Worth the upgrade?

[vilex]

Hey people. I recently bought a new tower (1000 big ones) from a local store. The specs are :

Pentium 4 3.0 Ghz
120 SATA HD
300W Power
54/32/54 CDRW Drive
512 DDR400 3200 (two 256's running dual channel)
Gigabyte 865PE motherboard
Geforce 4 TI 4200 64MB (already had this)
Soundblaster Audigy 2 (had this too)

My old computer's specs :

Elitegroup k7s5a Motherboard
AMD Athlon 2400+
300W Power
80GB Maxtor IDE HD
512 DDR 2100 (1 stick)


My question is : Should I notice a great performance increase from this new computer? I noticed Doom 3 ran better and I was able to boost the detail to Ultra and the resolution to 1024x768 from Medium detail and 800x600.

I ran the Far Cry demo however, and didn't see much of any performance gain. And what really boggles my mind is ACID 3.0 had no change. None. Load times are a bit better but songs I'm working on still skip during playback like they did before. Exactly like they did before. This was one of my main reasons for upgrading and nothing happened, so I'm pretty dissapointed. Is this how this upgrade should be or is something not working?

 

[agissi]

I think something isnt working properly, doesnt sound like a cpu bogging down, that is if its skips like the skip on a cd player.

A P4 3.0 should perform better then a 2400+, but you still got ripped on the deal if you ask me.

As for a great performance increase, as far as you comparing with Doom3 and FarCry between computers, a new videocard would make a tremendous difference as far as upgrades go.

CPU is still very important in games, and will lower load times,etc, but videocard is a very big factor.

 

[young&wild]

It seems to me that your video card seems to be the limiting factor for increase in performance. What will set apart the XP2400+ and the Pentium 3.0 in Doom 3 is a better video card.

 

[vilex]

Yeah I know I could have gotten a better deal if I built it myself, but I needed something fast, something with a long warranty and I built the last one myself...which is now suffering from strange problems. Judging by benchmarks the P4 3.0 should not only perform better than the 2400+ but it should stomp it into the ground.

I just ran the Soldner demo (yes I like this game) and it runs much better. Still, I don't care about games nearly as much as music creation, which hasn't changed. Maybe it's something with the program (ACID 3.0), I'm not sure. I know when I've upgraded in the past, ACID ran better each time. Not this time.

Any ideas would be very appreciated.

 

[Bug]

Create a new post in the Audio section regarding the audio issue. I would like to look into that one.
Bug

 

[vilex]

Well I seem to be getting this figured out on the ACID forums so we'll see how that goes. Thanks all for the replies.

 

[Charles Hammond]

Well you are using an older video card. Might try a Radeon 9800 PRO.

Also the power supply is underpowered for any of the newer video cards. I think a 400w or higher power supply might help if you want to add a better video card.

 

[Steve B]

Does the new board have AC97 sound?

if so, ditch the REALTEK drivers and install the latest NVidia ones.
It fixed all my audio probs, ie popping, strange effects during games etc...