Heh, I love harrasing you guys about this

Alright, here's the beef.... again :biggrin:

AMD Duron 800
Abit NF7-S motherboard
Crucial 256mb DDR 333
Jaton GeForce4 64mb MX440 w/TV out PCI
Western Digital 18.9gig 7200rpm HDD
LG 52x24x52x /16x CD-RW/DVD combo
Windows ME

I have been playing some games recently and well, I think I need an upgrade somewhere. Mind you cash is limited.

When I run Splinter Cell at 640*480 res with almost everything medium, the game lags, but the HDD red light dosent come on, so I dont think its a lack of memory there. Probably CPU power. Also, the sound sometimes gets choppy. the NF7-S mobo comes with NForce integrated sound so I think again the lower CPU is causing the sound to be choppy.

Breed runs laggy and the HDD light is constantly on, need more ram? The minimum for that game is a 32mb vid card, recommended 64, which is what I have. I just have it PCI instead of AGP.

As well, watching DVD's sometimes the movie freezes for like 2 to 5 seconds before resuming.

UT (original) dosent seem to have a problem, and CS with RU4.0 runs fine. (I use bots, I dont have the internet)

VHE takes a while to load though. between 10 and 15 seconds.

I was thinking about getting:
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ 266FSB (Retail) or
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 333FSB (BARTON BOXED)

There is a price difference of about 40$ between each. So I am wondering if its really worth the extra 40 to go with the 2500+. I also want to get a second stick of ram. And if I get a new CPU, I need a new PSU with the second power connector to the mobo, the 4 pin one.

By the way: whats the difference between barton boxed and retail?

last time you didn't listen very well..

good luck this time.

i bet if you dig up your old thread, all that advice still holds true.

BTW the web address is still.. www.pricewatch.com and i found out, they WILL send ups to canada.. so stop arguing asswipe :biggrin:

If you want your computer to last longer, get the 2500. If you don't mind shelling more cash out for an upgrade sooner than if you got the 2500, get the 2000. Your video card should be upgraded after that, the MX series is just crap nowadays (hell, it was crap when it was released :razz: ), but video cards tend to be expensive, so it's your call.

And you don't have the internet? So what, you post in these forums using some sort of telekenisis? :razz:

Actually Orph, I was not only just reading my previous thread, but I also was looking at pricewatch :razz: Now I need to figure out how to work that thing, lol. Well, Im looking around. Whats there delivery times anyways?

I have 3 working computers in my house (I say 3 because I have 3 others in my room that are in pieces)

2 are downstairs hooked up to a hub with DSL connection, the third is in my room so I cant get the internet, mostly cause my parents wont let me have it.

pricewatch is just a repository of pc part manufacturers, just look in each categories of the pieces you have interest in.

the link will take you to people whom will sell you the part at the price quoted.

usually there is a phone number to contact with, but i have use emails as well if it were not a 1-800 number.

delivery turn around times is as long as the mail takes in your area to go both ways, plus construction time at the source.

my times have been 10 days to 2 weeks.

Well, I found this:

http://www.monarchcomputer.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=M&Product_Code=120728&Category_Code=amdxp

I would save me 30 bucks, if theres no shipping fee. 30$ at one store, my friend is doing co-op and can get 10% off, dont know what that ammounts to though.

thats not pricewatch :wink:

and get the boxed version, usually it will have a cooling fan already mounted..

[edit] after looking at pricewatch, your price seems fair..

at pricewatch, press cpu, then search out 2500 barton

I found it off price watch :razz: as for a CPU fan, I already have a volcano 8 slim rated up to AMD 2800+. Its kinda noisy, but I dont mind... too much.

kay. if you want stuff to run fast upgrade memory. 256mb of ram really isn't a lot. It probably is getting to a point where your CPU is dragging your system down, but that's only because you don't have a great deal of RAM or video RAM. Meaning the video card is slacking off and making the processor do it's work (Which is normal) I'd suggest getting a new processor....you don't need anything as high as 2ghz. I'd suggest the cheapest one, you wont notice a differenece between a 2ghz, 2.1ghz, or a 2.2ghz. You'd have to upgrade your video and ram for them to be utilized. Meaning, there's a good change your system would still run slow with a 2ghz processor. Because your ram and video isn't too grand. For games it's mostly the video. But, again, it's up to you. I suppose it would be wise to get a faster processor, but it wont be doing much.

