Just wondering if anyone cares to speculate on what is currently holding my system back the most. None of its state of the art as I spend as little as possible on my system. Infact the only bit I've brought in the last year or two for it was the video card. I have a few quid spare so would like to increase framerates in more demanding games.

Specs:

Asus A7V8X Mobo
Athlon 3000, running at ~3300 speeds
1GB DDR333 Ram
Geforce 6600GT 128MB
2x 80GB ATA133 HD's, 7200rpm, 16mb cache

Framrates in most games are very good, but with the settings up high enough it will start to stutter a bit. The gfx card also has a mild o/c done, and has NGO drivers.

probably the cpu

You have slow graphic card for most demanding games like Fear,Oblivion etc.
How much you willing to spend?
The processor is not the fastest as well.

You have not my choice to upgrade as there is no much fastet CPU to your socket avaible and quite costy if you find some.
The graphic cards for AGP are hard to spot nowdays with PCI-E bus.

NVDIA 7800GS for AGP - cheapest around 271 Eruo and would handle all games probably with max settings but your CPU would probably bottelneck this card.

Gainward 7814-Bliss 6800GS AGP TV-DVI GS 256MB - Around 190Euros - quite a good choice.

HIS Excalibur X850Pro VIVO 256MB AGP - around 220 euros and a really bit faster then the 6800GS.Doesnt support Shaders 3.0 however as the cards above.

I'm willing to spend as little as possible Realistically my budget is £100 or so. I know nothings particually brilliant about my system, just the main nagging bit is how it will maintain a high framerate, but stutter once in a while. E.g. Doom 3, I run it on very high settings, no framerate problem. But when I walk through a door, it stutters a lot. I walk around a corner, it stutters a bit. Very annoying.

sounds like a fairly balanced system as is.

I have a fairly similar system (XP3000+, ASUS A7N8X, 512MB PC3200, 6800GT 128MB) and also get the stuttering when entering a new room in games like HL2. I always thought I just needed more system RAM but since you have the same problem I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there's too little RAM on the video card.

To answer your question, your system bottleneck under LFS is (almost) always going to be your CPU. Most other games require a good video card paired with a decent CPU. I have suspected for a while, however, that my system is CPU limited in most games these days.

If you wanted to play games on high, you'd need a new video card. The 6600GT is a fast card, but it is limited by the amount of onboard ram it has. I have the same card and was considering upgrading, but I realized BF2 looks fine on medium ;P

Quote from Forbin :

I have a fairly similar system (XP3000+, ASUS A7N8X, 512MB PC3200, 6800GT 128MB) and also get the stuttering when entering a new room in games like HL2. I always thought I just needed more system RAM but since you have the same problem I'm beginning to wonder if maybe there's too little RAM on the video card.

Hmm..before I have uphraded to my current 7900GT card I had GF6600@ 400/600Mhz and I had no stuttering in Doom3.
My system spec are:
AMD A643200+
2x512MB RAM DDR400.
120GB HD 8MB cache 7200rpm.

I am thinking towards the CPU might be bottleneck for him because his graphic card is faster then my GF6600 which run Doom3 fine with max settings at 1024*768.

Quote from Rtsbasic :

I'm willing to spend as little as possible Realistically my budget is £100 or so.

100GBP is not enought to upgrade decently something.I would save the money for next upgrade.100GBP later might be quite handy

Hmm. Sounds like its going to be rather costly to upgrade. At the min I can't really justify spending a big amount of money on it, games aren't worth that much to me. Maybe I should just spend the money on a new TFT instead. My 17" CRT is starting to whistle to me in the mornings.

Might buy a new heatsink for my cpu, I've taken it much further overclocking and it was fine until summer came, I've had to bring it down to keep the heat reasonable. I can't justify buying a new motherboard & cpu at the min for a marginal performance increase.

For 100 quid you might be able to get away with upgrading the RAM to DDR400 (if your mobo/CPU supports it), but I'd save the money for a bigger upgrade in a while yet. The RAM will only make a teeny difference really, but would be under a £100.

My retro motherboard only supports DDR400 for 1 stick. Infact I think one of my 512mb stick is DDR400, but its brought down to 333 by the other stick.

I'm not really going to have much money free after the coming weeks, thanks to buying a car, and having over £1,000 to pay for my college fees for the next 6 months. Maybe when I get my emergency tax credited back I could spare enough for a mobo/cpu upgrade

if you're games struggle when you turn up the graphics detail - it's pretty damn likely to be the graphics card holding it back

I'm going to agree with other people here and say the video card definately doesn't have enough memory... I've got a 256mb 5600XT and that works fine for me if I set the details down on games (COD2, CSS, HL2 etc etc). Won't play BF2 without oodles of lag tho lol I've given up upgrading mine and am saving towards a brand new system hopefully by March '07 (well you never know!) So that's what I'm doing... but if I was going to upgrade your system I would start with the video card. Perhaps consider something with 256 or 512MB ram? Although really a decent card is gonna set you back £150

Anyways hope that helps, there's loads of advice from everyone here so just pick what you think works out best

Thanks for all the advice guys. What I'm probably going to do is when I get my emergency tax back just get a new mobo/cpu/vid card and maybe ram.

What equipment would you recommend I upgrade to if the budget was raised to say £350?

Quote from Rtsbasic :

What equipment would you recommend I upgrade to if the budget was raised to say £350?

