Gaming PC upgrade. Graphics card/bottleneck opinions needed...

Hi,

I was thinking about upgrading my gaming PC. It's specs are below:

Mobo: ASUS P5ND2-SLI
CPU: Intel D 805 2x2.66GHz
RAM: 1GB DDR2-667
Graphics card: Geforce 6200LE (was previously a number cruncher)

I'm sticking with Nvidia after bad experiences with a ATI drivers and
Linux.

I have obtained the theoretical shader processing rates from Wikipedia
and used that to divide the price from Ebuyer to get the price/
gigaflop. The table below shows the results... (sorry about the bad
columns)

Gflops Price Price/Gflop
8300 GS 21.6
8400 GS 43.2 23.2 0.54
8500 GT 43.2 33.99 0.79
8600 GS 114.2
8600 GT 114.2 40.99 0.36
8600 GTS 139.2 47.25 0.34
8800 GTS-G80 345.6 76.96 0.22
8800 GS 396 97.95 0.25
8800 GTS 504 122.95 0.24
8800 GTS -G92 624 130 0.21
8800 GTX 518
8800 Ultra 576

9400GT 67 38.74 0.58
9500GT 134 46.75 0.35
9600 GSO 396 64.96 0.16
9600 GT 312 73.18 0.23
9800 GT 504 94.99 0.19
9800 GTX 648
9800 GTX+ 754 144.66 0.19
9800 GX2 1152

260 GTX 715 189.97 0.27
260 GTX Core 2 804
280 933 342.38 0.37

From these results we can see that the Geforce 9600 GSO is the best
card in terms of bang for buck to buy.

As such I have settled on the XFX 9600GSO XXX Edition 384MB DDR3 Dual
DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card.

Do you think I should throw in some extra RAM too?

Given that my mobo is a PCI-e 16x 1.0 (I think), will I be crippling
the PCI-e 16x 2.0 card?

I am of the belief that it is better to buy mid-range/commodity
upgrades often, than high end/premium upgrades rarely. Do you concur
with this viewpoint?

Do you have any alternative suggestions or points of view I have not
considered in this simple analysis?

Thanks.

Alex wrote:
Hi,

I was thinking about upgrading my gaming PC. It's specs are below:

Mobo: ASUS P5ND2-SLI
CPU: Intel D 805 2x2.66GHz
RAM: 1GB DDR2-667
Graphics card: Geforce 6200LE (was previously a number cruncher)

I'm sticking with Nvidia after bad experiences with a ATI drivers and
Linux.

I have obtained the theoretical shader processing rates from Wikipedia
and used that to divide the price from Ebuyer to get the price/
gigaflop. The table below shows the results... (sorry about the bad
columns)

Gflops Price Price/Gflop
8300 GS 21.6
8400 GS 43.2 23.2 0.54
8500 GT 43.2 33.99 0.79
8600 GS 114.2
8600 GT 114.2 40.99 0.36
8600 GTS 139.2 47.25 0.34
8800 GTS-G80 345.6 76.96 0.22
8800 GS 396 97.95 0.25
8800 GTS 504 122.95 0.24
8800 GTS -G92 624 130 0.21
8800 GTX 518
8800 Ultra 576

9400GT 67 38.74 0.58
9500GT 134 46.75 0.35
9600 GSO 396 64.96 0.16
9600 GT 312 73.18 0.23
9800 GT 504 94.99 0.19
9800 GTX 648
9800 GTX+ 754 144.66 0.19
9800 GX2 1152

260 GTX 715 189.97 0.27
260 GTX Core 2 804
280 933 342.38 0.37

From these results we can see that the Geforce 9600 GSO is the best
card in terms of bang for buck to buy.

As such I have settled on the XFX 9600GSO XXX Edition 384MB DDR3 Dual
DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card.

Do you think I should throw in some extra RAM too?

Given that my mobo is a PCI-e 16x 1.0 (I think), will I be crippling
the PCI-e 16x 2.0 card?

I am of the belief that it is better to buy mid-range/commodity
upgrades often, than high end/premium upgrades rarely. Do you concur
with this viewpoint?

