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What should I splurge on?

Toasty

Toasty

Sony battery
Will (hopefully) be getting a new PC pretty soon and am in need of a little advice. I don't exactly have limitless funds to put towards this, so I'm wondering just what component(s) I should focus on. I'm kind of a hardware noob, (I know what most of the numbers mean, but can't really connect them to practical usage) and since I don't spend much time around newer PCs, I don't know much about what the more current hardware is capable of. I know my current PC is very slow when emulating the 64's framebuffers (unless I use a cheat/fix, like the subscreen fix on Zelda for example) such as those on the Jiggy challenges in Banjo-Tooie, so one thing I'm wondering is if there's hardware capable of emulating these effects at full speed (or is this mainly a emulator bug that needs optimizing to work right?). Well, before I show off my ignorance any more, what kind of things are going to have the biggest influence on these effects (CPU speed, graphics card speed, graphics card memory, system memory, FSB speed, etc)?
 
ScottJC

ScottJC

At your service, dood!
Focus on processor, ram and video card.

For this you will probably need to buy a new motherboard as well... I suggest you go for a Socket 939 Motherboard and an Athlon 64 3000+ (somewhere in that region), you will probably have to buy 2 sticks of DDR Ram, preferably 3200+ speed.

I suggest you buy a Geforce 6600 as your video card as well. I don't know american prices very well so I didn't bother to include.. all thise could cost you at least $400 ? I think. probably more... worth it though.

(The reason I say all this is because if you buy all these parts you will get a decent high end system out of it, you can use your old ram for instance if it is DDR ram.. but you are better off going faster.)

--This info might burst your bubble a bit:
Also, framebuffer effects are equally slow on my system believe it or not, if I enable the jigsaw intro on banjo-kazooie levels my framerate would drop considerably, the only reason some framebuffer effects are fast is because video plugins (Especially Jabo's 1.6) has special tricks to get them to work - this isn't always "perfect" though.

What most effects jabo's plugin for instance is the video card, it requires a video card with Pixel shader to pull off some of its effects... but imho upgrading the video card alone is pointless, you might as well upgrade it all.
 
OP
Toasty

Toasty

Sony battery
Thanks for the info. $400 isn't too bad, so I just might take your suggestion. While I'm asking about hardware - some of the new hires texture packs (Federelli's Zelda pack for example) run kind of slow on my video card, particularly the new water texture (Lake Hylia is very jerky when I look out across the Lake). Also, on Knights of the Old Republic, some areas are extreamly jerky. What is the main factor that affects this? I'm taking a guess based on what little I know that it will be the video card, but is it the clock speed, vertices per second, pixels per clock, etc?
 
OP
Toasty

Toasty

Sony battery
Oh, and another thing :D. I've never used any ATI cards before and am just wondering how they relate to nVidia's (like what models are roughly equivalent and would be best for doing the stuff I mentioned above). Or maybe if someone can help me decode the numbers and specifications I can figure that out myself (what does video card clock speed, vertices/sec, pixels/clock, and all that stuff affect). Thanks for your patience!
 
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