[EDIT]
Dude, change your OS, ME is the worst OS ever. Literally.

It doesn't reconize above 512mb of ram. And has HORRIBLE memory utilization. I bet if you just changed your OS to XP Pro you'd be able to play your games just fine with the hardware you already have. Same goes with DVD's ME has problems with them.

ew....ME.......
[/EDIT]

New mobo, Processor and Ram (if a newer processor fits your current mobo then do that maybe....)

I suggest for Mobo (if your sticking with AMD) the A7V600 motherboard, has built in 5.1 sound, gigabit lan, 400 speed CPU slot thingy and takes a loada Ram, but make sure you get only Ram they say to get.... You should really be looking at an AMD 2000XP or greater nowadays, and 512Mb DDR if you want to stay in the gaming scene for future games. :kitty:

Crono said:
[EDIT]
Dude, change your OS, ME is the worst OS ever. Literally.

ew....ME.......
[/EDIT]

wildcard indeed has access to win 2000 pro, but the silly s**t is to forking lazy to use it.. in spite of the fact that his recent upgrade offered him a chance at a clean format. :rolleyes:

I reformat nowadays every 3-4 months... Only the windows drive though, cleans out all the s**t it accumulates, and every time you do it you get quicker at it :biggrin:

*tsk *tsk

The best parts to upgrade are CPU, Motherboard, Video Card and OS. 256MB of RAM is fine as long as you don't have lots of processes or spyware on your computer. 512 is better in all aspects and seems to be the bar for todays computers. You can get a 2500+ for about 15-20 bucks more than a 2000+ and it's a lot better in every aspect. And so far as I know retail and boxed are the same thing...no CPU comes with the heatsink attached...it just doesn't make sense. Volcano fans are noisy and only perform okay. I would imagine you could get a pretty good upgrade for that system for about 300-400 CDN.

Canadian Dollars?! Nobody uses that worthless money lol!

Gorbachev said:
And so far as I know retail and boxed are the same thing...no CPU comes with the heatsink attached...it just doesn't make sense.

shakes head sadly

do you guys intend to insult? or just think i make this s**t up to sound important?

THIS link should take you to a site that sells cpu's with the associated cooling fans..

geeze guys, if you are gonna call me a liar, at least pick something important..

mumbles to self

Attached and boxed together are a different thing...I know they come with retail stock heatsink/fan combos. I happen to have a bunch. I'm knowledged in computer parts and computers in general, next year I'm doing more technician studies at a technical institute. I was just clarifying that they:

a) Don't sell OEM processors these days (at a retail shop).
b) Stock cooling is packaged along with, but not attached.
c) Boxed and retail should be the exact same thing, just different wording.

Generally Orph you won't have to tell me about computer parts. I spend most of my time around them, a lot of pricematch sites and stuff aren't the best place to go. Shopping around is the best bet though, you never know.

my apologies then gorby, i am only just getting into this field..

my bad :sad:

Ok, so how does an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ and a second chip of 256mb DDR 2700 sound? I checked out some site, I can get it for 200$ Canadian.

Wild Card said:
Ok, so how does an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ and a second chip of 256mb DDR 2700 sound? I checked out some site, I can get it for 200$ Canadian.

my choice bud, for what its worth,

1) new 2500

2) new video card, your pci card is causing much more harm than the 256 ram is. even if you only got the agp version of your current card, you would notice a big difference.

My suggestion is similar to Orph's. As an example from www.ncix.com (Canadian supplier, local to me, but I know they ship all over the country) I can give you a code to get a 2500+ for $110.

I also forward the notion that you get an AGP video card if you have the ability, any AGP will be greater than plain ol' PCI. If you're really not interested in paying a whole lot then get something like a GF4MX as it's cheapest AGP but okay performer you'll get for low cost. Don't get any FX junk though, if you're getting a higher up card go with an ATI. Nvidia was great in the past, but for today's cards go for ATI.

