rec.autos.simulators

A7N8X Deluxe MoBo
Athlon 2200+ Thourghbred
GeForce Ti 4200 128MB AGP 4X
512 MB DDR 333 Mhz
XP

Unfortunately my A7N8X was the first type with a top FSB of 333 Mhz not 400.
I've been looking at an Athlon 3000+ Barton Core CPU as my next upgrade.
It's presently at $235 CDN but I expect that to fall below $200 fairly soon.
I believe this will be the top end of CPU for my MotherBoard.
My first question is how much of a difference will I see for sims?
It runs at 2.17 GHz and my 2200+ is running at 1.8.  That doesn't seem like
a big advantage.  I realize the FSB and the Cache are bigger but still.

I wanted to go with a CPU upgrade to improve general computing as well.  Not
that I do anything very CPU intensive except race sims.  Still more speed is
always good.  But then last night I was racing the Prototype "C" mod.  (I've
turned some of the eye candy down to get respectable FPS)  Things bog down
at the start but then when I was racing by my self  I was trundling along
merrily in the mid-50's FPS.  So I thought, "Well the CPU must still be
working on all the same cars it's just their not visible."  So I'm beginning
to think my GPU is my bottleneck.  For $250 CDN I can get a 9600 XT 256 MB
AGP8X (hopefully that will be going down to the $200 range in the near
future too). So now I'm thinking that might be a more efficient use of the
200 bucks.  And any GPU is going to be ATI.  I've always owned Nvidia and
been a total fanboy of their's in the past.  But I gotta say these last 9
months have pissed me of no end and they have totally lost me.

So what's the verdict GPU or CPU?

TIA

Rudeboy

Your GPU is the bigger bottleneck at the moment IMO. You could try and
confirm that by monitoring your CPU usage while *** to see if it
gets maxxed out.
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Maybe another 512 of DDR would help? I know a lot of the recent games are
really liking at least 1GB of ram..

--
Mike Beauchamp
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Now for me fsaa & aniso make a big difference to the experience,
especially in sims. But for raw speed a step up to a 9800Pro is what's
called for, and that would stretch the budget a bit far even though the
gap is narrowing nicely.

For overall use I might be tempted to suggest another 512Mb of RAM, I
certainly wouldn't want to go back to 512 now I've got used to the extra
elbow room. But in *** terms that probably more use reloading FPS
levels, or in flight sims where huge maps with plenty of textures can be
an issue.

Another option is to get a new motherboard instead (ABit NF7 or similar)
and push the existing CPU as hard as it'll go. But that could be money
down the drain... though there'd might be room in the budget for a
motherboard *and* mobile Barton 2500 (which seems to be the current
overclocking favourite).

It's a tricky one really. The best advice with that fairly useful rig
might be to hang on and keep saving unless there's something he really
wants to run better right now.

Andrew McP

How do you check CPU usage if you're not running win2k or some such?

Eldred
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http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-401&...

It will OC like crazy.  Native FSB is 133/266FSB; simply crank up the
mobo to 166/333 and enjoy an all-but-guaranteed 2.25 GHz.  (My early
A7N8X can run the FSB at 180/360 before going non-linear.)  If you run
out of FSB headroom, the chip also happens to be multiplier unlocked.

See:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=271103
for complete details.

-Greg

Andrew McP

Well I'd thought obout bumping it up to a Gig.  Also because I have one Bank
of 512MB so I'm not really using the Dual Channel capacity of my MoBo.  But
when I raised this in a Racesim forum everyone said that 512MB is more than
enough for Sims and Mods right now.  When you say "I've got used to the
extra elbow room." what do you mean?   How does it improve things?

Ya someone else suggested that.  I've never OC'd before but I've looked into
it.  The consensus is the 2200+ does not really OC well so I never bothered.
A Mobile Barton 2500 runs around $140.00 CDN so it would be a $100 saving.
I'm just leery of OC'ing.  I used to always try to push things, beta drivers
etc., etc., And I found my self tweaking way more than racing so I said to
hell with this and I've run pretty standard since then.  I might try this
but I'd like to hear any input from  as to how easy this is and how stable.

Ya it seems the next cycle for both is just around the corner I might hang
on.  All though the saving part is the hard part.

Thanks

How do you check CPU usage while ***?  Is there a utility or a trace? Or
do you mean just use Windows Task Manager in XP?  I did that last night. I
didn't have much time but ran a few laps of JGTC and 1997 Mods for F1C and
the CPU usage graph was maxed out the whole time when I was running. Does
that indicate a CPU bottleneck?

Thanks Rudeboy

What games?  I'm only really using F1C & Mods, NR2003 & Mods and GPL.   Did
you mean any of those? And there doesn't seem to be any games on the horizon
except GTR.
Do Mods take up more than RAM?
I was thinking of popping for more RAM but on a Racesim Forum everyone said
512 is more than enough for today's Race Sims and Mods.

Thanks

Rudeboy

Yes.

Quite possibly. Another way is to decrease and increase the resolution
you play a game at at see how the framerate is affected. If you run at
640x480 then the CPU is the limiting factor.
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Andrew McP

I don't have F1C, so I'm not going to make any promises. But the 4200
isn't such a bad card when it comes to throwing pixels onto the screen at
1024x768. The 9800se does it with more style and a little more speed
across the board on a 768Mb/1800MHz AMD box, but I was unimpressed
generally by the uplift. I just think that for about 1.5x the money (in
the UK anyway) you can get a much better bang for buck with the 9800Pro.
It's a matter of looking at the extra money and the relative benchmarks
available in other games and deciding what's best for you.

http://www.racesimcentral.net/

Don't lose any sleep about dual channel on an AMD setup. When I moved to a
dual channel board I benchmarked extensively in single/dual mode and the
best result I got was a 7% FPS improvement for dual. The average was more
like 5% and often a big fat 0%. The extra memory will not help most
games/sims run noticeably quicker, but it does mean that switching back &
forth between game & menus, reloading tracks or levels etc is much quicker
in general, as much more is kept in memory rather than on the HD. As I
say, it's about comfort rather than performance, hence the elbow room
thing (as in having more elbow room on your desk instead of it being
cluttered with stuff). In that sense it's perhaps not money well spent
unless you do thinks like editing home movies on your box.

As you say, it's easy to spend more time tweaking than driving, but that's
computers for you. If you want a simple life the XBox is over there ;-)

I always say that saving for something is a great way of finding out how
much you really want it. Often there are a lot better things to spend your
money on, it's just easy to forget that when your FPS dip and you spin off
the track (well, that's my excuse ;-)

All in all I think you have a fairly well balanced system. A 9600Pro/XT
would give you access to dx9 and some more fps (especially with fsaa) but
it's not a big enough step up generally IMO unless you really need access
to dx9 features now. A 9800Pro would be much more noticeable in
graphics-limited situations, and very handy if you're into *** in
general, but bear in mind that it might require a new power supply if
you're unlucky (same for the 9600XT probably). But if you made that
upgrade step, then managed a CPU/motherboard upgrade in six months or so
have a pretty capable machine... for a year or so anyway :-)

Andrew McP