Well, I didnt hold out very long... After two days of intense research, I hit the "pay now" button for a new gaming PC. Unlike my last two upgrades, this was a major change as I moved to an Athlon64 system with PCI-express bus and Crossfire enabled video cards.
This is a rather long post, but I thought I would walk through the upgrade process.
Choices, I hear Choices
Building a PC today involves a lot of choices. I always build AMD systems so that narrows things down a bit. I have also adopted ATI cards in recent years so that also narrows things down. Even so, there was still a lot to figure out.
CPU
The first question is what CPU to use. I couldn't really upgrade my existing 32-bit system anymore so I had to move to a 64-bit system. AMD sells several versions of their Athlon64 including a few dual-core models.
Since this is a game machine, I was budget conscious. (Even so this solution is a lot more money than an Xbox360 or a PS3.) My base choice was the bottom of the line Athlon64 3000+ and I compared other models to this one in terms of marginal cost and performance. (I used Tom's Hardware reviews or performance numbers.)
The Athlon64 3200+ was 32% more expensive and gave a 7% performance gain. The 3700+ was twice the money of the 3000+ but only 16% faster. The X2 3800+ dual core was even more expensive, at $300.
I chose the $100 3000+ model.
GPU
With the CPU chosen, the next question to ask is which graphics card to use. This didnt use to be the second question but with the advent of dual-video card systems, one has to be sure their motherboard supports their videocard of choice.
As mentioned earlier, I have been using ATI cards for a while so I had to choose between the ATI options, which was surprisingly hard.
Since I was curious about dual-card systems, I ended up choosing two X1600XT cards. And since I hate fan noise, I choice the model from Asus that includes heat pipes and no fans. This choice cost about $330 which is what I paid a year earlier for an X800 card. My other choice for $330 was a single X1800XT card, but more on that later.
Motherboard
With the video card and CPU chosen, I only had a few motherboard choices. My options were cards that supported Crossfire video (ATI's brand of dual video cards).It turns out there were two versions of chipsets that support crossfire. The ASUS A8R-MVP was $100 and the ASUS A8R32-MPV was almost twice that at $180. I went for the cheaper one.
Memory
Memory is the next choice. I have been using 1GB of DDR333 memory. Since Athlon64 systems use at least DDR400, I upgraded to that speed for $100 from a reputable brand. I considered buying faster memory but the price increase was 50% and I didnt expect to get a 50% speed improvement.
Another choice was how much memory to use. Was it time to upgrade to 2GB? I have heard some comments that extra memory will speed things up but I opted to save the $100 and stick with 1GB. I did not expect to get a 100% speed up for the 100% price increase.
(Just for kicks, I put my old memory in the system so I had DDR333 and DDR400. It worked but seemed to slow things down so I went back to just the new DDR400 memory.)
Cooling
Did I mention that I hate fan noise? These gaming rigs generate a ton of heat so they have big, nasty fans.
I was afraid that the stock AMD CPU fan would not cool enough and would be too loud so I bought a Scythe for $30. Unfortunately, as I will say in the problems section, it would not work on this motherboard so I had to go with the stock fan. And it worked just fine.
(A lot of people these days opt for water cooling and overclock their systems. More on that in another post.)
GPU memory
In addition to choosing a video card, one must also decide how much memory to include on the video card. Up until now, I have only had cards with 256MB but a recent review has convinced me to give 512MB a try.
The main decision for this question is the resolution you plan to play with. My LCD monitor is fixed at 1280x1024 but people with higher resolutions should opt for the larger memory. Withe the card I chose, the memory premium was about 20%.
Everything else
Since this was an upgrade, I reused a lot of my old system, including my silent power supply, my awesome Lanboy case, my ancient IBM keyboard, mouse, and soundcard.
Problems? We dont need no stinking problems!
With the system choices over, the next step was putting it all together. One has to endure the usual WindowsXP installation misery, complete with the cutting edge floppy disks for the SATA drivers. But even before I got to install the hardware, I had problems.
First problem: The fancy heatsink I bought would not fit on the motherboard because of the chipset heatsink. The screw that tightened the heatsink hit the chipset heatsink and would not tighten...
Second problem: On this motherboard, the floppy drive connector is turned 90 degrees and hard to reach inside the case. Of course, I found this out after tightening all the screws.
Third problem: the case connectors for USB and sound dont seem to match the pinouts on the MB manual. Took a guesstimate here that worked out.
Fourth problem: During the Windows XP installation process, a dialog popped up as soon as it started installing devices. This dialog had one of those helpful messages we have come to expect from Windows:
Software Installation -> A warning that "" has not passed Windows Logo testing...
What is that about? The same thing happened again for the ULi SATA controller but in the end everything worked.
Fifth problem: About 10 days after getting things working, the heat-pipe on one of my video cards just fell off. The card burned up as a result. As a result, I tried a single X1600XT card for a while but it just couldn't cut Oblivion so I bought an X1800XT. Anyone want to buy a slightly used EAX1600XT?
Conclusion
Now that I have finally written this down, it seems easier than it actually was :)
I will write a post about performance later. Suffice it to say, that the system is totally silent! The performance with a single X1600XT is about the same as the system I replaced. The second video card produces a sizeable boost as does the X1800XT. I also plan to try my hand at overclocking so I will see how much faster I can go with what I have.
Here is my before and after system specs. (All prices are from Newegg.com)
Before
| Part Name | Price | Date Purchased | |
| Motherboard | MSI KM400 VIA microATX | $58.00 | 3/12/04 |
| CPU | Athlon XP 2500+ Barton 1.8Mhz | $85 | 1/29/05 |
| Memory | Corsair XMS PC2700 512MB CMX512-2700C2PT | $120 + $105 | |
| Video | Saphire X800 XL 256MB | $335 | 4/16/05 | Hard drive | Samsung P1213C 120GB | $80 | 6/24/05 |
| SATA Controller | SYBA SD-SATA150 RT | $15 | 6/28/05 |
| DVD | Plextor PX-712A 12X DVD/RW | $122 | 8/27/04 |
| Soundcard | Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro | 5/14/05 | |
| Case | Antec Super Lanboy | $75 | 1/29/08 |
| Power Supply | Seasonic S12-380 | $77 | 9/25/05 |
| CPU Fan | Speeze 5F263B1M3G | $8 | 4/10/03 |
| Total cost | $1080 |
After
| Part Name | Price | Date Purchased | |
| Motherboard | ASUS A8R-MVP XPRESS200 939 - Retail | $98.00 | |
| CPU | Athlon64 3000+ Venice | $117 | |
| Memory | OCZ Gold DDR400 2x512MB [2-3-3-6] | $99 | |
| Video1 | ASUS EAX1600XT SILENT/TVD/256M - refurb | $165 | |
| Video2 | ASUS EAX1600XT SILENT/TVD/256M - refurb | $165 | |
| Hard drive | Samsung P1213C 120GB | 6/24/09 | |
| SATA Controller | onboard | ||
| DVD | Plextor PX-712A 12X DVD/RW | 8/27/08 | |
| Soundcard | Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro | 5/14/09 | |
| Case | Antec Super Lanboy | 1/29/08 | |
| Power Supply | Seasonic S12-380 | 9/25/09 | |
| CPU Fan | SCYTHE SCSMZ-1000 RT - Retail | $29.99 | |
| Total upgrade cost | $674 |