Do you have any alternative suggestions or points of view I have not
considered in this simple analysis?

Thanks.

There are two versions of 9600 GSO making the rounds. Asus has a model
with 96 stream processors, and they make another card $10 cheaper which
is only 64 stream processors. This card is listed as 96 stream processors
and 192 bit wide memory, so would seem to be a genuine one. Companies
sometimes cheap out on the memory, and in the past on some other
cards, I've seen a factor of 4 between the best and worst memories
included on the graphics cards of the same model. You have to compare
the products carefully, to get you money's worth. Sometimes a quick
buck artist, makes substandard cards.

http://www.xfxforce.com/en-gb/produc...9600GSO.aspx#2

In some countries, there is a rebate for the 9600 GSO, during the
month of October. Rebates are renewed on a regular basis, depending
on sales and economic conditions. I think at one point, you could
get a 9600 GSO for $55, if the wind was blowing in the right direction.
As I live in Canada, such bargains are not handed out with the same
zeal :-)

I understand a respun version of the 9600 GSO will be offered
soon, with a different chip. But that could change both the
hardware specs and the price, so there is no way to speculate
whether that will be a better option or not.

If you cannot afford a real upgrade (like me), the 9600 GSO
stands out as a bargain for what you're getting. At least,
as long as there is a fat rebate applied to it :-)

The PCI Express isn't particularly critical, at least for gaming.
There could be other bottlenecks, such as whether the system memory
controller can deal with the extra traffic or not. I haven't seen a
recent article, comparing the impact. In the old Tomshardware article,
their finding was that you'd get most of the gaming performance,
with a PCI Express x4 Rev 1 interface. But the article has not been
refreshed with the latest graphics cards, and the requirement
may have changed a bit since then.

Paul

On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:03:57 -0700 (PDT), Alex
wrote:

Hi,

I was thinking about upgrading my gaming PC. It's specs are below:

Mobo: ASUS P5ND2-SLI
CPU: Intel D 805 2x2.66GHz
RAM: 1GB DDR2-667
Graphics card: Geforce 6200LE (was previously a number cruncher)

I'm sticking with Nvidia after bad experiences with a ATI drivers and
Linux.

I have obtained the theoretical shader processing rates from Wikipedia
and used that to divide the price from Ebuyer to get the price/
gigaflop. The table below shows the results... (sorry about the bad
columns)

Just to be clear, you are now going to use this for gaming,
not number crunching, correct?


Gflops Price Price/Gflop
8300 GS 21.6
8400 GS 43.2 23.2 0.54
8500 GT 43.2 33.99 0.79
8600 GS 114.2
8600 GT 114.2 40.99 0.36
8600 GTS 139.2 47.25 0.34
8800 GTS-G80 345.6 76.96 0.22
8800 GS 396 97.95 0.25
8800 GTS 504 122.95 0.24
8800 GTS -G92 624 130 0.21
8800 GTX 518
8800 Ultra 576

9400GT 67 38.74 0.58
9500GT 134 46.75 0.35
9600 GSO 396 64.96 0.16
9600 GT 312 73.18 0.23
9800 GT 504 94.99 0.19
9800 GTX 648
9800 GTX+ 754 144.66 0.19
9800 GX2 1152

260 GTX 715 189.97 0.27
260 GTX Core 2 804
280 933 342.38 0.37

From these results we can see that the Geforce 9600 GSO is the best
card in terms of bang for buck to buy.

Yes, it is probably the best bang for the buck but the other
factor is whether it has the minimum performance level you
will need for the particular games you want to play until
you are ready to upgrade it again, and of course the monitor
resolution used and level of eyecandy desired.




As such I have settled on the XFX 9600GSO XXX Edition 384MB DDR3 Dual
DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card.

Do you think I should throw in some extra RAM too?

Yes, ideally you would have a minimum of 2GB. It will not
only make newer games faster but greatly reduce level reload
times when the files are cached in memory instead of all of
them being reread from hard drive.