Motherboard:
M/B MSI K8N Neo4-F, nForce4, skt.939, DualDDR, PCI-E = around 45GBP

CPU:
You have 2 options:
Either more mhz with single core
AMD Athlon 64 3800+(2.4Ghz) = around 75-80GBP

or go with dual core but nowdays still not many games can utilize 2 cores.Looking that you might use this system longer time then this dual core:
AMD A64 X2 3800+(2Ghz) = around 100-110GBP
can be easily clocked to around 2.4Ghz

Graphic card:
VGA ASUS EN7900GT/2DHT/256MB DDR3 = cost here around 190GBP
or
VGA Leadtek WF PX7600GT Extreme 256MB HDTV = around 140GBP

Another options would be go to AMD2 socket instead of AMD 939 socket but then you would have to definatelly exchange also RAM as AMD socket only support DDR2 memory.
Quick list almost at same pricing of Motherboard+CPU for AMD2.
MB MSI K9N Neo-F, nForce 550, DDR2, GbE, SATA-II, RAID
AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (socket AM2) Box
or
AMD A64 X2 3800+ (socket AM2) Box

If you would sell all the above you are going to replace you could buy pretty decent 2Gb of RAM.Will be quite handy for upcoming games.

When you exactly going to buy these new parts? There will be annoucement of new graphic card from Ati around the 2x August so some cards like ATI X1900GT will fall down at price close to the Leadtek card above.X1900GT has almost identical perfomance as NVIDIA 7900GT.All gprahic cards then will fall down a lot.I would wait a bit probably to the start/middle of the Septmeber when the all prices of graphic cards wil drop.
One very important things is we dont know how much powerfull is your PSU.How much Amper it has on 12v rail?

When you are going to buy later then you cant follow really my suggestion a lot as the pricing will change again.Hope this all help.

Thanks for the detailed post, was more than I was hoping for I will have spare money at the end of August for it if all goes well, so purchases will be done sometime in Sept.

My PSU I did last year, its a 650W, can't remeber the number of amps for the 12v rail, I'll have to check that.

Quote from Rtsbasic :

Thanks for the detailed post, hope than I was hoping for I will have spare money at the end of August for it if all goes well, so purchases will be done sometime in Sept.

My PSU I did last year, its a 650W, can't remeber the number of amps for the 12v rail, I'll have to check that.

You are welcome .
I would still try to go rather with AMD2 socket option even it mean replacing your ram to DDR2 version(I know its another money to spend ).Probably seeling the parts you are going to replace would cover the cost of the new DDR2 memory.

The socket 939 is going to be discontinued soon(aproximetly 1/2 year) so there would be no possibility in future to upgrade the CPU if needed.
AMD2 socket will be here probably another 2-3years.

I wanted to add this because I think its always wise to think a bit about the future when upgrading PC.

The PSU seems to have enough power but nowdays manfactures put big WAT on PSU which is not true with the cheap brands but the 12V rail(s) are more important because pc componets nowdays draw most power from this 12v rail exactly.Still the 650W even being some cheap could output at least 30-40A on 12V rail.

Good luck.

The PSU wasn't exactly cheap, so hopefully it will put out sufficent power

If the price is right I will try to go for the AMD2, future expandability is always nice. I've been using my current mobo and ram since 2002 I think, its seen 3 different processors. Suprisingly my Deathstar (IBM) drive has been ticking along since 2003 without so much as a burp.

Nice to see my current proc & gfx card have held their value well. Infact it looks like I could sell the processor for more than I originally paid for it..and the gfx card only a tenner less..even the mobo only £10 less than what I originally paid..maybe I'm good at getting bargains

Don't buy a Athlon64! The new Intel Core2Duo is MUCH faster than the Athlons!
Buy a Core2Duo E6400 and you will have long time fun with that CPU!

...until the new AMD's come out which will have to beat the conroe's, if not it will give them a LOT of bad press and ruin their reputation of the enthusiasts choice

Thanks for the info Quint. The memory is running in dual channel, and I have had a play with the memory timings in the bios, and its all okay.

Right, I now wish to purchase (build) a new system. I have around £450 or so in my pocket to do it with. I want it to be brilliant for games, and be a bit future proof'ed. I am thinking something along the lines of a 7900GT (£200 approx), AM2 socket 4200 X2 (£130), Motherboard (Gigabyte AM2 nForce 430 MATX, £60), 1GB DDR2 333 (£40), SATA hard disk (Maxtor Diamondmax 250GB 7200rpm, £50). What, if anything, would you do differently? I don't want to assemble a new system with an uber graphics card, and have it held back by something silly like the ram or HD.

Btw, I got one of these today. Nice display, although in serious sam 2 I can notice a small bit of ghosting compared to my old CRT when moving around pretty fast. Image is much sharper though in general use and mostly in games. And bigger

Im now making my self a pci-e system here are the specs:

AMD 3700+ 64 san diego

Asus A8N-SLi SE nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express

Nvidia 7600gt 256MB pci-e

in all it is going to cost me £195

That'll be good for gaming. Make sure you use a quality PSU though, if it can't handle much on the 12v rail you could end up with stability issues.

Btw in the end I brought a pre-built base system because a local shop had it sitting there for a great price. Athlon64 3400 939, 550W PSU, 200gb HD, 1GB ram, ATI chipset mobo, phillips dvd burner, then usual bits, £180. Added a 7300GT £130, fitted a slightly better HSF, had a play with the clockspeeds, well chuffed. Oh and put that Digimate screen on my other pc and got a better quality Sony, its much nicer for gaming.