My (Hypothetical) new PC is Awesome (I think, you tell me)

Ok, so currently my PC has this...

CPU: Intel Pentium D 2.8 GHz
GPU: Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS
RAM: 4 GB DDR2 (Some of which I can't even use because I have Windows XP)

Now, here's the new computer I have a (pipe) dream of buying...

CPU: Intel Core i7 2.66 GHz
GPU: Same (even in my dreams I'm not rich enough to afford an i7 and a new GPU)
RAM: 3GB Tri-Channel DDR3

I have no doubt that my hypothetical new computer would be better than the one I have now, but my question is, how much better? I don't want to go on a huge wallet-busting adventure, expecting a dramatic increase in performance, only to find that I get only a slight addition in my frame rate.

Currently my frame rate maxes out at around 20 FPS (and that's if I'm not looking at anything) and averages around 4, whereas I know people with frame rates that average between 75 and 100 (and that's on Ultra settings.) So, with the specs of my "hypothetical new PC", could I expect performance anywhere close to that, or would I be spending a boat-load of money for almost no frame rate increase? (I ask because back when I upgraded from a 7600GS, I though that my new 8800GTS would solve all my FPS problems, but it got me almost no increase in performance, and I don't want a repeat of that.)

I have no idea on the FPS question, but I'd go for more ram if you can swing it.

I don't believe the video card is the bottleneck in your old system. The Core i7 is a LOT faster than the Pentium D.

It will run at Ultra just fine.

As I posted in another thread already : SL is simply a hardware eater.

and the performance stands mainly on 3 important columns :

- CPU
- RAM
- GPU

so a change in all of those 3 would increase performance. There are also some other aspects to have a look at when it comes to performance in SL, e.g. the bus clock which depends on the mainboard and its chipsets.

What I'd recommend if you wanna go secure on a true perfomance increase is :

- a quad core CPU (I always recomment Intel's CPUs cos in the old days SL had always some issues with AMD)
- Windows Vista (if you wanna stay on a Microsoft operating system) cos it can address more RAM
- 8 GB RAM
- a nVidia GT graphics card (lead by the wicked GT295 at the moment) due to the matter of fact that Intel and nVidia belong to one company and blend perfectly together.

That of course is always a matter of money. So if your likely new system is the one you can afford I'd suggest to spend slightly more and give it Vista and some more RAM (4GB or more).

When it comes to computers and hardware (and especially concerning SL) I sadly have to correct the old quote "The whole is more than the sum of its parts" to "The whole is only the sum of its parts" .

I suppose I could bite the bullet and go for 6GB of RAM. (Although I'd have to stop buying food for a while.) But after this huge expenditure it might be a while before I can scrape together enough money to afford Vista. Could I still get decent performance (scratch that, I don't want decent performance, I want great performance) with 6 gigs or partially unusable memory until such time as I can upgrade to Vista?

Oh, there's tri-channel memory setups now, can't keep up with things, especially expensive things like an i7.

Is it 32 bit or 64 bit XP?

32-bit...I assume.

Upgrading to Vista won't change the amount of memory you can use, unless you make sure to upgrade to a 64-bit version of it. The reason the memory you have now is partially unavailable is not just because you're using XP. It's because the version of XP you're using is 32-bit. Were you to use the 64-bit version of XP, you'd be able to use more RAM, just like if you were using a 64-bit version of Vista.

What does change from XP to Vista is not the amount of usable memory, but the manner in which it's used. Vista actually watches and learns how you use your computer, and automagically preloads certain things into memory at certain times, in accordance with your usage patterns, for faster access. It's a really slick system. XP can't even dream of doing that.

If you want the best possible management of the most possible RAM, Vista Ultimate x64 is your man (at least until Windows 7 comes out). If you just want that same most possible RAM, though, without the superior management, then XP Pro x64 will do you just fine. It would be a little silly to go that latter route, obviously, but you could if you really wanted to.


Didn't we just cover this in that other thread? Once again, the amount of usable RAM is not an XP vs. Vista thing. It's a 64-bit vs. 32-bit thing. Both Vista and XP come in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Simply switching from XP to Vista won't change the amount of RAM you can have. Switching from 32-bit to 64-bit, whether it's XP, Vista, or both, is what makes the difference.

The 32-bit version of Vista can address exactly the same amount of RAM as every other 32-bit operating system in the world, including the 32-bit version of XP. That amount is 4GB. What defines a 32-bit OS as 32-bit is the fact that it can utilize 2^32 memory addresses. That translates to precisely 4GB, including the sum total of all memory used by devices such as video cards, BIOS, PCI buses, etc., as well as system RAM. On most machines, that comes out to somewhere between 3 and 3.5 gigabytes of usable RAM.

If you want to use more than 4GB of memory, you need a 64-bit OS. The theoretical limit for a 64-bit OS is 17 billion gigabytes of memory. The actual limit for most that are on the market today is 128GB.

