Legit Reviews

Is this good enough for games?

Depends on what games you play, and resolution.

I am assuming that you didn't spend the money for an 8800GT for just casual gaming. With that in mind, I would say that the X2 3800 isn't up to par with the GPU. No it isn't good enough...time to upgrade.

geokilla wrote:Depends on what games you play, and resolution.

Id like to play first person shooters and pretty much anything else. But, mainly shooters. My resolution is 1024x768. I havent bought the 8800GT yet. I see you own a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800, how do you like it and do you play games?

It's plenty fine for gaming at 1024x768! If you need more power just upgrade it a bit and you'll be fine.

Apoptosis wrote:It's plenty fine for gaming at 1024x768! If you need more power just upgrade it a bit and you'll be fine.

Thanks PoP!!! Thats all I needed to know!

definatly good enough, plus it oc's like a champ. If you get a bigger monitor down the line then sure upgrade it and y our motherboard. Until then. Enjoy it.

The 8800GT should be fine with your X2. Like what Apop said, upgrade your comp if you need more power. Or if you don't upgrade, you can always overclock the CPU and RAM to try and reduce the bottleneck.

I myself game at 1152X864 and 1280X1024, and I think this CPU is great. It can handle my everyday tasks pretty well. Until I try and get a bigger monitor, I see no point in upgrading my X2.

I stand firm on my original statement. The $50 cpu with the $250 gpu just don't make sense to me. If you want to play just low to mid level games at such a low res, then why waste the money on the 8800GT? A simple ($100) 8600gt would suffice using that cpu. That is why I said it isn't good enough. If you ever try to play games like Crysis or some of the other new DX10 offerings, you will quickly see that your cpu is not good enough. At some point in time, the games you play will outgrow that cpu...that is my point. And if they don't...then you wasted your money on a $250 video card you really didn't need. Gang up on me all you like, but my opinion stays the same.

Don't get me wrong, you can spend your money any way you like...this is just my opinion...all 2cents worth.

OP - Please don't be offended by this post...I just couldn't think of a more subtle way to put this.

Either way, the 8800GT is one hell of a card.

geokilla wrote: Or if you don't upgrade, you can always overclock the CPU and RAM to try and reduce the bottleneck.

I myself game at 1152X864 and 1280X1024, and I think this CPU is great. It can handle my everyday tasks pretty well. Until I try and get a bigger monitor, I see no point in upgrading my X2.

What type of games do you play? Can you play crysis?

Im playing crysis on an AMD X2 4000... med/low graphics, but it plays

vicaphit wrote:Im playing crysis on an AMD X2 4000... med/low graphics, but it plays

Hows the graphics look? Would you happen to have a screen shot?

I'm still impressed with crysis on medium, but when you get everything on low it looks like far cry. just make sure your physics are on high.

sorry, no screen shot. I'm at work when I get to post.

Edit:

Gamespot has a performance guide that displays the difference between ultra high, high, medium, and low

I just seen this post and I dont intend on OC'n but, I figured I would give out some details...

The X2 3800+ Toledo is more than ample enough to handle Crysis. It chucks out CoD4 on max settings at about 120FPS, but on DX9 is chucks it out at about 90fps.
DX10 helps. As for Crysis, its OK, DX10 makes huge improvements to detail. The X1650PRO can handle it with a little bit of difficulty, but it doesnt overheat. I just with I had a better Power Supply, or else I would up it a knotch.
My current rig is this-
Mainboard- ASUS A8V-XE ($56)
RAM- K-Byte DDR-400 RAM (4x512MB) Dual Channel ($165)
Processor- AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+ Toledo @ 2.0Ghz ($59.50)
Video Card- ATi Radeon X1650 PRO 512MB DDR2 128 Bit PCI-e 16 ($42)
Antec Basiq 350 Watt ATX12V 2.01 Power Supply- ($65) nabbed it with a 1 year parts and labor warranty and a lifetime free replacement if I pay for shipping. lolz.
I have Windows Vista Home Premium ($100) for an OS and its not a resource hog, I have it consuming 400-450mb of RAM on startup, compared to what it starts out from standard (750-800mb). d
Another thing- Its V-Core is 1.45V tho... idk why its set that high.... its worrying me. lolz. Considering changing the HammerVID to Manual instead of Auto.

Did some overclocking last night and found that the Athlon X2 bottlenecks the 8800GT up to about 2.8Ghz.

Edit:

Here's some 3DMark06 numbers:

Athlon X2 4200+
8800GT
3GB RAM @ ~800 Mhz

2.2Ghz: 8309
2.5Ghz: 9271
2.8Ghz: 9862

And there it ends, my 4200+ won't go any higher.

Well, from what you guys are saying...I really have nothing to worry about. Im fine. My cpu is good enough. Thats great!!! I would like to start building my new pc, but I still have some problems. Should I turn to vista? Or stick with XP Pro? Should I use my PNY Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT OC card? Will it work well with my x2 3800?

Valdin wrote:Well, from what you guys are saying...I really have nothing to worry about. Im fine. My cpu is good enough. Thats great!!! I would like to start building my new pc, but I still have some problems. Should I turn to vista? Or stick with XP Pro? Should I use my PNY Nvidia GeForce 8600 GT OC card? Will it work well with my x2 3800?

Are you building a completly new computer or just upgrading? Vista... Hmm... There's no reason not to make the switch at this point IMO.

Zertz wrote:
Are you building a completly new computer or just upgrading? Vista... Hmm... There's no reason not to make the switch at this point IMO.

Im building a completly new computer. When would be a good time to switch to Vista?

I pre-built vista compatibility into my rigs, right now I'm running dual boot from 2 raid arrays. Most won't really jump to Vista until Service Pack One comes out, it still has issues with sound cards. I ended up getting the Sound Blaster Extreme Audio ($42 after searching) because it has no issues with Vista, that's the PCIE 1x version upgraded from a SB Audigy MP3 PCI.

The SB Extreme Audio went right in, (just do the install of drivers from the provided disk before upgrading to web drivers), provides rockin sound with 5.1 speakers. Great game sound with 5.1 and 7.1 speakers.

As for Vista hang back until at least Service pack one, check your printers compatibility, download the newest drivers you can get for your MOBO and devices, and don't expect every legacy program to run. It would be nice (but impractical) to believe that every future operating system will provide complete backward compatibility with all our stuff but it's not going to happen. At some point they have to say OK were going to make a break with the past conventions and plan for future expandability.

Well that's my attempt at defending Vista lol, I haven't had any issues with my dual boot Vista, but then the fact that I have dual boot running should tell you some thing (Like I don't trust Vista yet), otherwise I'd be running a 4x raid 0 array, instead of 2 2x raid 0 arrays.

if you are building a new computer, keeping your x2 shouldnt' be what you do. you should go wtih a new processor/mobo. but in terms of gaming atm the x2 is fine. It will last you a while longer. I wouldnt' build a new system to last you for the next 5 years from it though for gaming.