9800 Pro: Would going from a XP Athlon 2.2 to Athlon 64 3000 gain much in framerate?

I guess what I'm trying to ask here is at what CPU range frame rate gains
slow down. I can probably pick up a new Athlon 64 + MB and 400 Mem soon but
a new Video card will be somewhat further in the future.

If it matters I'm playing HL2 and Doom 3 right now. Will probably give Far
Cry and MOH: Pacific Assault a try soon.

 

The best way to tell if you're CPU limited or GPU limited is by
increasing resolution size, if fps go down as res goes up you're not CPU
limited.
If you were to put a 6800 Ultra or X800 XT in with your Athlon you'd
probably get the same fps at 1600x1200 as at 1024x768.

So right now if you're happy playing games at 1024x768 the A64 will give
you a boost, if you think it will help running at really high res think
again, for that you'll need a new card.

I have a 9800 Pro and an AthlonXP @ 2.2 GHz too, I'd probably get an
nVidia 6800 before upgrading the rest of my system. Unless I was
getting a really good deal on it.

 

I agree with Lyman. Although I dont really think an a64 would bring much
change morese than a better graphics card like, as said, a 6800 or so. You
can pick up 6800 OC's pretty cheap right now, great cards and they perform
on par with their dearer brothers due to factory overclocking+. I myself are
building a new A64 machine with a 6800-OC, wish the shop would hurry up and
send my 3000+754 :/ Slow bastards.

 

I had an ASUS A7V333 with Athlon 2200+ with 1 GB of RAM with an ATI Radeon
9800 Pro AIW (128 MB) and Windows XP Professional SP2 (all updates). I
recently switched motherboard, CPU, and RAM to ASUS K8V SE Deluxe, Athlon
64 3200+, and 1 GB of RAM, I saw a significant difference in games
including DOOM 3. Most of my games are at 1152x864, 0/2X FSAA, and the
max anisotropic. I would say 5-10 FPS for me and that makes a difference.
I think I can use this video card for another year for gaming (newer
games).
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Yes, at least the minimum framerate will go up noticeably with that swap.
Scenes that might not be as smooth because of CPU limitation will be easier
to navigate thru. Doom 3 wakes up a bit, and the onboard memory controller
has a bit to do with this. Depending on your current video card, the maximum
will bump too. The A64 is a good upgrade from the XP, especially the
Winchester core, which runs cool, consumes a bit less power, and can
overclock well. But even the S754 A64s are a good improvement. If you're
running anything from a vanilla 9700 on up, it's a worthy endeavor, IMHO.

 

But I'll bet my system (2340Mhz Barton on a 206Mhz FSB w/1gig PC3200) w/a
nexgen video card (say a Nvidia 6800GT) would beat your system in games
benchmarks by a significant margin.

-Bill (remove "botizer" to reply via email)