I had an AMD Athlon64 3000+ and a nVidia GeForce 6800 GT 256MB system untop of a MSI motherboard and a 550W PSU. I since gave away that system to a friend of mine who was using it for web surfing and then broke it ... (No big deal, I did give him the computer.)

I've been using my laptop (A IBM Lenovo Thinkpad Z61m) as my main computer for EVERYTHING for the past 4 years. This is from doing homework assignments to programming the LFSWorldSDK and PHPInSimMod (PRISM). While not a very good gaming computer it will quite happly play any DX8.1 game and can handle LFS pretty well at 1280x800 with pretty hard core slow downs when more then 6 cars are on screen at once.

I was given a desktop by my sister who is no longer using it, so I thought I would spend some cash and make it into a computer that is good enough to play some DX9 games. Live For Speed being the main thing that I wish to run, but Test Drive Unlimited (The first one) being the other. It as an AGP 8x slot that's empty and only has one hard drive. The motherboard seems to be a Foxcon ATX board but I'm having problems pinning down it's model. The system rounds it self out with 1 GB of DDR2 PC2-4600, but that can be upgraded to 2 GB of DDR2 PC2-6400 and lastly we have a no name 300 Watt ATX PSU.

To upgrade this system to handle some of the light gaming I'm going to throw at it, I plan on getting a HIS Radeon HD 4670 1GB GPU and upgrading the PSU to a PC Power and Cooling Silencer Mk II 750W. After I make my next system build this will be used a server for media and video encoding (so the 320 stream processors in the GPU are pretty important.)

What do you think of the upgrade path?

i think those parts are overkill for an old system, especially the power supply...

What CPU does it have?

I recommend you sell all those parts, and get proper parts, AGP is ancient history,you better not spend any money on that anymore, look at me, even I went onto PCI-E, and the whole kit didn't cost me much, only about 75 bucks.
And my system can run LFS with no problem, and TDU works with minor lags at some places, here's my rig:
Motherboard: ASUS P5GDC Deluxe(Good this about this mobo is, that it runs both, DDR and DDR2)
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 540 (It's a 1 core CPU with Hyper-Threading, so it virtually has 2 cores)
RAM: 512 MB DDR(DDR2 is cheaper and better then DDR, but I had that before)
GFX: nVidia GeForce 6600 256 MB DDR
PSU: Fortron 350w(That's more then enough, because Fortron makes quality PSU-s)

And I am pretty sure that you can get parts similiar to those even cheaper in america, so you can get better parts for the same price.

Bunder, I agree again, but once it's retried it's going to be used as a media center server, so it's going to have ALOT of hard drives attached to it. (Think in the order of 6 - 8 HDDs) that and I expect the system to encode video so I see that as a pretty safe reason to have not only a gnarly GPU but also a cock diesel PSU. The PSU will be taken out once I make my new computer about a year down the line and replaced with a lower watt unit.

I guess I could just build a vespa for less then the price of this upgrade.

Shiny, that would be a Prescott P4, 3.0 GHz.

I think that with the GPU upgrade the aging Prescott would run circles around BMW's system tho.

And I agree with pretty much everything all of you are saying, for the most part the system is not really worth upgrading. Problem A is that I don't have enough money to buy a new system, problem B is that I will need a media server pretty soon with all of digital media that I have ...

Here's the CUPID dump on the system.

Quote from Dygear :

Bunder, I agree again, but once it's retried it's going to be used as a media center server, so it's going to have ALOT of hard drives attached to it. (Think in the order of 6 - 8 HDDs) that and I expect the system to encode video so I see that as a pretty safe reason to have not only a gnarly GPU but also a cock diesel PSU. The PSU will be taken out once I make my new computer about a year down the line and replaced with a lower watt unit.

Shiny, that would be a Prescott P4, 3.0 GHz.

I think that with the GPU upgrade the aging Prescott would run circles around BMW's system tho.

