yaaay! i finally got some $$ to buy new hardware, heres what i currently have
-amd sempron 2200+
-mushkin black ddr333 512mb
-seagate ata133 120gig
-sapphire radeon 7000 64mb
heres what i got!
-geil ddr400 ram, 1gig
-xfx nvidia mx4000 128mb w/ 500mhz memmory
-thermaltake gpu cooler
-a pretty newegg sticker
-defcon beanie (
www.jinx.com)
after these upgrades i should be ready to hit the games and coding harder than ever! i also bought my girlfriend a new computer for her birthday, its her first computer ever.. here's the specs
-via cpu, 600mhz
-256mb ddr266
-40gig maxtor hdd (jelous, i hate seagate)
-integrated gfx
its not much, but it'll get her humming along nicely....welp, gotta go
cheers
-xteraco
Quote:after these upgrades i should be ready to hit the games and coding harder than ever!
Hmm. Isn't the sempron somewhat of a... well, a bit like what the celeron is to intel?
(I'm not 100% positive, but I thought any geforce MX card was somewhat...stripped down as well)
Yes, but its not too bad, certianly better than a comparable celeron. the mx4000 is a budget card as well, it may be slower bit its cheap. Very cheap.
The ram however i dont know if it was worth it. Does the motherboard even support more than 333mhz? if it does then sure but i would of went with a 512 (you dont have the specs to suffieciently push the 1GB and use it completely.)
Also i heard that seagate make better drives then maxtor.
my amd sempron benchmarks consistantly a few points higher than a 2.0 ghz p4, and my sempron is only 1.5ghz, i bought it cause it keeps really cool, so i can overclock it really high, i've gotten it up to 2.15ghz... at 2.15ghz it outperforms a p4 2.8ghz....
but in short, yes, the sempron is a budget chip, but it definately gets the job done (i bought it outta despiration when i had no $$)
the geforce mx4000 is a budget card, but... it will outperform other cards in higher classes because it has support for dx9 and ogl 1.4.....plus its stock clock speeds are higher than cards in higher classes, for example, this perticular mx4000 will outperform a radeon 9600... why? because its mem speed is 500mhz, and its clock is 275... the radeon 9600 i had's mem speed was 425mhz, and cpu speed was 250mhz.... so, dont look at wheather its a so called "budget" card... the specs is what really matters
as for the ram, once i install this ram, i'll have 1.5gigs of ram, that means i can turn off or at least down the pagefile on winxp, and only use my mem, wich will take a load off my hdd, making it go a bit faster, also, some more demanding games run better w/ more ram, i'm planning on buying 2 more sticks of this stuff.. totaling 3 gigs!
my motherboard supports 3gigs of ddr400 128bit (dual channel)
hey xteraco, nice rig. lemme know how much the sempron heats up under stress. As I understand, the sempron is mainly for mobile applications and its supposed to compete with the celeron.
Quote:as for the ram, once i install this ram, i'll have 1.5gigs of ram, that means i can turn off or at least down the pagefile on winxp, and only use my mem, wich will take a load off my hdd, making it go a bit faster, also, some more demanding games run better w/ more ram, i'm planning on buying 2 more sticks of this stuff.. totaling 3 gigs!
Its a waste of money, 3gigs of ram isnt going to help you run games more than 1.5 GB will. Maybe video editing but thats all it will help with.
I dont beleive that the ,mx4000 will outperform a 9600. First off a 9600 clocks in at a 300mhz core, not 250(actually it has a 325mhz clock, also the 9600se has the same.. the 9550 has the 250 core.) The 9600 also has 400mhz ram , and its really 200mhz dual channel. The mx4000 has a 275mhz core and 200mhz dual channel ramn, your model may have a faster ram chip, but if the actual core cant even keep up with the ram it wont help.(which it cant)
Second the 9600 has better shader support, and better directx 9 support. Also core mhz alone doesnt say alot, the 9600 is based on much better hardware. Third alll the other cards in higher classes suppoer dx9 and pixel shader 2 which your card doesnt support. I dont see how dx9 support makes your card faster then cards in higher classes.
Unless you had a really shitty 9600 the mx4000 will get destroyed every time.
