Upgrading my computer

if your athlon 64 is a venice core or is 90nm, you could try overclocking it after getting a PCI-E board. that will add a lot of power to it (mine went from a 1.8ghz 3000+ to 2.5ghz, and there is a very noticeable difference in cpu-intensive games and encoding programs). if your ram can take it, i'd recommend overclocking it too, though you can use a divider if you want if it can't take the stress.

as for a video card, you probably don't want a midrange part, but i'd recommend the x850xt if you're short on cash. your x800pro has 12 pipelines and is clocked at 475gpu and 900ddr, and a x850xt has 16 pipes, clocked at 520gpu and 1080ddr. it's about $165.

if you're wanting high-end, the ati x1800xt is a good deal now for $349, and the geforce 7900gt is a steal at around $309. take your pick with those; they're all very well-priced. i'd go for the 7900gt... best performance at that price--it's the same as a 7800GTX, except its core clock is a bit faster and it's over $100 cheaper.

if you want super-high-end, there's always the 7900GTX and X1900XTX, but those are ~500 dollars.

as for memory, if you are doing some rather memory-intensive things (doom on ultra, half life 2, photoshopping large pictures, video editing) then more ram certainly can't hurt. just keep in mind that on an athlon 64 system, you get worse timings with 2gb than with one.

How ya doing, buddy?

well, specifically, when you use four dimms to make 2gb. there are a couple of motherboards that can run 1gb dimms at 1T command rates, but they are pretty rare now. currently, the only way to get 1T command rates is to use 2 512mb sticks. using 4 makes it go back to 2T, but it's not a huge deal really.

if you overclock your ram a good amount, it should negate any timing issues with normal usage. with tons of small bits of data going through the ram, better timings is great, but if there are bigger files / more continuous things going through it, it shouldn't matter as much.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

you might be thinking of crossfire, the ati version of nvidia's sli. you might also be thinking of pixel shader 3.0, which the x800 line of cards don't support- the x1800/1900 cards do though.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by PUG1911

I've had cards from both manufacturers, and ATI has screwed me over sooo many times in the past (pre-Radeon days). nVidia was way ahead in their support for stuff like Linux, and hasn't burned me with driver support yet, so that's who I'll buy for now.

pre-radeon driver support was hideous. don't judge a company based on mistakes made 6 years ago that have been corrected-- i get whoever is the best for the cost of the card.

right now, i'd say that nvidia's 7900gt is probably the best card for the money you'll pay for it right now.

(actually, i like ati more because the tv output isn't as bad as nvidia in my experience! but whatever, i've played off of both companies pretty equally).

Double Post:

Originally Posted by Soluzar

I did not know that. I suppose there's not a damn thing that can be done to compensate?

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/03/...k_frequencies/

i haven't read it yet, but it addresses this very issue.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?