As for the RAM, you can get a stick of 256 for about 50-60. Since crucial is a fairly generic type. I recommend getting 3200 as it's usually cheaper and would be more compatable later on too. (I have a setup of 256 2700 and 256 3200 in Micron/Crucial on this computer right now) It'll step down, but you can always go with a different stick of 3200 down the road. They're the same price almost always, so go with the faster.

[edit] And Orph, don't worry about it, those are easy misconceptions, I'm just here to help. [/edit]

Orph, ram is way more important then the processor.

I was suggesting the processor simply so you don't have to worry about it later on. Because your computer is getting to the point where the CPU is holding things back and the ram and VGA aren't picking up slack. Which in general you can do with a better video card and more ram. But eventually your CPU will become a problem again. but the CPU isn't somthing you'd NEED to upgrade at this point in time, it's just a good idea. My suggestion would be, if you wanted immediate performance increase, Video Card and Ram. the processor doesn't really effect certain performance issues if you got a new video card because it will take in most of the processes it should have in the first place, but couldn't because of a lack of speed on the GPU or ram on the card.

Having more memory is always good, less times the cpu has to stop and wait for a recongnition from the chipset. Meaning it takes the chipset longer to write if you have less ram, because you use VMM more often, and that includes writting to your hard drive. and your CPU sits idle durring all of this, so the fast the message comes back the faster your programs run.

yea the 2500+ Im looking at (with my friend's discout for co-op) is 114$. The memory is 62$ after the discount.

I might get a vid card later in the year when I get more money for a 128mb later on.

Crono said:
Orph, ram is way more important then the processor.

it is, but not in this case, his 800 duron is holding him back more than his ram is.. if it were an 800 athlon, or some such maybe, but the duron is IMO more critical in this instance.. the difference gained from a 2500+ would more than compensate for the 256 he is at currently.

i must confess, i am rather new at all this, but i feel i am at least correct enuff to be taken seriously.. at least on this one point.

I have to agree with you Orph, my friend has pretty much the same setup as me:

AMD Athlon XP 900
256mb SDRAM
64mb GeForce 4 MX440 AGP8x

and he can run things better than I can. Even with Win XP which sucks a lot or ram.

No, the compensation wouldn't be that great. What I was saying is that if he had more ram, it would be the same as if he got a new processor with the same amount of ram he has now....look at which is cheaper. By the way, over 80 US for a processor is way too much. Including the fan and heat-sink. Also, this is kind of my field, or at least part of it, I have to know how this stuff works. But it is up to WC in the end. But everyone ALWAYS says upgrade the CPU and frankly it just isn't that important in most cases. He could benefit in the long run from a new CPU, but if he bought one now with his current configuration he's not going to notice much of a difference.

[EDIT]
XP, actually uses the ram properly, as opposed to ME. The change of OS's alone would probably make your games playable....but don't listen to the CS Major guy....he doesn't know what he's talking about :razz:
[/EDIT]

Crono, what if I got the CPU and the ram?

Your stuff would probably load faster and thats about it. Mostly because of the ram. You must remember that the CPU sits idle most of the time. And right now your CPU is doing a good amount of work, in that, it's being used to its potential. Think about this for a second, I mean seriously. Most people upgrade their processors too readily.

Your game performance would still be close to what it is now, but it will probably run smoother. But you wouldn't be able to up your effects or anything like that. Or have compressed textures run smoothly or anything, why? Because that's all taken care of by the video card, and if it even goes back to the CPU for processing help it's running too slow to play already.

It is up to you. I think you should upgrade your processor, maybe not to a 2ghz, you wont use it. But the only reason I'm saying this is that, your processor is going 100% right now, which is a good thing in most respects, in some cases it causes the cache to stay valid longer.

So, basically, if you want IMMEDIATE, MAJOR performance increase, go for the big boys, Video, Ram. CPU sit's there with a thumb up it's ass most of the time, so it's not the biggest factor in all this, especially with games.