Also your overclocking comparison is unfair. So you can overclock your sempron to 2GHZ. you can overclock the p4 2.0 ghz to 3 and your chip will loose again. Yes the sempron is good deal, but its not meant to be a speed demon.
geez, so negative, ok, here's how i came up w/ the statements.. first of all.. ati blows majorly, and couldnt fight its way outof a paperbag as far as gfx is concerned compared to nvidia... . its like pitting amd vs intel.. yeah sure, the speed of the intel is higher, but amd chips do more operations per clock cycel.. well, think of that in the gfx card world.. nvidia is just simply better.. as far as the speed of gfx card memmory goes, i speek from experiance when i say mem speed is everything.. if you overclock your gpu, you see barely any performance booste, now when you overclock your gfx card memmory, thats where you see a BIG performance boost.. my radeon 9600 that i had, did fit the specs i listed, there are not only 1 specs per card, i prolly got ahold of some dumpy "made in china sweatshop" model, but still, i bought a radeon 7000 64mb w/ faster memmory, and i got a fan and boosted the core and it blows the shit outta my radeon 9600... it doesent have support for some of the effects that the radeon 9600 had .. but the radeon 9600 was so damned slow, it couldnt render any of the fancy effects it had support for anyway....
also, amd will always own intel no matter what
you can overclock your sempron to 2.0ghz, the overclock your intel p4 to 3.0ghz, the you can buy a phase change cooling system and overclock your sempron to 5.0ghz (my friend did it, i saw it for myself) and then the amd sempron will once again own the p4..... but really, you can jump the stupid ghz speeds you want all day, and bottom line, the amd does more ops per clock cycle and the intel just blows crap outta its ass.....
ram: if i have enough ram, i can turn off all virtual mem, and pagefile, and take a load off the ol hdd, i can set aplications to run out of a ramdisk, like big programs.. i can do tons more w/ 3gigs ram than with 512mb... if you run a program outta ramdisk.. your essentially eleminating the bottleneck between your cpu and harddrive... ya know the 150mbps limit... with runnin straight outta ram you get direct and speedy access to the cpu... cant get much faster unless you have raid
good day
-xteraco
Quote:ati blows majorly, and couldnt fight its way outof a paperbag as far as gfx is concerned compared to nvidia
Really? I know nvidia is catching up again, but come on... Do you have technical proof? facts? :-?
Quote:if you overclock your gpu, you see barely any performance boost
Really wow, couldve fooled me. for a 30 mhz boost core i went from 40-60fps to constant 70(no drops, ever). Like i said before if your core cant keep up with the memory its pointless. Granted i also did a 8mhz mem up with that too.(4 mhz dual channel).
Quote: bought a radeon 7000 64mb w/ faster memmory, and i got a fan and boosted the core
Why did you boost the core? mem speed is everything :p
Quote:you can overclock your sempron to 2.0ghz, the overclock your intel p4 to 3.0ghz, the you can buy a phase change cooling system and overclock your sempron to 5.0ghz (my friend did it, i saw it for myself) and then the amd sempron will once again own the p4..... but really, you can jump the stupid ghz speeds you want all day, and bottom line, the amd does more ops per clock cycle and the intel just blows crap outta its ass.....
The pentium M still stands as the best mobile chip out there. It will beat the amd fx-55 at games. I suppose amd is a little jelous that intels little mobile chip beats amds flagship gaming chip huh? THe pentium m does more per clock then an amd.
I buy whatever the better deal is. Amd and Intel both make good chips and niether blows crap out of thier ass.
Same with the nvidia/ati thing. Ati currently has the best high end and best low end graphic cards deals. If you go high or low get an ati. If you go middle ground get then nvidia 6600. But just remember that currently the fastest lone video card goes to ati, and ati has had that title for a long time now. (Nvidia has just been getting hammered everytjime they relaease a new card).
If you want to limit yourself to one camp go ahead, in the meantime ill buy the better deal from either company.
If you want to beat up games go and get some gf6xxx card. Even cheap Manli cards (which we bougt to our gamecenter) are faster than anything nvidia made before. And they are much faster than ATI cards we had here
. I haven't hold some good PCIe card in my hands as we don't have PCIe computers here, but I believe it is even faster.
EDIT:
Regarding software support and overal userfriendlines
nVidia seems to me that hey have more professional attitude. I admit it, I'am nVidia fanboy
and I hope that cooperation of m$ and ATI on XBox2 will make ATI to loose same way as nVidia lost when they teamed up with them :evil:.