i was thinking of upgrading my pc with about £150 worth of stuff, i currently have:
2800+ AMD Athlon
1 Gb of some generic PC3200 DDR400 RAM
ATi 9600XT (256 Mb version)
All this is plugging into an Asus A7N8X-X (the A7N8X-E Deluxes little brother)

None of it is massively oc'ed, but i thought the "weak link" was the video card (LFS is GFX limited on my machine), if the mobo is a problem, there is the A7N8X-Deluxe in the house going free, but last time it was used it melted its self!

So, what do you think would be the next port of call for an upgrade should be?

Quote from Jakg :

i was thinking of upgrading my pc with about £150 worth of stuff, i currently have:
2800+ AMD Athlon
1 Gb of some generic PC3200 DDR400 RAM
ATi 9600XT (256 Mb version)
All this is plugging into an Asus A7N8X-X (the A7N8X-E Deluxes little brother)

None of it is massively oc'ed, but i thought the "weak link" was the video card (LFS is GFX limited on my machine), if the mobo is a problem, there is the A7N8X-Deluxe in the house going free, but last time it was used it melted its self!

So, what do you think would be the next port of call for an upgrade should be?

Definately a graphic card upgrade.Look here:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatalog/6600AGP_Series.html

A 6800GS AGP would be nice upgrade.A better would be going for some PCIe motherboard and AMD A64 and 7600GT but thats a huge upgrade and worth more then 150 GBP.

I disagree, the 9600xt is a reasonable card , what fps are you getting Jakg? , any stability issues?
the deluxe has dual channel but your mobo does not ,and your ram is it running at 400Mhz? I have personally had some of the A7N8X-X fail to run at 400Mhz due to poor NB cooling , but if you are after more FPS maybe an athlon64 cpu and mobo could be the way to go , maybe a little over your buget tho.

SD.

Yeah, I'm running an Athlon XP 3000+ and without AA and AF, I saw absolutely 0 performance gain between a GF 4600 and GF 6800GT. With AA and AF is a different story. Your card should be able to run LFS with that stuff on just fine, though.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I'd save your £150 and wait until you can do a more PC-wide upgrade. The bits you've got there are quite well matched so you might as well be thinking about upgrading to an A64 machine with PCIE in the future rather than improving that box.

I agree with him ^^^

I would Save your money and upgrade your CPU to an AMD64 CPU you wil get a much better performance boost then upgrading what u got now. Of course it will cost more since u will need a New Cpu/Motherboard/Video card (if u go PCI-E)/ & maybe ram. But its Worth it!

Ciao

hmmmm, would a 9800 XT be a good buy for £110? or would i be better getting an AGP 6800?

EDIT - Hmmmm http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMD-FX-5 ... ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Now i need a new mobo and GFX card!

Quote from Jakg :

i was thinking of upgrading my pc with about £150 worth of stuff, i currently have:
2800+ AMD Athlon
1 Gb of some generic PC3200 DDR400 RAM
ATi 9600XT (256 Mb version)
All this is plugging into an Asus A7N8X-X (the A7N8X-E Deluxes little brother)

None of it is massively oc'ed, but i thought the "weak link" was the video card (LFS is GFX limited on my machine), if the mobo is a problem, there is the A7N8X-Deluxe in the house going free, but last time it was used it melted its self!

So, what do you think would be the next port of call for an upgrade should be?

Hi Jakg,

I would be interested in seeing what FPS you get with that Rig. I have a Semp 3000, FX5500 256mb AGP card, and 1.5gb Ram PC3200 running at 400mhz. I am only running 4x AGP as card is buggered and I get artifacts when running at x8 AGP, and I clock a healthy 60-80 FPS. on Full grid , this drops to 25-30fps, all detail maxed out.

I always thought the XT cards where good cards

Quote from Jakg :

hmmmm, would a 9800 XT be a good buy for £110? or would i be better getting an AGP 6800?

EDIT - Hmmmm http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/AMD-FX-5 ... ZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Now i need a new mobo and GFX card!

Nope dont buy a 9800XT, defo not for that money. A 6600gt beats it by a long way so a 6800 will too. Dont bother with older-gen cards now if you can afford it

Quote from Fordman :

Hi Jakg,

I would be interested in seeing what FPS you get with that Rig. I have a Semp 3000, FX5500 256mb AGP card, and 1.5gb Ram PC3200 running at 400mhz. I am only running 4x AGP as card is buggered and I get artifacts when running at x8 AGP, and I clock a healthy 60-80 FPS. on Full grid , this drops to 25-30fps, all detail maxed out.

I always thought the XT cards where good cards

always run fulll options, 4AF & 4AA, get 40-80, although normally 60-80 FPS, but then i have every custom DDS, sky and reflection texture known to man! Runs AGP x8 fine, full grid never seems to affect me (although i dont spend much time checking!)

NOTE TO SELF - Must benchmark PC for future reference!

Quote from Jakg :

always run fulll options, 4AF & 4AA, get 40-80, although normally 60-80 FPS, but then i have every custom DDS, sky and reflection texture known to man! Runs AGP x8 fine, full grid never seems to affect me (although i dont spend much time checking!)

NOTE TO SELF - Must benchmark PC for future reference!

Not sure why you want to upgrade then atm, seems a very stable and quick system to me. Hold onto the money, and buy some VVP pedals instead

Quote from Fordman :

Not sure why you want to upgrade then atm, seems a very stable and quick system to me. Hold onto the money, and buy some VVP pedals instead

vvp? im using the (now fixed!) Momo pedals, and a squeaky set of Microsoft ones! I love the ECCI ones, but i have better uses for £170!

Quote from Jakg :

squeaky set of Microsoft ones!

Get some WD40 in there, or better still GT40. Get Gt40 from Halfords.