Given that my mobo is a PCI-e 16x 1.0 (I think), will I be crippling
the PCI-e 16x 2.0 card?

I am of the belief that it is better to buy mid-range/commodity
upgrades often, than high end/premium upgrades rarely. Do you concur
with this viewpoint?


I do, but some don't. Then again most gamers would argue
for the high end and also frequent upgrades... when it's
someone else's money of course. Generally it seems a bad
idea to pay so much that you can't bare to replace something
again in 18 months when playing newer games, so the
remaining factor is what the total PC budget is, both today
and in the future.


Do you have any alternative suggestions or points of view I have not
considered in this simple analysis?


If you want to play at 1680x1050 or higher with high levels
of eyecandy to play current and future games, the 260GTX is
closer to that goal, a better choice even given the
significant increase in price. If you have lesser needs,
the 9600GSO, especially when overclocked (they tend to hit
at least 650 core/950 memory if not more, just sliding the
tabs in overclocking software w/o need for hardware
modifications or a different heatsink) is the best value.

Essentially by buying the XXX edition you are getting a
pre-overclocked card, but at least one guaranteed to do that
and possibly higher spec'd memory that would allow the
memory bus to o'c even more than a regular GSO (memory
bandwidth seems one of GSO's bottlenecks).

Your CPU will bottleneck the 260GTX more, but it should
still make more demanding gaming scenarios mentioned above,
more playable. Your system is SLI capable so a pair of
9600GSO in SLI mode is another alternative. At some point
you'll have to assess whether your current PSU is capable of
powering the addt'l load as well as your case cooling. A
pair of 9600GSO or 260 is a non-trivial change to the system
compared to the very miserly 6200LE being replaced.

kony wrote:

On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:03:57 -0700 (PDT), Alex
wrote:

Hi,

I was thinking about upgrading my gaming PC. It's specs are below:

Mobo: ASUS P5ND2-SLI
CPU: Intel D 805 2x2.66GHz
RAM: 1GB DDR2-667
Graphics card: Geforce 6200LE (was previously a number cruncher)

I'm sticking with Nvidia after bad experiences with a ATI drivers and
Linux.

I have obtained the theoretical shader processing rates from Wikipedia
and used that to divide the price from Ebuyer to get the price/
gigaflop. The table below shows the results... (sorry about the bad
columns)

Just to be clear, you are now going to use this for gaming,
not number crunching, correct?

Yup. Perhaps 8 or so of those machines would be outdone by the latest
quad core machines. How hardware specs flies.


Gflops Price Price/Gflop
8300 GS 21.6
8400 GS 43.2 23.2 0.54
8500 GT 43.2 33.99 0.79
8600 GS 114.2
8600 GT 114.2 40.99 0.36
8600 GTS 139.2 47.25 0.34
8800 GTS-G80 345.6 76.96 0.22
8800 GS 396 97.95 0.25
8800 GTS 504 122.95 0.24
8800 GTS -G92 624 130 0.21
8800 GTX 518
8800 Ultra 576

9400GT 67 38.74 0.58
9500GT 134 46.75 0.35
9600 GSO 396 64.96 0.16
9600 GT 312 73.18 0.23
9800 GT 504 94.99 0.19
9800 GTX 648
9800 GTX+ 754 144.66 0.19
9800 GX2 1152

260 GTX 715 189.97 0.27
260 GTX Core 2 804
280 933 342.38 0.37

From these results we can see that the Geforce 9600 GSO is the best
card in terms of bang for buck to buy.

Yes, it is probably the best bang for the buck but the other
factor is whether it has the minimum performance level you
will need for the particular games you want to play until
you are ready to upgrade it again, and of course the monitor
resolution used and level of eyecandy desired.

At the moment I've delayed upgrading my monitors and use CRTs. When I
do upgrade to TFTs it will again follow the same philosophy so I won't
be getting very large ones, just commodity ones.





As such I have settled on the XFX 9600GSO XXX Edition 384MB DDR3 Dual
DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card.

Do you think I should throw in some extra RAM too?

