AGP 8X worth the mobo upgrade?

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woolly

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 4, 2002
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Here are my system specs:
P4 [email protected]
150MHZ FSB
2x 256MB Corsair XMS series RAM
Asus P4B266 mobo
ATI R360 Radeon 9800 PRO modded to 9800 XT

I find that my 3Dmark scores are quite low compare to other systems of similar specs (radeon 9800 pro and P4 2.4-7ghz) my 3Dmark 2001 score is 13900 compared to others that have 15000-17000. Even the ATI 9800 PRO cards that are running at stock with a processor slower than mine beat my score.

I know there are many factors that can be affected by this such as the FSB (others have 200mhz and above) and memory bandwidth and etc.

However, I want to know which factor affects it the most?

I am thinking about buying a new mobo with a new intel chipset with dual channel DDR and agp 8x. Will that improve my system's performance significantly?
 
IMO if your going to upgrade your mobo, get one with PCI-E. THAT would be the martest choice, You might have to get a new processor I dunno.
 
PCI Express, if you went the intel route. Would require a new Video card(duh), CPU(LGA775) and RAM(DDR2)
 
theres a few factors hurting your 3dmarks score...

no hyperthreading
no dual channel ram
533fsb

going from 4x to 8x agp isnt as big of a jump youd think. your score would go up probobly 4000 points if you got a new 865 or 875 motherboard, and a hyperthreaded processor.
 
Well i just got the radeon 9800 PRO a few weeks ago so I am not going to go through the trouble of getting a PCI-e card and then selling the radeon.. I think I will stick with AGP until i get a whole new complete system.

I will probably look into probably buying a new mobo and cpu with HT support dual channel DDR and 800MHZ FSB. I didn't know the chipset bandwidth and the memory bandwidth can affect the performace that much.
 
you also have to understand that if he went with a PCI-E motherboard, he'd have to get new components - namely a new video card which would increase the cost and so forth.

in my opinion, best to upgrade around the agp spec.
 
meh, if he recently upgraded his comp, it might have been a bad desicion to stick to AGP, especially and older versionof AGP...
 
Who said he'd be sticking with older AGP. Lol, do they make systems that are AGP 4x anymore? Well, I suppose they do, but, there won't be many AT ALL... No, if he buys a new MB, it will be 8x -- that almost isn't even optional.

AGP isn't going anywhere for a while. There will be decent motherboards supporting it for a couple of years at least. Beyond that, well, the video card will be outdated anyway.

Right now the biggest thing you see making the jump from AGP to PCI-E (beyond having to pay a lot more out of pocket just to get it up and running since you can't use your old card) is the possibility of SLI, which ATI doesn't have yet. There is no reason for him to get PCI-E right now. There really is no point in shelling out hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to get a new mb, new cpu, and also a new video card just so you can switch to PCI-E when the current video cards for PCI-E aren't even TRULY better than the AGP versions... ATI has essentially said they will continue to make AGP cards for a while to come, and nVidia doesn't even have to say it, so, upgrading the video card isn't a factor either for a while, until those PCI-E video cards start to finally get up to beyond the limits of AGP 8x -- which current video cards, AGP or otherwise, don't really get that close to ATM.


That said, woolly, 3dMark01 is HIGHLY CPU/ram dependant and FSB is a gigantic factor in this one by all reports. The video cards are just running into upper limits in it. IMO, it would be more useful to at least look at 03 if not 05 scores to get a more realistic idea of how your performance in real life will be. Better yet, play real games like Far Cry. Of course, if you do upgrade to a system with hyperthreading a good fsb and dual channel memory, you will see some very nice differences even in real life gaming, but, don't go shelling out a couple hundred dollars just to get a 3dMark01 score up... Find out if you need it for the real world just yet or not and then decide.
 
get an A64 setup. i've got the 3000+ winnchester and A8V motherboard. I went from a XP 2400/nForce2 setup and the benchmark difference was 1200 points in 3dmark01......this is with a GF4 Ti 4200. i paid 347 for the combo and that's pretty expensive for it.

If you must go with intel then i have no suggestions except get hyper threading and dual channel ram. the athlon 64's dual channel mem controller and hyper transport technology is great for budget gaming machines.
 
AGP 4x to 8x will get you almost no improvement. After upgrading your mobo, you'll be stricken by bouts of depression and insanity. "But it's 8x!!" you'll scream, but your screams will be hollow, voiceless , meaningless sounds.

And then you'll cry.
Nobody here wants to see a grown man cry, ok? So forget about it :)

(PS. People are wankers. Don't go off the 3dmark comparison charts on madonion.com. Trust only peeps who say their scores are stock)
 
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