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Well after about 3 years I've finally upgraded the ol' rig to something a little more fitting for todays needs. I wasn't really feeling the need quite as bad as in years past, but the bug bit me and it was time. So I'm not the proud owner of a new AMD 64-3200 system which has replaced the ol' trusty Intel 1.8Ghz P4. I threw in a MSI K8T-NEO FISR MB, 512MB of RAM to go with it. I was a little concerned about the lack of memory, but I had to budget somewhere (my original CPU choice was an XP 3000, so I jumped WAY to much), but I did buy the "best" RAM I could find, figuring if I had to do with less RAM I may as well make sure it's got some performance to it.
But now I've got two problems, first the video card is now my bottle neck - GF4-4200 128MB. I noticed some stuttering on one game, but I think that's due to a mod I did awhile back when I replaced the HSF unit with something a little more beefy. I think when I ripped off the glued on HSF unit that was stock I pulled some of the protective junk covering the GPU, so I don't think I'm getting a good connection between HSF and GPU. I also never stuck any heat sinks on the RAM. I never had this problem though, but then again in some of todays games I had to dump the resolution down to a decent level, but certainly nothing very high, and forget AA. I'm going to throw some heat sinks on the RAM and see if I can get the HSF to seat a little better, if that doesn't work then it looks like another upgrade is in my future.
The second problem is noise, I bought one of the "standard" Antec full tower cases when they first came out (you know, the one with the door covering the drives, pop off side panel, etc). I liked the idea of having a ton of fans in the machine as I was a little bigger into the whole overclocking thing, but now it's just annoying the hell out of me. The machine is LOUD with 5 case fans, 2 PS fans, 1 CPU HSF and 1 GPU HSF. It all works as designed as even with running benchmark programs or intensive games the case temps never go much over 100 degrees (F) and CPU temp stays about 10-15 degrees higher than that. But I could do without the aircraft carrier flight deck noise levels, any thoughts? I was looking at the "quiet" cases from Antec, which use just a couple of 120mm fans instead of the smaller/noisier 80mm fans, but I'm concerned about how much cooling I'm giving up, looking at CFM numbers it looks like I'll take a bit of a hit by going that way, but obviously I'll loose quite a bit of noise along with changing the pitch of the noise as well.
So the good stuff, I haven't loaded up all the good games just yet, but I've thrown on F1 Challenge 99-02, Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9), Live for Speed, C&C (along with Zero Hour). I noticed the stuttering on F1C when I was running with 1280x1024x32 with 2xAA going on, and it was a couple of places on the screen that were stuttering, but the game itself was playing very well with a nice high frame rate. With FS9 I decided to do a little torture test, so I set all the graphics levels to max, set the draw distances a little further than recommended, set the 3d clouds up to max, etc loaded up a highly detailed 3rd party plane. Then I bumped the resolution up to 1280x1024x32 along with the 2xAA and the game played just as smooth as can be, even playing in the virtual cockpits. Now I just need to load up Splinter Cell 2 and Max Payne 2 and crank the graphics levels up to some ridiculous level.
Andrew
But now I've got two problems, first the video card is now my bottle neck - GF4-4200 128MB. I noticed some stuttering on one game, but I think that's due to a mod I did awhile back when I replaced the HSF unit with something a little more beefy. I think when I ripped off the glued on HSF unit that was stock I pulled some of the protective junk covering the GPU, so I don't think I'm getting a good connection between HSF and GPU. I also never stuck any heat sinks on the RAM. I never had this problem though, but then again in some of todays games I had to dump the resolution down to a decent level, but certainly nothing very high, and forget AA. I'm going to throw some heat sinks on the RAM and see if I can get the HSF to seat a little better, if that doesn't work then it looks like another upgrade is in my future.
The second problem is noise, I bought one of the "standard" Antec full tower cases when they first came out (you know, the one with the door covering the drives, pop off side panel, etc). I liked the idea of having a ton of fans in the machine as I was a little bigger into the whole overclocking thing, but now it's just annoying the hell out of me. The machine is LOUD with 5 case fans, 2 PS fans, 1 CPU HSF and 1 GPU HSF. It all works as designed as even with running benchmark programs or intensive games the case temps never go much over 100 degrees (F) and CPU temp stays about 10-15 degrees higher than that. But I could do without the aircraft carrier flight deck noise levels, any thoughts? I was looking at the "quiet" cases from Antec, which use just a couple of 120mm fans instead of the smaller/noisier 80mm fans, but I'm concerned about how much cooling I'm giving up, looking at CFM numbers it looks like I'll take a bit of a hit by going that way, but obviously I'll loose quite a bit of noise along with changing the pitch of the noise as well.
So the good stuff, I haven't loaded up all the good games just yet, but I've thrown on F1 Challenge 99-02, Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9), Live for Speed, C&C (along with Zero Hour). I noticed the stuttering on F1C when I was running with 1280x1024x32 with 2xAA going on, and it was a couple of places on the screen that were stuttering, but the game itself was playing very well with a nice high frame rate. With FS9 I decided to do a little torture test, so I set all the graphics levels to max, set the draw distances a little further than recommended, set the 3d clouds up to max, etc loaded up a highly detailed 3rd party plane. Then I bumped the resolution up to 1280x1024x32 along with the 2xAA and the game played just as smooth as can be, even playing in the virtual cockpits. Now I just need to load up Splinter Cell 2 and Max Payne 2 and crank the graphics levels up to some ridiculous level.
Andrew
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