I don't get it...

[elfs]

So, is a Sempron 3100 (512 MB) plus a nVidia Fe5500/256MB supposed to be slower than an Athlon 2700 (512 MB) plus a nVidia TI4200/128MB?

This thing runs Quake 4 like crap!

Comments

[rarkrarkrark.livejournal.com]

Damn, I'm so used to being surrounded by the clueless I assumed. Bad drachen.

Anyway, in which case 'ps auxw' and check for things running that oughtn't be but you probably already know that.

(And if that's not the problem, it's almost certainly hardware. I'd swap the video cards around if possible, see if the old video card does better than the new one.)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've already checked the process table. I log out as "elf" and log back in as "gamer" to use a very lightweight window manager, so even Gnome and all the other modern crud that makes Linux easier to use (but not manage) is off while I game. I think others in this thread have it right: the $800 machine I bought four years ago beat the pants off the $300 machine I bought this weekend, and the four years do not make up for the reduced price. I'll just have to bite the bullet eventually, accept that I've wasted $90 of that price, and eventually buy a hotter CPU and GPU.

The CPU should be fine, IMHO.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

The video card is REALLY the limiting factor there though, the 5xxx series, as is mentioned below, generally performs like utter crap. Just upgrading that should give a very noticable performance boost.

And unlike the Celeron that cut all sorts of features that the main-line chips had, the Sempron is a full Athlon 64 (though early-production Semprons did have AMD64 mode disabled, all newer CPU's have it enabled) with half as much L2 cache. It's perfectly usable for gaming, and has at least as much cache as your Athlon 2700 did so that's a non-issue in terms of the upgrade.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Oh, and the reason for the replacement was that the old video card's fan got so dusty it stopped turning and, in a blaze of glory, took out the rest of the system.

Sorry about the snark. I'm just not a Windows user.

[rarkrarkrark.livejournal.com]

What a way to go. I've always loved those really impressive failure modes.

I'm in vague agreement with velvet_wood -- sometimes it is cheaper to acquire a pre-built system through certain channels (stores that deal in overstocks and such) but most of the time she's right. Nearly all the time, even if the former is cheaper, the latter gets one better parts.

(The other exception is when one wishes a pre-built system with older/slower hardware. Not so good for gaming, though)

I'm in agreement with wolfwings, too. The video card is the most likely bottleneck.

Not stressed about the snark. I don't sysadmin anymore (getting my edumacashion) but I do deal with a small number of people whom I otherwise like who expect me to make their game machines run fast enough (is there such a thing?), and not one of them would have a clue with what to do with a linux box. So I saw your post and did the sort of kneejerk, half thinking, mumble the standard answer thing. If I'd been thinking I would have realized that you're not part of the above list, thus not my problem, and I would have just kept my mouth shut. *grin*

(the above about said friends is particularly weird because I don't run windows, to the point where the only time I've played with XP and ME is on other people's boxes, mostly theirs, and all the games I play run fairly well on a 486. But this may soon change as I may have to let XP in the house due to my non-linux using partner and MS finally giving up on 98. So not looking forward to that)

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

I don't sysadmin anymore (getting my edumacashion) but I do deal with a small number of people whom I otherwise like who expect me to make their game machines run fast enough (is there such a thing?),

Yes. They're available from Alienware.

*drool*

Preeeettttiees....

For the record, we're a multi-OS family,ranging from a linux box handling the network for security's sake to my uber-gaming windows machine. I loathe MS with every fiber of my being but... I'm a game slut, and I want to turn the graphics _ALLLLL_ the way up! So see, such folk do exist, I promise.

[rarkrarkrark.livejournal.com]

*chuckle*

Alienware is good and they have really pretty boxes, but they are well out of price range of my friends, at least the ones who think I'm a good game-box consultant. I think my primary advantage is that I work for hugs and hard cider. I have visual processing issues that make it hard for me to appreciate good graphics or play games with complex graphics (Escape from Castle Wolfenstein was a real challenge -- I mean, trying to figure out what all those shapes were supposed to represent, I kept shooting at wallhangings -- that the first and last FPS I ever played ;) ) so the more graphical things become, the less I like them. I do recognize that this is my personal wiring and not a universal issue. I use X entirely for graphics drivers for web browsers and to organize my terminal windows.

I do know very clued windows users/admins and gamers, but most of them would not consider me to be a very good game-box consultant. I can handle the hardware just fine, but I'm dependent on research skills to handle all but the most simple software issues. (Now, ask me to set up and run a large, high availability server farm running multiple unix-varients and I rock. Gaming just isn't my specialization.)

OTOH, so many windows problems are solved by the same magic incantation (scandisk,defrag yadda :) ) that I've threatened to train a parrot as my assistant. *grin*

Oh, and honestly my dread of letting XP or something in here is less technical and more due to licensing issues, which is something I have to research.