And I agree with pretty much everything all of you are saying, for the most part the system is not really worth upgrading. Problem A is that I don't have enough money to buy a new system, problem B is that I will need a media server pretty soon with all of digital media that I have ...

well, in that case... the power supply is worth it then. i have a prescott 3.0E with a 4 disk raid array in it being used as my PVR backend, powered by a 650W kingwin power supply.

i still wouldn't worry about the GPU. the video encoding will most likely be done by the tuner card, or by the CPU (software)...

edit: being AGP8x, it won't be as good as anything PCI-E can dish out... if you really need a card, i'd just use some 128mb piece of crap.

just to add to the thread. the best/newest nvidia card (agp) is the 7900GS 256mb

That's a pretty good CPU, and spending up to $100 on a good AGP video card isn't such a bad idea. It will definitely inject some life into it for the time being.

Lies. The 6800GT was offered in both AGP and PCI-E.

Quote from bunder9999 :

i still wouldn't worry about the GPU. the video encoding will most likely be done by the tuner card, or by the CPU (software)...

What about DVD encodes?

Quote from dadge :

just to add to the thread. the best/newest nvidia card (agp) is the 7900GS 256mb

[edit]You can use the higheracy table from here to see how much more powerful my old 6800 GT is compared to the 4670 or the 7900GS.[/edit]
I had benchmark stats before that I can't find. They where from Tom's Hardware back in like 2008 showing the ATi Readon 4670 & ATi Readon 3850 was the fastest AGP cards out there, they even include tips on how the handle the aging system. They also had a table showing what cards where faster then the others ... But like I said I can't find that anywhere. Starslicer on the AMD forums d ... cards side by side also, with many people suggesting that they are pretty much equal and you should buy what ever one you can find cheaper. However, it is known that the ATI Radeon HD 4670 provides some pretty shocking performance for it's price point.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

That's a pretty good CPU, and spending up to $100 on a good AGP video card isn't such a bad idea. It will definitely inject some life into it for the time being.

Would not kill me to do a tiny upgrade on the CPU also, the motherboard should support that just fine ... But I'd love to swap the whole thing out with the fastest APG board that I can find with SATA 6gbps controllers and an AMD socket so I can put a really low thermal unit in there.

Quote from Forbin :

Lies. The 6800GT was offered in both AGP and PCI-E.

I'm pretty sure your right, I think the 6800GT was the first nVidia graphics card to be both AGP & PCI-E.

Quote from Dygear :

...

i said best/newest nvidia agp.......

Quote from dadge :

i said best/newest nvidia agp.......

Got ya.

So nVidia's fastest AGP chip is the GeForce 7900GS 256MiB.
Where as AMD / ATi's fastest AGP chip is the Radeon HD 4670 1GiB.

Quote from Dygear :

Would not kill me to do a tiny upgrade on the CPU also, the motherboard should support that just fine ... But I'd love to swap the whole thing out with the fastest APG board that I can find with SATA 6gbps controllers and an AMD socket so I can put a really low thermal unit in there.

I strongly discourage you from doing any of that. I did that once, it was the biggest waste of money ever. I wish I had bought a new computer altogether. If you buy the fastest AGP board ever, you will be disappointed. Trust me. Don't waste your money. Get something new.

Quote from Dygear :

What about DVD encodes?

as in creating your own dvd rips? that'll probably be done in software too, unless you're using some super special setup that allows you to use physx or similar. that stuff's still kinda new.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

I strongly discourage you from doing any of that. I did that once, it was the biggest waste of money ever. I wish I had bought a new computer altogether. If you buy the fastest AGP board ever, you will be disappointed. Trust me. Don't waste your money. Get something new.

It would just be for bragging rights at this point. "I've got the fastest AGP system ... in the world!" (In Jeremy Clarkson Voice.)

Quote from bunder9999 :

as in creating your own dvd rips? that'll probably be done in software too, unless you're using some super special setup that allows you to use physx or similar. that stuff's still kinda new.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking ... There are programs out there that allow you to leverage the power of your GPU to encode video.

Dygear asked for specs on my PVR setup, so here it is...

Asus P4P800-E Deluxe
Prescott 3.0E
2GB Corsair Value Select DDR400 (4x512)
some Hitachi 80GB SATA drive for the OS
4x Western Digital Caviar SE 250GB IDE133
2x Leadtek WinFast TV2000 XP RM (software) tuners
2x Creative SBLive sound cards (one for each tuner)
Nvidia MX440 AGP (because there's no onboard)

I originally bought this machine years ago as a gaming machine, but it became my PVR because it was the most powerful machine I had at the time. It was originally fitted with a XFX 6600GT, and a 400W power supply. (The power supply recently failed [I was overloading it, can I blame it?], I mentioned it in another thread)

It runs gentoo linux and the mythtv PVR software.