You can ask Edge to elaborate, but, if your computer is slowing down because of polycounts or something, that isn't your CPU that's struggling. Its your GPU.

Anyway. CPU and Ram is fine. But, you wont need anything above a 1.6-1.8 right now. and that's keeping the future in mind. Taking that 64-bit processing runs at 1ghz and has the equivilent preformance of a stacked system with a 3ghz instruction speed, you can see how flawed the X86 arch. is. Ram, is a definite upgrade. upgrading the CPU will make it 'modular' for things later on. take that however you'd like, I can't tell you exactly what to do, just give you the facts on how it works and let you choose what exactly you need out of your computer.

For games: Ram and Video.
Data intensive: Ram and CPU.
General User: Ram.

:smile: hope this all helps.

[EDIT]
I don't want anyone thinking that I meant he will be able to use a current processor for 64-bit processing, I was using an example of 64-bit processing to show how innefficient the actual architecture is, and by that you can see that some of the other parts are infact more imporatant.
[/EDIT]

sometimes i am forced to concede defeat... but i find it hard to grasp that an 800 duron runs so close to a 2500+

i can grasp ram deficiencies, hell more ram is always better, but 256 is no small fish either, its not as if were were discussing 128 or even 96.

what i am having trouble with is the 800 and 512 ram will be better than a 2500 and 256..

we are discussing a duron afterall

Orph, you're missing the point.

Just because a processor can punch out commands at 2500mhz doesn't mean it will run faster then a processor that puts out commands at 800mhz.

It's just how the architecture works. It has a bottleneck for a bus (which is why it's slow) and that makes accessing ram a slow endevour. I never said that 800mhz is faster then 2500mhz. I was saying that his 800mhz is going at 100% right now, and a 2500mhz would probably never go over 20% usage.

I can't really explain this well, you'd honestly have to take a course on X86 archetecture to see what I'm really saying, and believe me, you'd REALLY understand if you did. (it takes programming knowledge though, so get reading :smile: )

Okay, in a game, what does the video card really do? It draws the verticies and polygons, right? What is that really? Well, its a series of Matrix equations of vectors and coordinates on the 3axis planes. Okay. The GPU does those calculations, meaning the CPU sees them and spits them out to memory (a CPU thinks everything is memory). The chipset then tells everything where to go, based on that address in memory's label. Meaning, if a program wanted to show a pixel on the screen the compilers have been written in a way to want a specific point in memory, this then goes to the CPU, because everything goes to the CPU first, the CPU sees it as a write access no big deal, it takes like 1/10 of a pico second to do it. So it sends it out to memory, down the (slow) bus the chipset recieves this and tries to write to memory, OH!, that's not physical space, so it sees what it really is, oh it's the video card, then it gets sent to the video card and the video card works on it alone. The video card can send out requests for assistance (if I remember correctly), but by that point your video would be running so slowly you wouldn't even care, you'd want to shut it off.

Now, why did I just explain all that? To show an example of how the processor isn't responsible for something as runtime effective as video processes.
ALL a CPU does is mathmatical operations. +, -, *, / and so on. (there's some other stuff in there, but this is staying simple). Meaning, if you say 2 + 2 and then write that result to memory (or a variable in your program) the processor adds two and two and writes it to ram. You can see how innefficient this system can get. Thats why they're devloping 64-bit processing, meaning the size of each 'chunk' of ram is 64-bits as opposed to the current 32-bits. How does this speed it up? well. there's more ram. Also, processors have been developed to pipline (do more then one operation at once). So you can have 2 + 2 going at the same time you're getting the address of its variable placement (taking that the variable already had a value). It goes faster.

The clock speed of a processor is just how fast it can send out commands onto the bus. That's it. That is determined by how fast it can go through one cycle. Yes, this helps, but, since when were your applications SO CPU dependant that you couldn't fix the problem with more space in ram. Because the real reason why its gets so boged down is because of VMM. Otherwise known as, writting crap to the harddrive, but still conceptually exists in ram, meaning it can be accessed. Writing to the hard drive is bad to say the least. Because it takes forever, in computer-land.

