Reviews/Advice on my upgrade

Looks like I'll be ordering the Power supply and RAM today.

and I'm leaning towards that 7950gt, only because I just don't have the cash at the moment.

I don't plan on playing any other game (competitively) until CoD4 is dead (which will be quite some time). I mean, I'll probably play some of my old games on it (like CoD2, MOHAA), and new games like Medal of Honor Airborne, which I should be able to run fine.

Other than the fact that the 8800gt will be better off for dx10 games, I don't see why not choose the 7950gt?

and Mut, Call of Duty 4 runs in DX9, and I've heard from some friends it isn't a big FPS-eater. I ran it on my current system, and I get 50 fps tops.
 
well I talked with a couple of friends, read some stuff, and looks like I'll be purchasing a 256mb x1950pro, from what I've read, it will be running everything fine
 
I wouldn't recommend that move.
In the short term you may see this as cheaper, but in the future (a year or so, maybe less) you might want to play Crysis and CoD4 and not be able to run them too well. This means you will then buy a DX10 card, which may be less than the DX10 card, but if you had just bought the DX10 card in the first place you wouldn't need an upgrade anyway! :D
 
Ya, that 1950 isn't worth it, but I guess it's your call. You can either wait two months and get double the framerate or settle for something that you will have to upgrade again later.
 
mut said:
I wouldn't recommend that move.
In the short term you may see this as cheaper, but in the future (a year or so, maybe less) you might want to play Crysis and CoD4 and not be able to run them too well. This means you will then buy a DX10 card, which may be less than the DX10 card, but if you had just bought the DX10 card in the first place you wouldn't need an upgrade anyway! :D
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CoD4 runs in DX9. I've been told that the 1950 will run cod4 great, and I'm assuming he's right. I know it may not seem like the best of moves, but this and maybe medal of honor airborne, are the only two games I plan on playing for a year or more, by then, prices will drop. As long as this card runs cod4 fine, I'm happy. I just don't have the extra money at the moment for the 8800.
 
I talked to a fellow cod4 gamer, and he told me he's got a x1950pro 256mb with a pentium 4 3.6ghz and 1 gig of ddr ram, and he's playing cod4 with mostly medium settings with a few on high @ 1024x768 with 60-80fps. Since my system has a newer processor and 2 gigs of ram, I'm pretty sure this thing will take cod4 just fine.
 
gazaway said:
Basically leave the Multiplier at 9, make your bus speed 400 and make your cpu voltage 1.212-1.215 volts and you should be set. All of these are accessible in you BIOS, probably under advanced or something to that effect. Look up your motherboard and you may find a "virtual BIOS" on the gigabyte website.
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I just ordered the cpu and motherboard.

After I overclock the processor in the BIOS, you said it will be running at about 2.5 ghz. How good do you think that will be compared to my current processor p4 2.5ghz? Really fast or what? I've never used a better processor before, it always slows down when I got a few applications running, jams sometimes. That's probably also my 512mb RAM talking too, so with this setup everything should be pretty fast right?

and I'm planning on getting this video card:

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100216L Radeon HD 3850 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail

it's way better than that x1950pro according to the specs, and its only a couple extra bucks
 
That should make your proc 3gigs I believe. You will no longer be bottlenecked by multiple applications as long as you don't overdo it.
 
Ok sounds good. I should be getting my processor and motherboard today or tomorrow, and I'm looking to order the powersupply and RAM today or tomorrow aswell. I should have everything besides the video card this week, so I'll post back.
 
gazaway said:
That should make your proc 3gigs I believe. You will no longer be bottlenecked by multiple applications as long as you don't overdo it.
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okay just ordered the psu and ram and arctic cooler fan, only thing left now is the 3850 ati, which ill order later this week
 
Alright, I've got all my parts (except the video card).

Do you guys think I should try to set everything up myself? I have installed a video card before, and have managed to fit in a motherboard aswell. Plus, there was a guide that came with the motherboard on building your own pc, it has step by step directions on each part (psu, cpu, etc). It looks simple, but the powersupply wiring looks a bit complicated. Or should I get a friend to do it and watch him?

Can somebody with experience tell me the difficulty of this task?
 
It differs from person to person. Some people are so scared when they try that they make building a computer a huge ordeal. Others just go at it and go too quickly and overlook the little stuff and end up not figuring out why their computer won't start. I would recommend that you have your friend watch you as you do it.
 
Alright, yeah. That would be the smart thing to do then.

By the way, I wanted to know if I decide to run the e2160 at stock speeds, will it bottleneck with the 3850 ati or the other way around? Or will everything be fine?

I don't plan on running it at stock, I just want to know.
 
At stock you would still be mostly OK, especially with multi-threaded applications. The only thing is that people buy that proc for the sole purpose of overclocking.
 
Alright awesome.

I'm probably going to have to look into a in-depth guide online and browse around my BIOS to get it at a good 3.0ghz or possibly even more. The pointers you gave (multiplier 9, etc) seem a little simple, I think theres going to be more to deal with though. I'm definitely going to try it though.
 
well I have not read any of the past posts on this so what I say might have already been said throughout this post... Everything is fine except for the graphics card, got either 8800 or HD 3870/3850. Then if you wanted go to the e2160(i think) and just overclock the crap out of it, because that motherboard with its p35 chipset makes it a great overclocking motherboard.
 
Just thought I'd update everyone. I've been running the e2160 @ 3.0ghz for a week now. And I've purchased the 8800gt 256mb video card, running it right now. Computer runs extremely fast, absolutely no lag whatsoever. I've capped FPS at 125 in Call of Duty 4 and it's not going anywhere lower than that.

Thanks for the help guys! It's a beast!!
 
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