them! they really arent that good! I use a Cooler Master Hyper 48, its alright, but it could be better, the Big Typhoon is GREAT

Whats your budget?

And who said your CPU is great for overclocking? All cpus overclock, some (like the Core 2 Duo's, Opty's and the mythical 3700 Sandy) overclock an incredible amount!

I would recommend going to overclock.net for your cooling/overclocking questions. The forum community is great there, they know what they are talking about and can give you the right advise and be able to show you how far others with the same cpu have pushed theirs.

Yeh - what he said! Overclock.net is my Bible, i learnt pretty much everything i know about Overclocking there!

If you want to overclock, make sure you have decent ram, mobo and PSU (Not wattage - whether its a proper brand as to whether it will fluctuate, sometimes when you overclock you need to add slightly (ie on my 20% overclock, i have to go from 1.5v to 1.55v on the CPU) more volts to "stabilize" the overclock - the last thing you want is for your PSU to go back down to the original voltage!

When you buy a Fan, make sure you get yourself some Arctic Silver 5 paste, its the best on the market (unless you buy Phasechange cooling, which goes into the -'s degrees, but its so expensive i doubt you will, and as with all things there are better, but for rediculous prices as they are for engineering perposes). The paste helps to transfer heat from the CPU to the Fan, and the better the paste the more heat can be transferred, keeping the CPU cool.

EDIT - Silly me, i thought you still had that Xeon - i see you have a 3200 A64 - i take it that its a Venice? i have seen reports of them hitting 3 GHz, which is something my overclocked 4000 will never do! Although, that was far from stable!

Athlons really arent hard to overclock, you just need to understand "the basics" - oh, and check your BIOS for ways of manually changing the vCore voltage, CPU FSB, Multiplier (Should only go down) - if you can do this, then you can overclock. Can't say i know much about eVGA boards though!