Upgrade Fever 2004
Introduction
Ever since I’ve owned my first 486 SX 33 I’ve usually upgraded my computer on a yearly basis. Generally, I would wait till processor speeds doubled and then plunk down a bit of cash for a new CPU, motherboard and RAM. Sometimes I could reuse the RAM but usually there was something faster and I couldn’t resist that extra imaginary 1 pico second of time that it would theoretically save me.
Now, fast forward a bit into the future and we have my current setup. An AMD 1.3 GHz Althon with 512 MB of RAM on top an Abit KT7A-RAID Motherboard. Speed demon it is not, but back in the early 2001 days it was hot. Unfortunately like most computer parts it has not aged well and its more comparable to um… hot dog water. Sure it’s food and yes it will keep you alive but you’re not going to enjoy it.
Considering my previous past, my tendency to be on the computer all day/night and my lust for all things technology related; How could I have lived with this machine for so long? Well, the answer lies ahead…
The Story
You see around the 1 GHz days I started to think that I really didn’t need to upgrade so often. The longer I waited the better stuff got. This simple concept started innocently enough and it went on for quite some time.
Many months had passed now and I still clung to my aging computer. I was starting to get more anxious like a junky needing a fix but I kept holding on. Then it happened in early 2003. Half-Life² info started to become available.
At first the info came in tiny morsels, nothing to get too excited about, that is until E3 that year. Valve release what I think is one of the most amazing video game teasers ever made. Words fail to describe it, I had to watch it over and over again to believe it. Heck I even posted a lot of screen shots with mandatory silly commentary that very same evening. That’s how much I was in love with it.
I remember showing it everyone and anyone I could get my hands on. Like I was a messenger for the digital messiah or something.
So, armed with this new inspiration, my path was now clear. I would need some very serious hardware to run the new Half-Life so I decided to… wait… some… more…. Zzz….
Little did I know what a trying time the next year would be.
Realization
As you probably already know the release date for Half-Life² kept slipping and slipping and then their source code got stolen then they said, “well actually we are not ready to ship anyway” and then… AIIIEEE!
You get the picture.
My upgrade fever was getting worse. Video editing projects were getting backlogged because I could only run them at night. Games no longer looked as shiny, rubies lost their luster and all that was left was a fathers love for his daughter… Ops Conan flashback! Sorry.
I finally came to realize how foolish it was to base my life around a video game release (cough WoW cough). It was time to upgrade and this one would be significant.
AMD 64bit chips were here, new video cards from NVidia and ATI were blazingly fast and DDR ram was flowing like like vomit from a Vahzilok. Oops CoH flashback! Sorry.
Mmm, tempting...
Like any smart shopper I lurked around Techbargains, Pricewatch and Newegg for a few weeks before I struck…
The Plan
My first idea was to upgrade my aging video card with a new ATI Radeon X800 Pro. It’s about double as fast as the best card from previous generations (who knows how many times faster than my card) and only about double the price. Hmm, four hundred was quite a bit of money though, still the performance jump was 2x so I say it’s worth it!
With wallet in hand and decided to order one from Dell, mainly because I found two stackable discounts which brought the price down some. Dell said they had it in stock too and that it would ship within a week or so. Of course that week ended and I got a automated message from Dell that said the new ship date would be in September. Zoinks!
I quickly canceled my order and started searching for anyone else who had the card in stock. Drat, any place with it in stock was charging over $400. No way I’m paying more than retail and I’m not going to get it from a local store and be hit with tax either. Hmm what to do?
Hmm, 13 blades. I wonder if it...
...oh yeah! That's a good shave.
AMD recently released their new socket 939 pin chips. Unfortunately the new chips were starting in the $500 price range so I decided to go with a socket 754 solution. Benchmarks were very similar so I knew I wasn’t buying something outdated plus the new NForce 3 250Gb was getting great reviews so I knew I had a good combo.
A tiny bit more patience and I stumbled upon a Farcry Giveaway with qualified AMD Processor and Motherboard combinations at Newegg. Woo free game, I’m there! Only one problem though, no motherboards listed (that I liked) were using the chipset I wanted. I decided to check out ZipZoomFly (formerly GoogleGear) for a price comparison and viola they were running the same promotion! Ah and they had the CPU and Motherboard I wanted too. A bit more ram research and one credit card transaction later I was a happy consumer excited waiting the delivery of my new stuff.
Upgrade This!
By far this is the machine I have owned the longest and it’s been very good to me. I did add certain parts like the DVD and Hard Drive over time but its core has remained the same.
AMD Althon 1.3 GHz (Socket A)
512 MB of Corsair PC 133 SDRAM, CAS 2
Abit KT7A-RAID
NVidia GeForce 2 GTS 32 MB
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy
Maxtor 40 GB, 7200 RPM
Western Digital 200 GB, 7200 RPM, 8 MB Cache
Sony DVD RW DRU-510A
3Com EtherLink XL 10/100 PCI Network Card
Of course, no computer would be any good without software which consisted of the following.
Windows XP Pro SP1a
NVidia ForceWare 56.72
VIA Hyperion 4in1 4.51v
DirectX 9.0b
New hardware is as follows.
