Time to upgrade for orange box?

[ulater6000]

Current setup:

Athlon 64 Socket 939 3500+
1g DDR 400 (2x 512mb)
ATI x1950pro 256mb VRAM
80gb HDD

Well I was thinking of doing small upgrades to play the upcoming oragne box:

Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Socket 939 $90
Additional 1gb (2x 512mb) DDR 400 $47
250gb HDD $57
Keep current video card


Would this play orange box or maybe even bioshock ok?
Also would it be worth the extra $40 to just get 2gb (2x 1gb) ram instead of 2gb (4x 512mb) ram?

 

[Poizen22]

getthose uprgrades will let you play bioshock for sure cause i do on maz settings, and ya it probably would be worth getting teh 2x1gb kit, then u can have 3gb instead.

 

[lancec2c30]

ya, 2gigs and the x2 4200 will do great.

 

[Gabb]

little off topic, all i gotta say is I got orange box and the TF2 beta is AMAZING! Like seriously valve put some SERIOUS polish on that game. It looks amazing but its definately a lot more demanding then what were used to for the source engine. Sometimes my stock 8800 gtx/q6600 drops to like 60-70 fps in heated battles ( max settings )....not like this matters since the eyes cant notice anything higher then 70 fps

 

[lancec2c30]

you might want to consider the x2 3800. same cache, just .2ghz less clock. Newegg has it for $50.

 

[ulater6000]

Since neweggs skt 939 x2's are all oem... what would be a good cpu cooler from newegg (under $15... ) to go with it?

Also since im upgrading my single core athlon to an X2, wont I have to get a new operating system.

 

[Invisible]

arctic freezer 64
might be 20 though...

 

[Ronnie]

your current OS will still work but not if you want to use your 250gb for your os
but if i were you i would use your 80 for the os and 250 for storage

and your current heatsink should work fine AMD ships out the same stock heatsink will all their processors

 

[ulater6000]

Ok, Final checkout cart:

Socket 939 Athlon X2 4200+ $69
Newegg.com - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ Toledo 2.2GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - OEM

Gskill 2gb DDR 400 (2x 1gb) Cas Latency 2.5 $99
Newegg.com - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

250 GB Sata II Hard Drive $57
Newegg.com - Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Rosewill Socket 939 Cooler $15
Newegg.com - Rosewill RCX-Z1 Long life ball bearing for over 45,000/hrs CPU Cooler - Retail

Sata II Cable $2
Newegg.com - OKGEAR 36" SATA II cable, UV Blue Model GC36AUBM - OEM


Final questions:

My motherboard does not support sata II, so is a sata II hdd and SATA II cable backwards compatible to sata 1.5gbs?

Also will this dual core setup work fine under windows xp home sp2... what is the biggest size hdd partrition xp will use?

How far should I be able to overclock it?




Finally.... Are all of these really worth the money?

 

[Sora]

You can expect around 2.7-2.9ghz I think with a 90nm chip which is not bad considering.