This is the real reason why your computer slows down. Most of the time, your CPU is idle, meaning it's not doing ANYTHING, why would this matter? well, if it's waiting on ram then it will go the same speed as if it were syncing up with ram speed. Does that make sense?

Anyway, it doesn't really matter, because new things are well into development, and the bottlenecked system that is X86 will be no more in the next decade or so.

And come to think of it, I really want a SPARC, with Solaris 9 on it, but I'm not sure why lol.

[EDIT]
The fact that it is a Duron vs. an Athlon, doesn't really mean anything, unless you get into registers.
[/EDIT]

ok, now you did it, my head hurts..

/me bows to my superior.. i am forced to acknowledge your skills crono..

unless someone can come to my defense, i suggest you listen to crono wildcard.

I'm not your superior, it's just how the thing works. I was just trying to clear the air of misconception :smile:

My post is probably more indepth then most peoples understanding of a computer, sorry if it's too technical. And my examples weren't the greatest.

Crono, that's all very nice, but seriously, no decent performance boost going from 800 to 2500MHz on DDR333 RAM? hu?

Crono said:
I'm not your superior, it's just how the thing works. I was just trying to clear the air of misconception :smile:

My post is probably more indepth then most peoples understanding of a computer, sorry if it's too technical. And my examples weren't the greatest.

never apologize for information.. but i am still iffy.. i am still thinking like jeff just posted.. no offense to your schooling i promise.. if i had examples before me, maybe, but.. my brain hurts from all this gay stuff..

Crono, that's all very nice, but seriously, no decent performance boost going from 800 to 2500MHz on DDR333 RAM? hu?

Not as much as everyone is insinuating. I never said there wouldn't be a performance increase. It just wont be amazingly drastic. Will you notice a difference, well, yeah, of course you will, because his processor is probably going at 100% capacity, which also means that the ram and bus (especially at 333mgz) can be accessed faster then the processor can keep up. But, my point was that usually WC's situation is not the case. However, if you noticed, I said that he should upgrade his CPU, it's just not entirly needed at the moment. I like how people only read like a fourth of what I write in my posts.....

Crono said:

Crono, that's all very nice, but seriously, no decent performance boost going from 800 to 2500MHz on DDR333 RAM? hu?

Not as much as everyone is insinuating. I never said there wouldn't be a performance increase. It just wont be amazingly drastic. Will you notice a difference, well, yeah, of course you will, because his processor is probably going at 100% capacity, which also means that the ram and bus (especially at 333mgz) can be accessed faster then the processor can keep up. But, my point was that usually WC's situation is not the case. However, if you noticed, I said that he should upgrade his CPU, it's just not entirly needed at the moment. I like how people only read like a fourth of what I write in my posts.....

i for one an only capable of comprehending that much i am afraid.

I'd like to agree with you Crono, but it's tough, your reasons are almost right. But you have to realize that you also do not utilize more than 256MB of memory that often. If you're a smart enough computer user you should be using roughly 120-200MB of memory if you're running XP. Games generally use 30-300MB. So the only games that'd need the extra memory are top games. But the issue is the processor power needed for the games at that very time is not there. A Duron, especially an older model 800Mhz is not enough for newer games. I upgraded from 256-512MB of RAM and there's a neglible difference, the only few areas I felt it different where if I was running a ton of processes at the same time (which he shouldn't be doing with a system such as his anyway, especially if you're playing a game.)

The biggest jump in performance game-wise for him would end up being a PCI video card to AGP.

I would agree with how you said that the examples you gave weren't the greatest...because quite frankly they're confusing. I understand computers and I think that you're slighly mixed up in a few areas.

Saying that the CPU is idle most of the time is true but when he needs it, it won't be there.