AMD Athlon 64 3200+, 1MB Cache, Socket 754 (2 GHz)
512 MB of PC3200 (CMX512-3200LL) 400MHz DDR, 184 Dimm
MSI K8N Neo Platinum (nForce3 250Gb, Gigabit Lan, Firewire, 4 Sata Raid, USB 2, Dual Bios and more)
Not many changes on the software front except for the chipset drivers.
Windows XP Pro SP1a
NVidia ForceWare 56.72
NVidia nForce3 4.08 Drivers
DirectX 9.0b
I tried to keep the setup as similar as possible between the old and new systems for benchmarking.
Speaking of benchmarking… I’m not a hardcore benchmarker at heart. If you really want some serious info you should head on over to Tom’s Hardware, Anandtech and the ever amusing Dans Data. All of them are frequently updated with a plethora of hardware reviews and other assorted knowledge and are highly recommended.
Ports Ahoy Captain!
That being said, I tried to pick benchmarks that either show a specific performance category and/or are things that I use on a daily basis.
If all I did was encode video all day I might have went with an Intel chip. On the other hand if all I did was play video games all day (guilty!) then I would definitely go with an AMD chip. Either one is a fine choice right now. You just have to make sure its a match for your use and your budget.
iSoftware Sandra Standard 2004.SP1
Comes with a bunch of utilities, can be used for free and has some quirky interface issues. Oops!
Did I mention it was free?
CPU Arithmetic Benchmark
Dhrystone ALU
Old 4941 MIPS
New 8720 MIPS Whetstone FPU
dull 2025 MFLOPS
shiny 3174 MFLOPS Whetstone SSE2
Not Supported
ooh yeah 4133 MFLOPS CPU Multi-Media Benchmark
Integer MMX/SSE
luke warm 12259 it/s
hott (with two T’s!) 19153 it/s 3DNow!
exlax 13671 it/s
all you can eat tacos 20594 it/s Memory Bandwidth Benchmark
Int Buffered
loaf 894 MB/s
meat loaf 3091 MB/s Float Buffered
H2o 882 MB/s
root beer 3090 MB/s Bandwidth Efficiency
Combined
angry bear 84%
fozzy bear 96% Cache & Memory Benchmark
Combined Index
barbie 1706 MB/s
transformers 6030 MB/s
Futuremark 3DMark03
Due to my ancient GeForce 2 GTS, 3DMark would only run a few of it’s tests which helped lead to these abysmally low scores.
3D Marks
diet coke 150
*sniff* coke *snif* 230
Farcry
Why did I choose such a demanding and bleeding edge game to demo my system? Well, because I got it for free and I had to install it anyway!
First Save Point
kiss 48 fps
snog 85 fps These number were not static of course. The old pc tended to drop to high 20s in tough locations while the new box dropped to the mid 30s.
City of Heroes
My current video game addiction that I spend way too much time in. Very nice particle effects and a large variety of textures.
Independence Port Mission Entrance
lamb chop 42 fps
the muppets 85 fps
Winamp 5.03a + GEISS 4.24 Plugin
I love it, use it constantly and can’t live without it. Heck I even use it while I’m playing City of Heroes. Options were set to classic skin, no other windows and no song scrolling. GEISS was set to 800×600 32-bit and 100% screen size. Music used was the very hypnotic My Army of Lovers by Army of Lovers. Ooh la la, I never get tired of listening to it.
Mode 08
aol 34 fps
two cans and a string 70 fps
Virtual Dub 1.5.10, Keopi’s XVid 1.0 and LAME 3.95.1
I decided to re-encode the Mr. B Natural (~100 MB) educational film from Mystery Science Theatre 3000. I never get tired of their commentary, the original film and the fact that it was made at my old high school! Virtual Dub settings used were a 2:1 reduction filter, XVid video compression (single pass, 700kbps, defaults) and LAME mp3 audio compression (128kbps, cbr, stereo).
Total Time (lower is better)
internet exploder 14:25 min
firefox 5:13 min
OGG Vorbis Encoding
I ripped the very excellent Logos – Live at the Dominion by Tangerine Dream to wav using EAC 0.95 prebeta 5 followed by the command line Oggenc2.3 to see how long it would take to encode song number two.
Total Time (lower is better)
cheese in a can 41 seconds
cheese 23 seconds
Happy Ending
Well the benchmarks speak for themselves. Most things are twice as fast and video encoding is almost three times faster than the old system.
MSI K8N Neo is part of this complete breakfast.
I think I’m in love.
Of course, just like a real loving relationship, there is always something you want to change about the other… oh wait… um… bad analogy.
No candy raver, not even you may approach my AMD 64bit CPU.
Like any bodybuilder, there is always a part your want to work on (and if you’re using roids you know which part). So the next upgrade is definitely going to be a better video card.
Will I wait patiently for the next best thing to come out? Heck no! I learned my lesson! I’ve already ordered a ATI Radeon X800 XT 256 MB and I’m not stopping there.
Yeah you hear me! I’m gonna order lots of stuff. No one can stop me now! Ahahahahahaha!
Upgrade fever returns!