Memory, CPU and GFX choice questions

[Fat Tone]

I'm seriously considering an upgrade of my system, and have a couple of questions.

CPU: AMD have just dropped their prices massively, and the 5200+ can now be had for ~£140. Is this the best option for AM2 CPUs, or is it worth spending less/more? I know it performs ~10% lower overall than the E6600 which it used to compete with on price, but that is still getting on for £200. I'm not really in to o/c'ing but I will probably go for an ASUS mobo with a good rep for that.

MEM: I see there are various speed flavours of DDR2. Is the performance gain of the higher speeds worth the extra cost? I am hopefully going to pick up 1 or 2GB of DDR2 667 for nothing or next to nothing (from a server upgrade), which may make this a moot point, but I'd still like to know just in case.

GFX: This is where I have the hardest time justifiying major expense. I don't seem to game anymore (maybe I will one day) but I do need good desktop performance for Vista, (currenty 1920*1200*32 + 1280*1024*32). My old card is a 9800XT (AGP) so I need a PCI-e card. I guess I want a card thats going to give me sensible performance if I fire up HL2 again as well as run the OS nicely. Perhaps a 7600?

Oh and a quicky: Presumably I'm right in thinking that a modern 250GB PATA (Maxtor Maxline III) won't lag significantly behing SATA drives, and that I can still boot off it in on modern mobos with single IDE interfaces?

TIA,

T.

[Admiral]

ATI Vista drivers seem to be better than nvidia's but there are still mixed reports of people not being able to play any games, only D3D (OpenGL needs improvement) or everything works out (for a few).
You can read here a bit of info on AMD's driver roadmap.

CPU, if you overclock I'd go Intel, the E6600 should at least give you 3.0GHz on P965 Asus motherboards (P5B vanilla is to be left out) . From what I've read on other forums reports are 3.0 - 3.4 GHz, with a good cooler and a bit more voltage it could go to 3.6. The benefits are also for the video card, X1900 series get a considerable boost from a higher clocked Core 2. Thinking x1950 GT or Pro, a bit more expensive than 7600GT. I don't know if there are any reports about x1650XT scalability with Core 2, otherwise it's also a card to consider. You should also consider holding out until April when lower end parts of the R600 will be available.

[Gurm]

Oh and a quicky: Presumably I'm right in thinking that a modern 250GB PATA (Maxtor Maxline III) won't lag significantly behing SATA drives, and that I can still boot off it in on modern mobos with single IDE interfaces?

Actually, you'll see a night and day difference, especially once you get some stuff on there with a little fragmentation, between a PATA and a modern SATA/300. I didn't believe it myself, there's no good reason WHY it should be - I mean, you're not even really saturating the PATA interface most of the time. But it's true.

Claymonkey and I have had a discussion about a perceived phenomenon known as "PATA performance creep", where under normal use the performance of a PATA drive will degrade SIGNIFICANTLY over the course of 6 months to a year of normal use, whereas the same drive in SATA (or SCSI) will remain as fast as it was at purchase time... indefinitely. This is a known phenomenon, if not an understood one.

Last but not least, I must remind you that any drive by Maxtor is a festering shitpile.

[Fat Tone]

hehe IKWYM about Maxtor. Its just what I ended up with after sorting a warranty swap for someone - I couldn't be bothered to swap everything back after the exchange.

[rylan]

Quick fyi... Vista has no OpenGL support.

[gt40]

Quick fyi... Vista has no OpenGL support.

pardon?
I mean, really??

[rylan]

Well ok, I should've said that OpenGL performance will be horribly slow. There are some features that are left out or require some funky conversions to work properly. If anyone has seen some of the benchmarks for OpenGL apps its pretty sad.

[Mehen]

X1650XT would be good with a Core 2 Duo. E6600 is a monster - you would be very happy with it for a very long time. ASUS is always a good choice.

There is the R600 series coming out soon, but nothing as inexpensive as the X1650. There will be a big performance gap though. (X1650 will be great for HL2 though).

note: I've been out of town the last week, there has been a lot of news on both new ATI and NV I have to catch up on. http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx has a lot.

[Fat Tone]

Interesting to see the switch away from AMD right now, despite the price/performance difference.

Any other comments, esp. real world experience of DDR2 ram speeds?

Ta,

T.

[DGhost]

Well ok, I should've said that OpenGL performance will be horribly slow. There are some features that are left out or require some funky conversions to work properly. If anyone has seen some of the benchmarks for OpenGL apps its pretty sad.

Right now it's crap because all major parties have had to rewrite their drivers, and generally speaking DirectX has gotten most of the attention because it is far more visible at the moment.

Of course, this is also because Microsoft originally wasn't going to let vendors write OpenGL ICD's for Vista and they changed their mind in a relatively last minute decision...

[Mehen]

I've never noticed much of a difference (benchmark or real world) with different ram, only with amount of ram.

Something like PC2-6400 (DDR2-800) 5-5-5-12 would be fine (2x1GB)

You could spend over double for the same amount of ram to get DDR2-1200+ at the same timings, or double as well for same speed but lower timings. Either way, I don't think its justified.

[Fat Tone]

Thanks for the advice so far.

Right, the memory is a done deal. I should be getting 4 * 512MB PC2-5400 ECC DIMMS from a server upgrade (for nothing or very little).

So that leaves CPU, Mobo and gfx for ~£300, maybe a little more if it can be justified. Come on murcers, do your worst!

T.

[schmosef]

You should double check that ECC is supported by the motherboard you end up choosing.

I don't remember for sure right now (I'll check later) but I don't think it's supported on my P5W DH Deluxe board.

[Fat Tone]

Ta. Would it matter if ECC went in a non-ECC board? i.e. will it work but without ECC?

[Fat Tone]

ok, so lets say I'll stump up another £50 and go for the E6600...seems like a sensible choice for longevity. That leaves ~£150 for mobo and modest gfx.