Performance wise my order of upgrading would be

AGP Video Card -> CPU -> Memory

First off, I'm not wrong or 'confused' as to how this all works. Secondly, I said the fastest performance increase he would get is from a new video card. Thirdly, how the hell can you justify the processor being more runtime impendant then memory? The processor WAITS on the memory, most of the time (as in always) you run out of it and begin using VMM, which obviously slows down the computer even more. The way Windows uses the ram is still dependant on the systems use of memory, which doesn't change depending on the OS. Saying that you don't utilize more then 256mb of ram at a time is not true. You're saying that hardware/software developers envoke VMM when they could avoid it? That's rediculous. In fact, the system is set up such that it doesn't know the difference. Such as, your processor thinks that there is at least 4 gigs of ram at all times. Through VMM is can have that. it doesn't use VMM unless it runs out of physical memory. Your devices which have addresses in memory aren't physical addresses. The memory gets appended. Such as, if your hard drive took up a specific place in memory that memory can't be directly accessed, instead of the memory ending on whatever byte number, it is appended at the end numerically. Unless Windows is written more poorly then I am aware of, this holds true. Where did you get that it only goes to 256, then basically wont be used after that point, not being utilized. Also, I never said his Duron was up to handling newer games. I was saying that.....you know what this is about the 30th time I've explained it on these forums and I don't really want to explain it again. Case in point -> Processor is not the most important thing in your system. It gives out commands and its overall, noticable to humans, speed, is based on everything else in the computer. My suggestion to WC still stands as at least upgrade the ram. Video and CPU is up to you. I do suggest the CPU, simply because right now you're is being used to it's maxiumum meaning it can't pick up the slack (speed wise) for other units in the computers size or speed. Also, for the most part, CPUs are rather cheap right now. 333mhz ram isn't as cheap, but getting both of these isn't as expensive as a new video card, which you need as well, if you want to play newer games. (I said this before, that games are mostly dependant on the video card's performance). And Orph, that comment wasn't really directed at you, But I have noticed that lately many people only respond to like two sentences (probably the only two sentenes they read out of my post) to comment on, and then continue to preach on it and basically try to demean everything I've stated. I don't see it as anything person or an attack or anything like, it's just rather odd to, as it seems to everyone else reading the post, read one comment harped on.

[EDIT]
......and my post is completly unformated for some reason.
[/EDIT]

Well, I guess for sure I go with another 256mb ram chip. Then I can either get a CPU or maybe a new video card. Depends how much they are/which ones I should get.

I have a friend in need of a PCI video card as well, so I could probably sell it to him, lol.

As for all this CPU/memory stuff Crono, as much as I like computers, I think I'll stick with the physical hardware of it, this is getting way too technical for me, lol. And I though JAVA was confusing. By the way, whats this VMM you keep talking about?

Also, I've been reading on and off about Win ME bashings, lol, I have yet to encounter problems with ME, but with XP home I did have some. it was before I got my current computer, it was the Duron 800 with 128mb SDRAM but the damn thing was sooo slow. Booting up, loading windows, VHE, internet, etc.

I know getting more ram will make a difference though, I've seen first hand the difference playing the same game with 128mb, then adding in a 256mb stick (all SDRAM)

But as I said, I'm leanning more towards the CPU because graphics cards are expensive as f**k.

Which one of these would your recommend?:

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrItem.asp?product_id=2902&product_subtypes_id=287&product_types_id=26

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrItem.asp?product_id=2492&product_subtypes_id=287&product_types_id=26

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrItem.asp?product_id=2466&product_subtypes_id=285&product_types_id=26

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrItem.asp?product_id=1604&product_subtypes_id=78&product_types_id=26

I found these ones that seemed interesting. Im trying to keep under 150$ though. Here's the main page, if there is something else you would recommend:

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrMain2.asp?product_types_id=26

There is a price difference of about 40$ between each. So I am wondering if its really worth the extra 40 to go with the 2500+.

yes it is worth the extra $40, i have an AMD 2000+ on this pc and on my new which i got for xmas, i have an AMD 2500+ and when compiling there is a difference, so i would go for the 2500+,[if you do get it though make sure you go to advance in the bios and make sure that it is at 1.833GHz]

I also want to get a second stick of ram.

Definately[sp?] get another stick of RAM, 512! it will really boost up your performance and loading times.

