High-performance personal computing
With Doom 3 upon us and Half-Life 2 quickly approaching, it’s time to take a stab at that Sisyphean task of keeping the deck up-to-date and able to play the latest and greatest (at high resolution with antialiasing and anistropic filtering enabled, of course).
My next leap:
| Component | Current system | New system |
| Motherboard | i850E PCI | i925 PCI-Express |
| CPU | Intel Pentium 4 (2.66GHz, 512KB cache, 533MHz FSB) | Intel Pentium 4 550 (3.4GHz HT, 1MB cache, 800MHz FSB) |
| System memory | 512MB Rambus RDRAM @1066MHz | 1GB Dual-channel DDR2 SDRAM @533MHz |
| Video card | nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4600 (128MB DDR RAM) | nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra Express (256MB DDR3 RAM) |
| Disk | 40GB EIDE disk (5400 RPM, 2MB cache) 40GB EIDE disk (5400 RPM, 2MB cache) |
160GB Serial ATA disk (7200 RPM, 8MB cache) |
| Optical Drives | 4x DVD±RW | 52x32x52x CD-RW 12x DVD±RW |
| Sound card | Sound Blaster Audigy Gamer | Sound Blaster Audigy 2 |
Unfortunately, due to constraints on the PCI-Express motherboard and 6800 Ultra Express, it looks like I won’t have the new box up, running, and scaring the crap out of me in Doom 3 until mid-to-late September.
August 4th, 2004 at 1:54 pm
You know, that current system should play Doom 3 rather admirably. No, you won’t get the resolution you desire, but you can still have the bejesus scared out of you.
I still haven’t made the plunge for this purchase yet. I’ve driven rather near two different retail establishments and still found the backbone to not pull into the parking lot
. That won’t last.
August 4th, 2004 at 3:56 pm
The current rig runs Doom 3 so-so at “Medium” settings on 800x600. I get a fairly smooth framerate (30ish FPS), albeit with some noticeable stuttering depending on the lighting. And yes, it is still horribly startling.
Since I prefer to play in 1280x960 or higher (with all the visual goodies, given my druthers) and things are only going to go downhill once multiplayer overhead is added in to the mix, I figured it was time to bite the bullet and get a system that’ll support my primary hobby for the next 3 years (or hopefully longer). Doom 3, Half-Life 2/Counterstrike 2, The Battle for Middle Earth, and even some upcoming MMORPGs will definitely benefit from the horsepower of the new system.
August 13th, 2004 at 12:17 pm
Eerie, your current rig is almost identical to my current rig. Same video cards, processors, and soundcard. I’ve got just the one HDD (same specs though), and no DVD drive, but I went whole hog on memory when I got it and got 2GB (non Rambus, though). The saddest part? All I play anymore is old school games from my teenage years. Not exactly pushing the hardware to its limits.