Yes, ideally you would have a minimum of 2GB. It will not
only make newer games faster but greatly reduce level reload
times when the files are cached in memory instead of all of
them being reread from hard drive.

OK.


Given that my mobo is a PCI-e 16x 1.0 (I think), will I be crippling
the PCI-e 16x 2.0 card?

I am of the belief that it is better to buy mid-range/commodity
upgrades often, than high end/premium upgrades rarely. Do you concur
with this viewpoint?


I do, but some don't. Then again most gamers would argue
for the high end and also frequent upgrades... when it's
someone else's money of course. Generally it seems a bad
idea to pay so much that you can't bare to replace something
again in 18 months when playing newer games, so the
remaining factor is what the total PC budget is, both today
and in the future.

Other responsibilities call :-). Gaming is both expensive on the
wallet and in terms of time; that's why I tend to focus on FPS games
which unfortunately can be the most time consuming.


Do you have any alternative suggestions or points of view I have not
considered in this simple analysis?


If you want to play at 1680x1050 or higher with high levels
of eyecandy to play current and future games, the 260GTX is
closer to that goal, a better choice even given the
significant increase in price. If you have lesser needs,
the 9600GSO, especially when overclocked (they tend to hit
at least 650 core/950 memory if not more, just sliding the
tabs in overclocking software w/o need for hardware
modifications or a different heatsink) is the best value.

Essentially by buying the XXX edition you are getting a
pre-overclocked card, but at least one guaranteed to do that
and possibly higher spec'd memory that would allow the
memory bus to o'c even more than a regular GSO (memory
bandwidth seems one of GSO's bottlenecks).

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't know the XXX editions were
overclock tested.


Your CPU will bottleneck the 260GTX more, but it should
still make more demanding gaming scenarios mentioned above,
more playable. Your system is SLI capable so a pair of
9600GSO in SLI mode is another alternative. At some point
you'll have to assess whether your current PSU is capable of
powering the addt'l load as well as your case cooling. A
pair of 9600GSO or 260 is a non-trivial change to the system
compared to the very miserly 6200LE being replaced.

My PSU is a Sansun Black 600W PSU - 20/24pin SATA.

The graphics card on my previous gaming PC was a 6600 GT.

Paul wrote:

Alex wrote:
Hi,

I was thinking about upgrading my gaming PC. It's specs are below:

Mobo: ASUS P5ND2-SLI
CPU: Intel D 805 2x2.66GHz
RAM: 1GB DDR2-667
Graphics card: Geforce 6200LE (was previously a number cruncher)

I'm sticking with Nvidia after bad experiences with a ATI drivers and
Linux.

I have obtained the theoretical shader processing rates from Wikipedia
and used that to divide the price from Ebuyer to get the price/
gigaflop. The table below shows the results... (sorry about the bad
columns)

Gflops Price Price/Gflop
8300 GS 21.6
8400 GS 43.2 23.2 0.54
8500 GT 43.2 33.99 0.79
8600 GS 114.2
8600 GT 114.2 40.99 0.36
8600 GTS 139.2 47.25 0.34
8800 GTS-G80 345.6 76.96 0.22
8800 GS 396 97.95 0.25
8800 GTS 504 122.95 0.24
8800 GTS -G92 624 130 0.21
8800 GTX 518
8800 Ultra 576

9400GT 67 38.74 0.58
9500GT 134 46.75 0.35
9600 GSO 396 64.96 0.16
9600 GT 312 73.18 0.23
9800 GT 504 94.99 0.19
9800 GTX 648
9800 GTX+ 754 144.66 0.19
9800 GX2 1152

260 GTX 715 189.97 0.27
260 GTX Core 2 804
280 933 342.38 0.37

From these results we can see that the Geforce 9600 GSO is the best
card in terms of bang for buck to buy.

As such I have settled on the XFX 9600GSO XXX Edition 384MB DDR3 Dual
DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card.

Do you think I should throw in some extra RAM too?

Given that my mobo is a PCI-e 16x 1.0 (I think), will I be crippling
the PCI-e 16x 2.0 card?

I am of the belief that it is better to buy mid-range/commodity
upgrades often, than high end/premium upgrades rarely. Do you concur
with this viewpoint?