By the way: whats the difference between barton boxed and retail?

the difference is that the retail comes with a fan and heatsink and the boxed is just the processor, if u upgrade your CPU then make sure that your fan can handle the heat[or get outta the kitchen :rolleyes: ] or otherwise your new pc would crash in a matter of seconds

VMM stands for Virtual Memory Management, or Manager, I can't remember at the moment.

Basically it just means that a chunk of hard drive space is used as if it were ram. So your processor can assume it has at least 4 gigs of physical ram at any moment. And you don't need 4 gig free obviously. It uses a paging system to swap out pages of VMM when they're full, kind of a VMM for VMM, but the second one are temporary files.

However, with VMM you have to clean it up, because it's on the hard disk. That's the really nice thing about ram, and a bad thing as well, if it loses power all the information held inside is gone. Oh well. Now you know.
As for the video card, I'm rather partial to MSI's Line. However, they're a bit pricey at the moment. I don't suggest ASUS, I've had way too many problems with them, they're just.....annoying in most respects. But, if you're going for more bang for your buck, the MSIs generally last for a very long time, if taken care of. I don't really know how well the current ASUS line performs, I don't own one. I'm sure they run fine. Just check to see if there's a warranty, on everything you buy obviously. I remember that nVidia used to have a 3-year warrenty for all their cards, straight from them, so even if you bought it from johnny-s**ts-ville company 5003, you were insured for three years, as long as you didn't damage the card yourself.

I read all your posts, it just seemed like you were overstating things. Look at this. and see how with the same graphics card (it uses an ATI and an nvidia, but they are equivelant), the CPU makes a huge amount of difference. If we go from the duron 900 (the 800 isnt in the comparison), to the 2400+ (2500 isn't in comparison either), the performance is at least doubled in virtually every situation! The Duron is not using DDR333 memory in this case, but WildCard has this better memory just waiting for it's extra capacity to be used anyway (duron he has doesn't use DDR333) - as soon as he puts in a CPU with a higher FSB, his memory performance will improve by making full use of his DDR333-capable memory, without adding any extra. 256MB is fine, you can buy plenty of new PCs that have 256MB, and that run significantly better than a duron 800 system. OK, it's a bit weird to have a 2500+ with only 256MB of memory, but come on, it's hardly a catastrophy. I'm not saying your knowledge of how all the memory works is wrong, I just think you should move from then theory into some real world figures.

Yea the 800 runs the ram at 200, but its PC2700 meanning 333. I can get the 2500+ with a 333FSB and a generic heatsink for 114$

The ram I will be getting, another stick of the same thing I have.

by the way: on the mobo, the slots are arranged as follows:

slot 1 - slot 2 ------ slot 3

It says to start adding sticks from 3 down to 1. But if I wanted to make my ram dual channel, should I put it in slot 1 and 2?

Crono, my friend has an MSI video card, yes they are nice, they are expensive too. lol. What can you tell me about this one?:

http://www.pccyber.ca/scrItem.asp?product_subtypes_id=80&product_types_id=26&product_id=1063

As well, my brother used to have an ASUS card, and it worked fine (using pass tense because it was a 32mb GF2TI and has since upgraded to a 128mb card)

If your board supports dual channel, then you will want to use slots 1 and 2 for this.

The graphics cards on that site seem expensive or weirdly distributed to me. Even as a budget card, I wouldn't buy an MX anything these days, I don't know what to suggest. If you want to play new releases and care about how well your PC runs games, you want at least a midrange card like a ATI 9600 or nvidia 5700. Hold on, it says you already have a GF4MX? Why buy another one of the same type of card? If you already have a GF4MX, it doesn't seem worth buying anything worse than a 9600 or 5700 to me.

The card he linked to has more ram then the one he has. But I don't suggest an MX, maybe if you were still running a GeForce 2 or something and you were upgrading. The MX (if they have a fan) generally have their fans stop working at some point, it's rather odd. If you can't really afford a good video card at this point, I don't suggest buying an okay one to compensate at this point in time.

