Pc upgrade

# 1 26-08-2004 , 09:41 AM

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Location: Glasgow

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I am looking to upgrade my pc and wondered if any of you would have any advice on what to get?

At the moment I have the following:

AMD Athlon 2200+ 266MHz FSB (1.81GHz)
1Gb RAM
30Gb + 40Gb hard drives
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440
Gigabyte G7VAXP motherboard

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# 2 26-08-2004 , 10:02 AM

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I'd start from the video card...

I just ordered a GeForce 6800 GT 256MB card for myself user added image

Kari
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Do a lot, Fail a lot and Learn a lot!

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# 3 26-08-2004 , 10:14 AM

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Will an upgrade to the graphics card you mentioned, make a large difference?

I see this card is around £250.

What do you think of the GeForce 5900XT 128Mb which is around £120?

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# 4 26-08-2004 , 10:44 AM

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the XT cards (nvidia ones) are lower performance budget cards just like the MX series you got... i personally wouldn't get it...

Kari
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- My IMDB

Do a lot, Fail a lot and Learn a lot!

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# 5 26-08-2004 , 10:47 AM

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What about the rest of the spec?

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# 6 26-08-2004 , 11:04 AM

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unless you are willing to change the MB and CPU, there isnt much to change except the video card that will make any noticable performance gain.

And the 6800GT is viewed as the best performance/price card availlable from what I have seen on various forums.

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# 7 26-08-2004 , 02:12 PM

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I would be willing to change the motherboard and CPU.

Would you advise a Pentium or AMD and what speed?

Any other suggstions of improvement would be appreciated?

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# 8 26-08-2004 , 02:35 PM

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Get a board dual CPU capable and get an AMD Opteron. Start with just a single proc and get the second one when you have the cash for it.

HD: pick a WD Raptor, put them in RAID 0 if you want to over do it

These are massive upgrade but totaly worth the cost.

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# 9 26-08-2004 , 03:02 PM

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Thanks for all of the advise.

Mantat, what spec of pc have you got?

I am only at university, would an upgrade of your suggestion now be too large?

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# 10 26-08-2004 , 03:23 PM

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I dont have a PC, I am on a mac ;-)

And yes, these are pro level upgrades (except the video card). I think that even Kurt is not going to go to such settings. But you asked for it ;-)

If you want to spend under 500$, just a video card upgrade should be fine and help a lot for modeling. If you have problem with render time, you can always buy a cheap computer (fast CPU, 1gig ram, small HD, no video) to serve as a render node.

If you want to invest more than 1k$, the opteron option will give you the best yeild but you would still be stuck with the same video card unless you upgrade that too.

Just think about it this way: pro machine are using dual proc, high end video card, RAID HD, fast HD and lots of ram. These system can cost over 5000$ but you can get about 80% of their performance for about 2000$ by always taking the most cst effective part.

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