Do you have any alternative suggestions or points of view I have not
considered in this simple analysis?

Thanks.

There are two versions of 9600 GSO making the rounds. Asus has a model
with 96 stream processors, and they make another card $10 cheaper which
is only 64 stream processors. This card is listed as 96 stream processors
and 192 bit wide memory, so would seem to be a genuine one. Companies
sometimes cheap out on the memory, and in the past on some other
cards, I've seen a factor of 4 between the best and worst memories
included on the graphics cards of the same model. You have to compare
the products carefully, to get you money's worth. Sometimes a quick
buck artist, makes substandard cards.

http://www.xfxforce.com/en-gb/produc...9600GSO.aspx#2

And I suppose a bit of benchmarking once I receive it would not hurt
as well.

In some countries, there is a rebate for the 9600 GSO, during the
month of October. Rebates are renewed on a regular basis, depending
on sales and economic conditions. I think at one point, you could
get a 9600 GSO for $55, if the wind was blowing in the right direction.
As I live in Canada, such bargains are not handed out with the same
zeal :-)

I understand a respun version of the 9600 GSO will be offered
soon, with a different chip. But that could change both the
hardware specs and the price, so there is no way to speculate
whether that will be a better option or not.

If you cannot afford a real upgrade (like me), the 9600 GSO
stands out as a bargain for what you're getting. At least,
as long as there is a fat rebate applied to it :-)

The PCI Express isn't particularly critical, at least for gaming.
There could be other bottlenecks, such as whether the system memory
controller can deal with the extra traffic or not. I haven't seen a
recent article, comparing the impact. In the old Tomshardware article,
their finding was that you'd get most of the gaming performance,
with a PCI Express x4 Rev 1 interface. But the article has not been
refreshed with the latest graphics cards, and the requirement
may have changed a bit since then.
Paul

Thanks Paul, very informative post.

On Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:25:17 -0700 (PDT), Alex
wrote:


Yes, it is probably the best bang for the buck but the other
factor is whether it has the minimum performance level you
will need for the particular games you want to play until
you are ready to upgrade it again, and of course the monitor
resolution used and level of eyecandy desired.

At the moment I've delayed upgrading my monitors and use CRTs. When I
do upgrade to TFTs it will again follow the same philosophy so I won't
be getting very large ones, just commodity ones.


Ok, but personally, I find that 22" monitors, 1680x1050, are
affordably enough priced that they are commodity... to me, a
monitor is such a primary interface device that it's the
last place I'd save % on if it resulted in less than 20.x",
so, I generally think in terms of 1680x or higher
resolutions and/or higher eyecandy levels, since newer games
only really shine when their higher eyecandy levels are
possible.


Essentially by buying the XXX edition you are getting a
pre-overclocked card, but at least one guaranteed to do that
and possibly higher spec'd memory that would allow the
memory bus to o'c even more than a regular GSO (memory
bandwidth seems one of GSO's bottlenecks).

Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't know the XXX editions were
overclock tested.


They're quaranteed for their sold-as clock rate, but keep
in mind that many other cards can do that speed, they just
aren't officially guaranteed to.




Your CPU will bottleneck the 260GTX more, but it should
still make more demanding gaming scenarios mentioned above,
more playable. Your system is SLI capable so a pair of
9600GSO in SLI mode is another alternative. At some point
you'll have to assess whether your current PSU is capable of
powering the addt'l load as well as your case cooling. A
pair of 9600GSO or 260 is a non-trivial change to the system
compared to the very miserly 6200LE being replaced.

My PSU is a Sansun Black 600W PSU - 20/24pin SATA.

The graphics card on my previous gaming PC was a 6600 GT.

PSU seems fine if actually capable of the claimed 600W, if
it's a brand name instead of "Sansun" which seems a big
generic risk. If it is a generic, I would replace it
before a video card upgrade because many generics are
horribly overrated and have loose shutdown/safety tolerances
that could risk new hardware, as well as what you already
had, when overloaded past actual (vs. rated) capability.