Power, power, POWERRRRR!!!

[screwtype]

Okay you guys, after I boasted about my new 2.8 Celeron system and you all jeered at me for not buying AMD, I went back to the store and exchanged it for an Athlon 64 3000+ system running Windows XP.

Power, power, POWERRRRRR.

Now if only I could get the darned thing to run in AGPx8...

[LeftEyeNine]

And...Erm..Well ?

[Strike For The South]

somebody is happy

[GoreBag]

My last computer was a Celeron. Probably shouldn't do that again...I didn't know they still made them.

[screwtype]

My last computer was a Celeron. Probably shouldn't do that again...I didn't know they still made them.

To tell the truth, I can't really tell the difference between this system and the 2.8 Celeron I had before. They are both so much faster than my previous system it doesn't matter.

I can now run RTW with all the graphics tweaked to their highest setting with no noticeable slowdown in play. So I guess there isn't much to complain about...

One advantage of the Celeron though is that it was quieter. The AMD CPU fan is smaller, but quite noisy by comparison.

[GoreBag]

I recently got more RAM and a graphics card worth my effort (256mb Radeon 9600), so I should probably do that too. I know the feeling you have, though, and it's great.

[LeftEyeNine]

Hmm..ok..Let's grow this snowball of hi-tech love then..Ding!

AGP speed adjustments are primarily in BIOS and secondarily in the Display Options in your OS.

[screwtype]

AGP speed adjustments are primarily in BIOS and secondarily in the Display Options in your OS.

Thanks lefteye. I've actually been through two weeks of hell trying to get the thing to run right. Nasty reboots whenever I try to run in AGPx8.

Anyhow, I think I've finally tracked down the problem now....sorta. It's basically "a problem" that "some hardware configurations" have with Windows XP. In other words there's nothing I can do about it, except maybe try some different ram sticks.

Anyhow, AGPx4 isn't that bad...it's still a heck of a lot faster than my previous system.

[screwtype]

And...Erm..Well ?

Well it runs okay in AGPx4 I guess... :/

[Productivity]

Well it runs okay in AGPx4 I guess... :/

Uh, it doesn't matter. Video cards don't saturate an AGP4x bus, the performance difference between AGP4x and AGP8x is <1%.

[Beirut]

Uh, it doesn't matter. Video cards don't saturate an AGP4x bus, the performance difference between AGP4x and AGP8x is <1%.

Really?

[English assassin]

Hmm, now I know how you all felt reading the cricket threads...

I supose its hopelessly jejune never to "upgrade" your PC until the old one blows up?

Seriously though, I am due an explosion any time now, what sort of system is a good mid priced specification these days? Mostly for games, in terms of things that make a demand on the PC. Any hints for an old luddite?

[Sigurd]

The potential of AGPx8 is vast as it operates on a 32 bit channel octuple pumped(66 MHz) churning a total of 533 MHz which can potentially deliver a data rate of 2133 MB/s.
AGPx4 operates on a quadruple pumped channel with a total of 266 MHz and can deliver a rate of 1066 MB/s.

But as is already mentioned in this thread, games seldom need more than 2x AGP which churns out data at a rate of 533 MB/s… that is megabyte!!
There is seldom anything gained by increasing your bus deliverance on your graphics card. This is not the typical bottleneck.

[screwtype]

Uh, it doesn't matter. Video cards don't saturate an AGP4x bus, the performance difference between AGP4x and AGP8x is <1%.

Yeah, I have read that there isn't nearly as much difference as you might think. But <1% sounds a bit exaggerated.

Anyhow, as I said, it seems to run okay in AGPx4. I'd prefer it if it ran it x8, but if it won't, I can probably live with it.

I always found it worthwhile to just keep using the system untill it's really old, and then replace the whole thing.

I should probably have done that, but I thought I was going to do just a cheap little upgrade. I started out with a $300 budget for the Celeron system. Then I got greedy for more power and took it back to the store and exchanged it for the Athlon system. The price went up to $415.

Then the new mobo blew up my 300 watt PS. So I bought a 550 watt for $60. Then I found the new system wouldn't run reliably in Windows98SE, so I had to upgrade to XP. Another $135. And now that I've got XP, I really should get another 512 Mb RAM, because the 512 Mb I've already got isn't much for an OS that just by itself takes up more than 200 Mb. Another $80. And I'll probably have to get better quality RAM this time. Another $20.

And finally, it's really time I got rid of these cheap old speakers and got a nice set of Logitech 5.1's. Another $100.

So my "cheap" $300 upgrade is going to end up costing me around $800

Did I mention that I could use a bigger hard drive?

I've been using an AMD64-3000 for a while now and it runs very well. I can use 8x AGP through the Catalyst Control Center that runs my 9800 Pro and all is very stable.

You lucky, lucky basket

Anyway, you should really get pci xpress as the next thing, so I'd just keep the system as it is, if you only want to play rtw, doesnt really demand much compared to other games on the market (or The Elder Scrolls 4 when it arrives).

When I bought my video card a year ago, I made enquiries about PCI-Express and folks said, "don't bother with it! It will be ages before it's cheap and affordable." So I bought my Radeon AGP card instead. And now here we are just a year down the track and there's hardly a new mobo or vid card that supports AGP. Incredible how fast it became redundant. But having just recently spent $350 on the AGP card, I really couldn't afford to go with PCI-Express this time.

But next time, I think I'll go with my own gut feeling instead