I can't believe it but I have had my 2 heavy rigs for over 2 years now. I've been thinking about upgrading.
My plan is to go Dual Core AMD 64
What I will need is Mobo, Chip and video. Everything else, memory, is OK and current.
I think I will go back to the ATI video. I haven't been too impressed with my Nvidia 6800.
Problem lies with the Mobo. I've always been a hardcore ASUS guy but the reviews for the AMD 939 chipset are very bad. What Mobo's do you guys really like?
I will tell you I have done so little with hardware in the last year or so I wouldn't have the foggiest idea. Much like you I have always been with ASUS, but lately they have less than impressed me. I have always been an ATI person, but they haven't impressed me lately either although I will say my 9800 pro pretty much rocks.
I have an Asus mobo (an A7V880), and while the board works fine, I am not impressed with Asus Tech support in the least little bit. They are just plain unresponsive and they rarely do any bios or driver updates. Of course my board is probably older than yours so that may explain some of the lack of updates.
I used to have a chaintech board in my PC. Never had any problems with that and it was good for overclocking. They also rarely did any updates. It was relatively inexpensive though compared to say an Asus board of similar vintage.
If you are going AMD, get an Nvidia NForce board and stick with your Nvidia card. ATI has been lagging behind Nvidia on Driver support for newer games. Nvidia also seems to have a lot of the major games tied up in "exclusive deals". This means they are tweaked for Nvidia.
I understand what Atomm is saying on the video, but that all depends on the game. Battlefield does tend to be more NVidia but other games like Half-Life is more geared for ATI, so that is a dang if you do dang if you don't. The reason I am hesitant of Nvidia is I think about the problems I had with BFV with my NVidia. I ended up backing back down to my ATI to have any performance.
I may be able to get out of this cheaper than I thought. The old hardware troublshooter in me got to thinking and acting. Processing seemed to be on par, but video rendering seemed to be my great setback. I got to digging through my drawer-o-parts and pulled out my old ati 9600 and slapped it in my computer. Fired up BF2 and went strait to warlord. To my surprise I was actually able to play it. This from a card that had been in my drawer for over a year and a half. I tried a few other things that I had issues with and they seemed ok as well. Looks like I will be looking into a new vid card. I'd stick with the 9600 but there was one GREAT drawback. Since it was so old it took 5 minutes to load the map.. :bigshock:
A lot of people have complained about video issues. One suggested fix involved the memory cache on your mobo AGP bios settings. Humor me and play around with it. What is it set to today? Double it. Quadruple it.
Also, what speed is your AGP running at? A 9600 is 4X, but a 6800 is 8x. Sounds to me like you have a bottleneck somewhere in your settings. The shadow rendering leads me to believe it is something other than your card.
If you really hate that 6800, I'll take it off your hands for free. :nerr:
I really think the problem is the video card. It ran fine for the longest time. Heck I really had no problems on SF up until about 3 weeks ago. I noticed some video jumpyness then, but I shrugged it off as "the map" and "rat bastards". 2 weeks ago I started noticing it on more than just one map and blamed it on the "server". Last friday it was just attrocious. I couldn't even begin to play. It was very CHOPPY on everything! To take out a server issue, I played a little bit on single player and such. It was still very choppy. I was going to put the card in my Dell and see how it went there before I jumped out and bought a new card. If i see the same issue. I'm definatly getting a new card.
A lot of people have complained about video issues. One suggested fix involved the memory cache on your mobo AGP bios settings. Humor me and play around with it. What is it set to today? Double it. Quadruple it.
Atomm's gonna have you make a 2Gb Swap next.
I think Atomm is on the right track but I would think the memory has gone south on the card. Of course his ideas you can test. :-)
I know we have some here at work still in our basement. God I remember buying my first soundblaster. I had just bought my first add-on audio card it was an adlib card and was like $200. I got that installed and working. The Wing Commander came out and it required a Sound Blaster to get sound. Apparently much like today Creative had made a deal with the maker of the game so you had to have the soundblaster to get the good sound. Luckily I had just bought the ad-lib so I brought it back and exchanged for a Sound Blaster. I also remember buying my first cd-rom so I could play the 7th guest
What I have read most recently is that regarding the AGP aperature in you bios, the more memory in your card, the less you need from the bios. Generally having the aperature set between 64 and 128 is adequate. Although if you have a lot of system memory and a smalller memory card, you can go higher to 256.