Here's the breakdown of memory limits for all versions of Windows currently available:

Vista (all 32-bit versions): 4GB

XP (all 32-bit versions): 4GB

XP Professional x64: 128GB

Vista Home Basic x64: 8GB

Vista Home Premium x64: 16GB

Vista Business x64: 128GB

Vista Enterprise x64: 128GB

Vista Ultimate x64: 128GB

3GB of memory is plenty for now. Upgrade to 6GB later. More is a nice luxury, but not a must have. Especially if you're running 32-bit Windows. Run XP for now, then when Windows 7 comes out, get Windows 7 x64 and more memory. It'll probably get cheaper between now and then too.

Don't blame me for you being too slow.

Hmm, will I be able to upgrade from XP to Windows 7, or would I have to get Vista anyway just so I can upgrade to 7?

Windows 7 won't upgrade from XP in the versions up until now, so I doubt the final version will. You'll need to do a clean installation to go from XP to 7.

To expand on what Milla said, the full answer is yes and no.

The yes part is the price. Microsoft has confirmed that XP users will be able to purchase Windows 7 at upgrade pricing.

The no part is the actual installation process. There will be no direct upgrade-install path from XP to 7. You'll need to do a clean install.

That's no different than what you'd need to do for upgrading to ANY 64-bit OS from ANY 32-bit OS, though. If you were to upgrade to Vista x64 today from XP x86, you'd need to do a clean install. You can only do an upgrade-install if you're not changing the bit depth.

For this reason (and for many, many others), I highly recommend having more than one physical hard drive in your machine. Use one just for your OS and programs, and another for all your data. That way, you can safely wipe your C drive at any time, and never have to worry about losing any of your data. And if you're worried about ease of use, don't be. It's just a matter of two clicks to change the "My Documents" (it's actually just "Documents" in Vista) path to steer straight to the other drive.




If you want to upgrade now, so to make the process as painless as possible when 7 comes out, go right ahead. But if you want to wait, that's fine too. Either way, you're going to need to wipe that C drive sooner or later. There's no way to switch to 64-bit without doing that.

D'oh, I was just thinking about the upgrade procedure, not the pricing. Thanks for clearing that up.

get 4, then you can have 2 matched pairs and run them in dual channel mode, which is noticeably faster, also dual stick matched pair packages are cheaper than buying a 2gig and a 1 gig stick

i mean tiger direct often tosses some rebate sale up, and if you choose to jump tru the hoops and fart with a rebate you can pick up 4 gigs (2 * 2gb 800mhz) for sometimes less than 15$

Can anyone confirm that dual channel mode is better than tri-channel mode?

Tri-channel mode is better.

If you're using an i7, triple channel is the way to go. From what I've read, a machine with three sticks (6GB) in tri mode will actually benchmark about 40% higher in bandwidth, and about 10% faster overall, than will the same machine with 4 sticks (8GB) in dual mode. In other words, it's not the size of your memory, it's how you use it. Am I right, ladies?

If you were using something other than an i7, then you'd want dual channel.

Say Moo brought up an interesting point on another topic:

/111/bd/301781/2.html#post2285202

The short version is that for good gaming performance, you should look to have a good GPU, plenty of memory, and a fast harddrive.

Obviously with client/server applications like SL internet speed is also crucial.

That thread is kinda old, and I don't want to necro-post but since we're kinda on the topic here... does anyone agree with what Moo presented? If that's the case, it might not be necessary to upgrade the CPU - that is, if SL is the only consideration for this PC.

No, I do not agree with that.

First, I believe the hard drive is the least important factor.

I don't believe the CPU is as important as the GPU, but the CPU is important, and if you want to run at higher graphics settings, a faster CPU will help, a lot.

You DEFINITELY want a dual or quad core CPU. There's no question they're faster than single core CPUs, and there is no question that until your computer is GPU bound, you will see performance improvements from a faster CPU.

Single core CPUs are obsolete rubbish.

i am in the same boat

in my testing over my years of SL hard disk speed does not really make any noticeable difference

cpu effected performance the least, where as using more ram seemed to be the biggest bang, with video in the middle

and yes multi cores are much faster, even if your just using 1 core at a time the newer manufacturing processes and refinement of the product just makes them faster chips

now i do not agree that single core cpu's are rubbish if you happen to have one (well maybe the intel ones are p4's are god awefull slow nowdays, my X64 hums along quite happily altho i am not setting any records ) , but don't bother with one if your shopping

Ok, here's the thing...I don't know how meaningful these benchmark charts like PassMark are, but I'm about to reference them. My friend who is on a laptop is using an Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTS, which ranks slightly below my 8800 GTS. Even so, he averages 75 FPS on Ultra, while I get, at most, 20 FPS on (a tweaked version of) high. How? Well, my theory is that it's because he has a Core 2 Duo, which ranks significantly above my Pentium D. So, in theory, I should get super great performance if I got a Core i7 (which ranks significantly higher than the Core 2 Duo, and thus double-significantly higher than my Pentium D) Is that theory valid at all, or does what you said ("cpu effected performance the least" invalidate it?

Also, as for adding more RAM giving the biggest increase in performance, I upgraded from 1 Gig to 4 and it only increased my performance in that, previously, I would literally run out of free RAM after a few minutes in SL. Other than that, no FPS increase.

There is no way he averages 75fps on ultra. Not outside empty skyboxes.

No, he averages 100 FPS inside empty skyboxes. 75 is regular places. (All on Ultra)

Screw the Core i7, get whatever laptop your friend has.