As configured, recording from one tuner uses about 20% of one logical CPU. It can record two shows, and commflag another quite easily. Watching a recorded show consumes <2% CPU. RAM usage is minimal. I could probably get away with putting 128MB in it.

An "hour" (after transcoding out the commercials) of recording takes up about 600MB.

It's a rock solid machine, now that it has a 600W power supply. I'd consider getting another tuner if I had another PCI slot for the sound card. (Sure, I could go with hardware tuners, but I was cheap)

If I were to upgrade this machine, an i3 would probably be complete overkill.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

I strongly discourage you from doing any of that. I did that once, it was the biggest waste of money ever. I wish I had bought a new computer altogether. If you buy the fastest AGP board ever, you will be disappointed. Trust me. Don't waste your money. Get something new.

I went ahead with what you said. I'll keep the CPU but in the 4670 and cross my fingers. I also went with a much lower watt power supply for now as it only has one hard drive to worry about at the moment.

I think I'm going to build the system around my girlfriends birthday, I'm sure she will be thrilled.

Quote from bunder9999 :

It runs gentoo linux and the mythtv PVR software.

As configured, recording from one tuner uses about 20% of one logical CPU. It can record two shows, and commflag another quite easily. Watching a recorded show consumes <2% CPU. RAM usage is minimal. I could probably get away with putting 128MB in it.


If I were to upgrade this machine, an i3 would probably be complete overkill.

Great information, thanks. As I have 1GB currently in the system, I might hold off on the 2GB upgrade ... But Windows XP runs so very well when you have over a gig of RAM in it. (That and dual cores too ...)

Quote from Dygear :

I went ahead with what you said. I'll keep the CPU but in the 4670 and cross my fingers. I also went with a much lower watt power supply for now as it only has one hard drive to worry about at the moment.
)

Great choice, just wanted to say that the system will will only draw around 200W even with that prescott.

Quote from RevengeR :

Great choice, just wanted to say that the system will will only draw around 200W even with that prescott.

I did some maths!

Intel Pentium 4 Prescott (115 Watts)
Motherboard (40 Watts Typical)
ATI Radeon HD 4670 (70 Watts)
1GB DDR2 RAM (2.025 Watts Typical, Each)
DVD-RW (30 Watts Typical)
7200 RPM 3.5" HDD (30 Watts Typical, Each)

375 Watts, if I'm using everything at once. So that really puts me around 345 Watts when I'm gaming or ~90% of maximum, and that will be fine.

Can you let us know what kind of performance boost this upgrade will give you? I've always wondered if those AGP Radeons actually do anything for an old system.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

Can you let us know what kind of performance boost this upgrade will give you? I've always wondered if those AGP Radeons actually do anything for an old system.

Sure ... Would you like some benchmarks before and after? Do you have an area that you would like me to test in?

I think I'll test with PC Mark, 3D Mark, 3DS Max*, LFS, TDU (1 & 2), Half Life 2, Warzone 2100, GalCiv 2 and some Video Rendering software that will take advantage of the Stream Processors when they become available. That should cover all of the basics. (Base system score, 3d graphics score, rendering time & video rendering time.)

*If I can find my old license.

To tell you the truth I'm not really interested in synthetic benchmarks (other ppl might be though). I just wanna know the fps before and after in games, such as Half-Life 2, LFS, and Mafia 2 if possible lol. Thanks!

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

Mafia 2

Don't have that, but if I can find the demo I'll use that. If I can find a Demo of Star Trek Online I'll add that in too

The Mafia 2 Demo was on Steam, it should still be there I think.

False alarm, I got hold of the system today and I was switching out the PSU and was doing a general clean and run down of the system. It has a PCIe 16x port on it. I'm pretty happy with this now, going to get a SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 5670 512MB 128-bit DDR5. Making my total upgrade price around ~$160 to make this system game ready at a very decent level for some light gaming. I'll report do the benchmarks on this when I get some termal paste on the CPU as I took all of that off and cleaned the whole system with a can of compressed air.