LOL... I was about the 2 or 3 person in the server period last night. I spent a lot of time waiting. I didn't want to be a squad leader since I die too easily, although I do get "benind enemy lines" a lot. :-)
I wonder what I have that is incompatable with WinXP 64Bit? I may install that today and try it out.
I know BF2 is suppose to work I think. I've googled it and many were happy.
I am running an Athlon 2400+, 1 GB DDR RAM, A Maxtor 250GB Serial ATA Hard Disk with 16mb cache, and an ATI 9600 128MB video card. Those are the essentials. I think the age of my Video card is starting to show, but I probably get in game faster because I just did a clean XP install about a month ago.
Also, the Soundblaster Audigy that I have takes a significant percentage of the load off of the processor for audio - something like 10-12%. Between that and all of the other optimizations, I think that they all add up to slightly quicker loadtimes, and a few frames here and there 🙂
Raze wrote:looks like I may need to go back to 32bit windows. BFV has random lockups :-( CanSet up a duel boot. You can use your 64 bit as is now but fall back to 32 for mission critical items.
well. I went back to 32 bit and low and behold after 10 minutes the crazy game hardlocked again. windows still responds fine, it is just the game. So I googled and the first thing that comes up is an incompatability with the nforce chipset and punkbuster. what a crock. I haven't tried to manual update my PB yet. I bet I went through over a thousand posts on one site alone that complained about this. THe bigger issue is, it just isn't BFV, it is BF42, quake .. and many other games using PB that is having the same problems. It doesn't matter if you run an NVidia video or ATI. I'm surprised I haven't seen it yet in BF2. :-( Now that I think of it, I have a friend with the same problem, he has a 6600GT on the nforce chipset. argh!.
I decided, "screw Nvidia". I found a mobo online that I liked so I'm going to swap out. This is the part I hate about upgrading. Although on paper, everything says it it compatable, go to AMD and it is on the compatable list. I'm not sure who is the offending person, PB, or Nvidia. I think it is kinda funny that EA has a program based on NVidia tech, to have a 3rd party add-on that breaks it. :-)
I guess you could say the I have purchased my last NProduct. :roll:
Raze wrote:looks like I may need to go back to 32bit windows. BFV has random lockups :-( CanSet up a duel boot. You can use your 64 bit as is now but fall back to 32 for mission critical items.
I see the quick reply had a hiccup 😉
Raze, that is weird man. Why would PB be upset about hardware to the point of not working at all? I also cannot believe they have not fixed that yet.
I've seen this problem before with AMD. Racer (old GRB) had an AMD 1.2. I believe it was Ghost Recon had all sorts of problems with his system and it was the chipset causing the problem as well. It took forever for them to come out with a fix.
Honestly, I've several chipset problems with AMD. It's the reason I spend a little more money and go with Intel.
I have never owned an AMD product so cannot judge. I am really happy they are out there, competition is good!
I just always like the stability of Intel. AMD has some great stuff though and I have nothing against them from a personal experience.. Intel seems to have better heat throttle back support etc.. AMDâs are historically bad with heat problems.
I have run both, I like the speed and price of AMD. But in the recent past I have gone back to Intel. They are easier to cool thus making them quieter. Once upon a time I only ran Intel because Autocad stunk on AMD.
Only ran Intel once, no Now that I think of it it was an IBM Blue Streak. I have owned 2 AMD's a K6 and my current Barton Core 2800+. Now AMD is kicking Intels but in the dual cores. Well not kicking butt, but from what I've read AMD's Arcitecture is much better for thru put. Would love to get an AMD FX64 Dual core but it's priced at over a grand for the processor alone. Try a Celron for yur cad ops bubba! that'l surely make ya crash.
No one in their right mind would EVER use a celeron processor! That is like me, being 6'4", driving an escort. 😉
I have always had very stable systems. I very rarely have issues with my systems and if I do it is usually software. I did have one MB just die on me but it was not the CPU. 😉
lol, I had a celeron when they first came out. I had one of those that ran better than the regular P3. I believe mine was a 400 that I had overclocked with no problems to 550. that was a good chip. Still going today in a computer that I made from spare parts and gave to my nephew.
OK, I seem to be back in buisness. I was able to run BFV for an hour before it CTD on me. THat is much more than total lockup in less than 5 minutes. The CTD could be due to me running XP 64bit. I am installing BF2 right now. If tomorrow doesn't go well it is back to 32bit XP.
Why don't you just set up a duel boot system with 64 and 32 bit OS's versions? Boot into 32 for games. The use your 64 for normal tasks. You are not gaining anything game wise by running that on 64.
Actually having a 32 just for games would help as you can then keep that as bare as possible.