I just plopped a Sapphire HD3850 into my machine!
I left behind an Nvidia 6800.
I have 5 inquiries.
My Specs:
Athlon 3000+@2.03, 512 + (256x2) = 1gb of unmatching ram, Asus A8V-X board. IDE133 HD (1)(Does not being a SATA HD affect game performance?)
With a super FPS config at 640x480 in COD4 I get 60-160 ~75-100 consistantly FPS.
(2)I'm wondering how big a difference 2gb of CL3 Kingston will make over the current ram on my FPS((3)Can I run this newfangled 500mhz DDR1? (3a)Is it much better?). (4)I'm also wondering how much a 4000+ as opposed to a 3000+CPU would make in FPS difference. (5)Finally, a 939socket Athlon x2...
I guess it would help if I posted a benchmark score of some kind. I'll get on that.
OH, and I OC RivaTuner 1026 / 810
Thanks, I look forward to your responses.
1:-No difference in gaming between IDE 133 and SATA I and II.
2:-Having 2GB in dual channel will make gaming alot smoother and you will notice more responsiveness in windows.
3:-If your motherboard allows to be set to DDR500 in BIOS it will cope with it.
If you board is like my old ABIT AV8-3rd eye then it should be able to use DDR500 RAM to its full potential although DDR is very expensive.
3a:-Over DDR400 no.
4:-A 4000+ will make decent difference over your 3000+ and overclock hard.
Many people have reach 3.0Ghz on those CPUs.
5:-X2?
Well two cores are better than one although alot of games still only use one core.
But in saying this the other core will be taking care of the other things in the background.
Only thing is 939skt CPUs are very expensive still for what they are.
Also you may want to get an Opty as they are generally better overclockers due to higher temperature threshold.
If you get a X2 3800+ you should be able to get decent overclocks of 2.9Ghz
The X2 4xxx+ series wern't as good overclockers like mine for example.
Needs alot of voltage to keep stable.