Jeff, I'm not theorizing as much as you're implying, I know there will be a performance increase, but it wont matter if some of his other hardware can't handle it, and that is what I was saying. Those specs on that page are of the instruction speed to memory, yeah obviously that will speed up because at this point in time, like I said, his memory is waiting on his CPU, basically.
That chart doesn't surprise me, I don't if you thought it would or something. All that's happening there is that the processor is able to write to memory faster . . . . thus the video runs faster. Why is this out of what I had said? Because I implied this. Secondly these are frames per second, I'd rather see poly count or something like that along with it. I mean, this chart is showing almost exactly what I was saying. Yes, I said most of the performance depends on the video card, and it does. But, I never said the processor didn't have a part.

Also, the way the processor works isn't theory, that's how it works in the real world. Obviously people have written stuff to try to get around it and such, but nonetheless, that's what it boils down to.

And on another note, I said that he should upgrade his CPU, I just think a 2500 is a bit of overkill. However, would a jump from 210 fps to 398fps or whatever number that chart has, really make such a noticable difference?

Half the games I play, including quake III at times, don't go above 90fps or so, and I that chart says that my processor should allow somewhere around 219fps. (Also taking that my video card isn't really lowend at the moment.) I don't care about the fps, honestly, maybe if I was developing something.

I know the stuff I was talking about before looks like a crash course in computer architecture, but believe me it isn't, I said that to explain just why it wouldn't be as huge of an increase as everyone was implying. And it wouldn't. FPS.....nice....... too bad you wont really notice a huge difference between 200fps and 400pfs. So, obviously you all completly missed the point of everything I said. I appologize if it seemed arrogent or something. But believe me I am well aware of real-world scenarios envolving this arch.

Also, I think anything over $100 (US) is way too much to be paying for a processor, heat-synk, and fan.

I guess, we're actually mostly agreeing on what WC should get though. Ram and a new CPU.

Technically you can even make that desicion by look at the life of the products. How long would it be before you'd have to upgrade either, because they're just not cutting it? Well, a lot longer then a video card. So, that's another way of looking at it.

Yea, video cards tend to change like 5 times a year. The only time CPU's outdated each other faster was like in 2001 after AMD hit the 1Ghz mark, lol, I guess Intel didnt like that, at the time, I was getting a magasine called Ottawa Computers published every month and everytime the processors jumped: 1Ghz, next month, 1.2Ghz, next month, 1.4Ghz, etc etc etc until Intel finally reached the 3Ghz and then stoped.

My current video card is an MX and does have a fan, but thus far I havent had any problems with it, but I've only had it since September.

I'd say stick with it, and wait for HL2 and Doom 3 to come out to get a new one (you'll know then what will be best as those games will probably become benchmark tests).

I've had my card for over a year. It's great, however it was rather expensive (nothing near 300 bucks or something though), good thing it was a gift :smile:

Secondly, they can't really make processors go faster then 3ghz...Like, they're getting way to hot and requiring way too much cooling. So they tried forming (as most companies have done) an alternative. Intel's answer was the Itanium (it's a son of a bitch to program). They went with HP, I don't know how they got HP to stop producing their rather succesful 64-bit processor to help work on theirs, but they did. An Itanium generally runs at 1ghz. However, it has the overall performance-instructions speed as a 3ghz P4. It uses pipelining and 64-bit memory units to get it all done. The bad part is 32-bit stuff doesn't exactly work most times, and if it does, it will either run as slow or SLOWER then it did on the 32-bit machine. You have to specifically write stuff for it, and it doesn't help you out....I'm not sure of the specifics, as I don't own one, and they're expensive. But if you're curious look at this.

Those are only workstations they offer. Itanium is mostly used for UNIX servers and such. It's very fast if used properly, but expensive (the cheapest desktop is 3k, and you can't exactly build the systems yourself, because Intel hasn't released the individual parts, and there is no demand for them at the moment, at least not in the general market).

I think AMD has a pretty good 64-bit solution as well, and theres is backwards compatable. (Not to mention you buy the chips.)

Yea I read about the AMD 64's.

So then, ram and CPU, video card later?

That would be the best bang for your buck, so to speak.

can get both for 200$