Next Upgrade?
Ok i recently bought a new graphics card, a His HD 2600XT 512Mb GDDR3 IceQ Turbo (830Mhz Core/1860 Mhz Memory) and to be honest it couldnt be better, but as before my graphics was holding back my rig, now its the CPU. I have a AMD Sempron 3000+ OC'd to 2070 Mhz (1800 Stock) which is very stable. 1gb of RAM also, which im upgrading to 1.5Gb before the end of the week wink.gif.
But im convinced the CPU is the week link, but the only uprade is the rare Athlon 64's, only seen them on ebay for around £50 (socket 754 you see) Complete System Specs:
Abit NV8, Nforce4 chipset. Socket 754 AMD Sempron 3000+ (2.1Ghz) 1Gb DDR Pc3200 (1.5 by friday) His HD 2600XT 512Mb GDDR3 IceQ Turbo 160Gb WD HDD 7200RPM
My dilema is, do i spend 50 quid on an Athlon, something around 2.4Ghz with a much more impressive 1Mb L2 as opposed to the 128kb ive got at the moment? Will i see a better performance increase from another HDD in RAID0 (about 30 quid), or should i ditch the motherboard, RAM and CPU and get a dual core and some DDR2 (in the region of 200 quid) Basically i not ever used RAID, this is my first computer i know about in detail, i dont know much about what kind of performance impact the L2 cache has (their really small in the grand scheme, but CPU's with bigger caches tend to cost more, so are they worth it?) and to be honest i dont think DDR2 has that much over DDR. So anyone been here, or know which upgrade will get me the most bang for the buck. I will tell you i get 30 quid a month lol, but if i can referee some games that will go up, so i should be able to make 45-60 quid in a month, bear that in mind, that it would take me until about april (what with xmas and all) to get the DDR2 and dual core i was onnabout.
PureEvil wrote: But im convinced the CPU is the week link, but the only uprade is the rare Athlon 64's, only seen them on ebay for around £50 (socket 754 you see)
My dilema is, do i spend 50 quid on an Athlon, something around 2.4Ghz with a much more impressive 1Mb L2 as opposed to the 128kb ive got at the moment?
Athlon 64's still come in decent speeds; look for a 2.8Ghz.
Will i see a better performance increase from another HDD in RAID0 (about 30 quid), or should i ditch the motherboard, RAM and CPU and get a dual core and some DDR2 (in the region of 200 quid)
That is a loaded question. First off, you will not see a performance increase from RAID0; striping only extends the space across the HDDs you have (combining them). There are really no performance benefits; performance relies upon the access speeds of the HDDs (IDE, SATA).
If you can afford to swap out for a dual-core and DDR2, then I'd say do so; in that case, get an AMD Athlon 64 X2 and rock on. If you can't really afford to switch, don't worry about it; most people won't notice a GREAT difference between single-core and dual-core.
i dont know much about what kind of performance impact the L2 cache has (their really small in the grand scheme, but CPU's with bigger caches tend to cost more, so are they worth it?) and to be honest i dont think DDR2 has that much over DDR.
Okay, if it helps, think of the L2 cache as the fastest performance "memory" your computer will ever have. Since it's on the CPU chip, you get awesome access speeds from it. In other words, a bigger L2 cache is better. For that matter, FSB (front-side bus) speeds are important, too, for a similar reason.
As for DDR vs DDR2, DDR2 is better, but you can do without for now.
Just manage what you can… if it's too much of a stretch to get dual-core, DDR2, etc., then don't. The world won't end.
Zephyr, thanks for the help, ive not seen an Athlon64 at 2.8Ghz, i have to rely on what comes up on ebay, socket 754 is a pain in the ass to be fair. As for RAID0 you do get increased perfromance, not in the sence that your computer will run faster, but will load things such as textures faster, i do alot of gaming so this is of concern for me. As for the caches, i figured the bigger the better, but would i be better off with a 2.8Ghz with a 512kb L2, or say a 2.4 with a 1024kb L2?