Upper limits with cpu ??

[Guest]

Good point MAX!!!I just read the review pitting the new Intel Chips Vs AMD XP2100...man that AMD chip has the minerals!!!! What a beast!! That is what I am building at the moment. It was interesting to note like you noticed no testing with DDR RAM...! RAMBUS is dead!!! My P4 1.5 box is being relegated to an e-mail server and other drool functions. The price of the P4's (new ones) of course is rather high to justify in GAME BOX!!!! The AMD is just great!!!Max, thanks for your insight and technical knowledge...!RegardsTony

[Guest]

Hi Arni,With respect, I have run so many benchmarks on FS2K2 in the shop on such a wide variety of systems over the past six months. All I can say is claims like the gentleman made above are simply on the fringe. There are *always* claims like the above in every group... Reality, however, never bears them out. The same can be said for the inevitable claims on the other end of the "wishful thinking" spectrum that always surface saying the highest end computers get like 200 FPS in a new game like FS.Back here on earth, Paul has more of the correct pulse. This is *not* to say that good to great performance can't be had with some fairly inexpensive equipment today in FS, but thats not what you asked Arni. What you asked is what the upper limits would be. I fully agree that somewhere in the range of 3.0-3.5 GHz on the P4 or 2.5-3.0 GHz on the existing Athlon XP platform would be the ultimate sweet spot with 2K2.I also fully agree with Paul's recommendation as the "ultimate" system today for FS being the new 0.13 P4 at 2.3-2.5 (although the 850E that supports the new 533Mhz FSB is an RDRAM platform, not a DDR platform as suggested). All semantics aside, the new P4 with even RDRAM at 800 Mhz is the fastest CPU system you can buy - *today*. Which is exactly what FS relies upon the most.Cost, on the other hand, almost always plays its part in any decision. When taken into account today, an existing Athlon XP platform would indeed be my hearty recommendation. If you were to ask the same question in 3-4 months, I'd most likely be recommending the new Atlhon's (Athlon64 maybe? or too Nintendoish?) with 512KB of cache and 166Mhz FSB - for I'll assume considering long standing history, much less then a P4 platform at the same or better performance.But back to today. My recommendation if price matters:Athlon XP 2000+ABIT AT7 or KT7A v1.3 (bit expensive, but guarenteed compatible with near future 0.13 T-breds)512MB of Crucial (or similar Micron chiped) PC2100 DDRGainward's Ultra 650/XP Nvidia Ti4200 w/128MBMy recommendation if price isn't as important:P4 2.53BIntel D850EMV2 or Asus P4T533-C (in a few weeks)512MB Samsung PC800 or PC1066 at 533Mhz (soon available)Gainward's Ultra 700/XP Nvida Ti4400Take care,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest PaulL01]

>But back to today. My recommendation if price matters: >>Athlon XP 2000+ >ABIT AT7 or KT7A v1.3 (bit expensive, but guarenteed >compatible with near future 0.13 T-breds) >512MB of Crucial (or similar Micron chiped) PC2100 DDR >Gainward's Ultra 650/XP Nvidia Ti4200 w/128MB >>My recommendation if price isn't as important: >>P4 2.53B >Intel D850EMV2 or Asus P4T533-C (in a few weeks) >512MB Samsung PC800 or PC1066 at 533Mhz (soon available) >Gainward's Ultra 700/XP Nvida Ti4400 >>Take care, Hi Elrod! (heh heh just for old times sake!) :)Its great to "see" you back Elrond, hope everything is well for you and yours.With regard to the above topic what

[Guest]

I have found this string to be extremely educational to me since I'm trying to weigh a similar decision as the person who posed the original query, and since I'm a low-tech moron. So here's some low-tech moron questions if you have the patience.If my computer is running 184MB PS sdram memory (I upgraded by inserting 128 in the expansion slot) and I want to add another 256 must it be sdram or rdram or DDR of another? Also, what's the difference? I'm just learning about tweaking the system and don't understand all the definitions being tossed about. FSB? TSR's? LOD(where do I find this to set?)My pittifully puny old (2years..HA) system is:AMD6 500mhzTrident Blade 3D184MB RamWIN 98Thanks for any assistance

[Guest]

Hiya Paula, :-)Thanks for the sentiments - and the same to you and yours. Yes, my wife and I are fine, although my back is thrown out at the moment and I'm stuck at home. But, even if in some pain, at least I get some much deserved time off - its been too busy the past few months. Every since that freeware bru-hah-hah a month or so back that pizzed me off so much I've decided to spend more of my time in other game communities. I've been pretty active in the Dungeon Siege community and have really enjoyed myself - its such a wonderfully written and planned game when it comes to expansion possibilities. I highly respect those dev's at Gas Powered.As for future upgradability, I wouldn't touch one of the older P4's now. Intel has such a horrible track record with the P4 platform in this regard though, so its not much of a surprise (again). Hopefully they have the pin counts and voltages set in stone for more than a mere few months this time around... I haven't seen any documents to suggest otherwise this time. I think the 0.13 Northwoods will last for a least a year as far as pin count, so its probably a good time to invest if you are an Intel fan and upgradability is part of your goal (not you specifically of course :-)).As for the Athlon Platform, this is probably the worst time to invest if upgradability is part of your plate. The platform has been extremely stable and wholly based upon SocketA for the past few years... A VERY nice benefit to the Athlon platform in my opinion. SocketA should indeed still be useful for the next two Athlon intros: the Tbred and Barton (Barton possibly quite exciting). However with the introduction of the yet-to-be-named consumer version of Hammer 32/64, the pin count will dramatically increase for the first time since SocketA (754 for the consumer version, a whopping 940 for the Opteron). Once the chipsets are out for Athlon64, the stability of the platform should return and it'll be another good time to invest if upgradability is part of the goal.In all, investing this fall instead of now will be the best bet regardless. There are so, so many things coming down the pipe this summer and fall in just about every regard in hardware: AGP 8x, DDR400, PC1066, 32/64bit processors, finally a return to massive competition in the video arena, standardization on built in USB 2.0 and Firewire, possibilities of Serial ATA showing its face, etc. I've never quite seen such a barrage of hardware platform changes as is taking place all at once as right now. Very exciting to be a hardware enthusiast today!Of course, you already know most of the above. So this was more written to those who are wondering or on the fence of course.Good to talk at you too my friend,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest]

JEH,A good basic understanding of all this stuff can be had by reading the stuff provided by Intel on their website.Most of it follows through for AMD chips (which are Intel chips, reverse engineered and improved on and/or fixed to a greater or lesser extent.)http://www.intel.com/technology/agp/toverview.htmYour computer is broken up into a bunch of components which talk to each other over various bus technologies. Each bus has it's own links to the mainboard chipset which in turn links everything together. Each one of these bus runs potentially at a different speed and width of addressing and width of data. These have all evolved at different stages and in differing directions. Some devices on a bus can exert control and load the bus which forces other devices to wait. Other devices need to be controlled (babysat) by yet another device. The combination of all these factors is what we see as an end result.Since the marketing folks always force developers to maintain backwards compatibility (shoot 'em i say!), we have this horrible mix of design requirements and standards that is todays PC. For each leap forward, we end up having to replace parts on *that* bus to keep up, hence the perpetual upgrade cycle. (like all the poor folks who have spent a fortune on a brand new shiny nVidia 128Mb Geforce 4 card that happens to not support the AGP 8X bus standard, which will again cause them to buy their Geforce 5 card etc ...)RayAs to your ram question, you are pretty much stuck to whatever chipset your motherboard used as far as what support for ram types and combinations you can use. Since you didn't list your specific motherboard model, I'd just be guessing.

[Guest]

Hi Elrond,If you were directing your comments towards me, with respect, I am being quite truthful here... I see you also live in Ontario. I am in just North of Oshawa and cordially invite you to come over to my home and judge for yourself - I am not making wild claims here, my system works just fine - come on up here and have a play!sincerely

[Guest]

Hi Terry,No disrespect to you meant in the least: I hope you didn't feel any. I fully believe you are satisfied with the performance of your system as you state and I wouldn't have it any other way. Theres nothing more we can ask from our particular hobby than that.While my testing on a wide variety of systems has not provided the same experience as you have had on your own system, I wouldn't presume to tell you that you are wrong. What I am saying is regardless of claims on both ends of the spectrum, the middle ground is where most experiences will fall and where recommendations must come from for them to have meaning to more than one person - it is with that regard that I made my recommendation.Take care,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest]

Ray: Thanks for the considerate and detailed answer. I'm working my way up the curve. At play from the marketers must also be "product developement", first invented by the auto industry and since copied by everybody else. This says, design it's obsolesence so the dumb yucks will have to buy a new one. Helps insure you stay in business with big profits.Well I'll muddle along til this one's finally paid for and then I'll get in line.Thanks againJohn

[Guest]

Yep, thats all part of the big upgrade myth ... we'll change the pinouts and voltages just enough in each design to ensure that you need a new style of power supply and a new motherboard which of course will require a new type of ram and maybe throw in the odd bus change to add the video card type (agp 2x/4x/8x) into the mix :-lolWhile you may be able to upgrade the odd part now and then assuming you only did a partial upgrade and didn't max out your system when first built, generally you are getting a few percent overall improvement ...Video cards are the perfect example here, while the Geforce series has grown in great leaps and bounds in the last year or so with the advent of the Geforce 3 and now the 4, they are still capped by the AGP 4x standard which means that the card developers have had to increase the memory on the card itself since the card no matter how fast is capped by the AGP slot 4x fastwrite/sideband maximum bandwidth. Slap another 64 Megs on the card (aka Geforce 4 128Mb) instead of deal with the real problem (AGP 8x or 16x)Once the AGP 8x boards ship, people will be buying 32 Meg cards that will outperform the new 128 Meg cards simply because they can use your system ram once again without the chokepoint being there.It becomes really annoying, because we all want performance now, not tomorrow, so we become victims of our own wants ;-) yet we know whats coming down the pipe and knowingly go out and spend the money to be temporarly lulled into the "it's better now" syndrome :-lolThe more you learn, the more you'll wish you didn't know, because when it comes time to upgrade, all those silly little parts that system builders normally put into the clones become just not good enough for YOU :-lol and the price climbs dramatically for that extra 10% that you get out of the superior parts... The more you know, the lighter your wallet as my wife puts it :-lolRay

[Guest Max Cowgill]

>Once the AGP 8x boards ship, people will be buying 32 Meg >cards that will outperform the new 128 Meg cards simply >because they can use your system ram once again without the >chokepoint being there. Ray, I'm curious to know exactly what you mean by the above statement. Are you implying that vid card manufacturers are going to start making 32MB AGP 8x (and higher) video cards that will perform better than the 128MB cards of today? If so, you're wrong. It would take AGP ~64x to have a higher memory bandwidth than the local memory of today's fastest video cards, and AGP 64x isn't anywhere around the corner ;) That's just to match the bandwidth, that still wouldn't provide the same performance as accessing the local frame buffer (accessing system memory = latency penalties).I think you're right about AGP 8x (and higher) being necessary, I just think you're wrong in your assessment of its implementation. Max Cowgill

[Guest PaulL01]

Not only that, but the near future is bringing 256mb and even 512mb cards using 8x AGP, as this will help the higher/better sampling rate of the newer AA methods that will be introduced with some of these new cards. :-)Later, Paul

[Guest Max Cowgill]

>Not only that, >but the near future is bringing 256mb and even 512mb cards >using 8x AGP, as this will help the higher/better sampling >rate of the newer AA methods that will be introduced with >some of these new cards. :-) True that Paul. Can't wait for Parhelia, NV30, and R300. Each of these cards are rumored to have up to a 256MB frame buffer :) I've been hearing some interesting things about the multisampling method of the Parhelia lately, and NV30 is supposed to be based on 3dfx/Gigapixel technology so it appears as though we might finally get great-looking FSAA along with super fast speeds :)Max Cowgill

[Guest]

Hi Max,While Ray's claim was a tad toung in cheek I believe, the statement isn't *that* far from the truth. Read this page of this article:http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1614&p=8This has been discussed for many years and has been a wish list of many developers for quite some time. As a matter of fact, those silly bitBoys had a somewhat similar design, *on paper* :-), four years ago. Of course, we all know where that has lead. The P10 on the other hand finally brings this idea to silicon. While the buffer can't be 32MB and sell in the market today, that doesn't mean it wouldn't work. The P10 is just an extension of this long standing idea used in a bit different way, and with enough fast memory onboard to satisfy the market.Take care,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest Max Cowgill]

>Hi Max, >>While Ray's claim was a tad toung in cheek I believe, the >statement isn't *that* far from the truth. Read this page >of this article: >>http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.html?i=1614&p=8 >>This has been discussed for many years and has been a wish >list of many developers for quite some time. As a matter of >fact, those silly bitBoys had a somewhat similar design, *on >paper* :-), four years ago. Of course, we all know where >that has lead. The P10 on the other hand finally brings >this idea to silicon. While the buffer can't be 32MB and >sell in the market today, that doesn't mean it wouldn't >work. The P10 is just an extension of this long standing >idea used in a bit different way, and with enough fast >memory onboard to satisfy the market. Elrond, I realize a faster AGP bus is necessary, as I admitted in my post. No matter how fast the AGP bus is though, it's still optimal to have a large frame buffer on the video card and not have to access system memory for textures and such. That is, at least, until the penalty for accessing system memory is similar to the penalty for accessing on-board memory. You could have an AGP bus with 100GB/s bandwidth for all I care, but if you have to wait 7.5ns (and higher, depending on memory type) to access system memory, and then even longer to transfer everything across the AGP bus and into the video card's local frame buffer anyway what's the point? Modern video cards are shipping with DDR memory with latencies as low as 2.8ns nowadays, and who knows what the future will bring? Don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that the AGP bus is useless or anything silly like that, I'm just saying that fast on-board memory is preferable to slow (in comparison) system memory.Max Cowgill