Upgrading 3+ year old system

[veg1992]

Exactly. he could squeeze a nice X2 system into his budget along with a decent video card. That way he won't only notice an improvement in gaming, but every day task as well.

Cheapest 4850 is 175$. 175 + 175 = 350. Think he can squeeze in a nice mother board and X2 CPU for about that much? Along with like 2 Gigs of G.Skill ram.

the NQ's or even those OCZ Gold's?

or if he likes to gamble some, Crucial Ballistix

 

[Hussein19891]

the NQ's or even those OCZ Gold's?

or if he likes to gamble some, Crucial Ballistix

Yeah just cause he doesn't have a lot of money doesn't mean his out of luck. This is probably why I loved AMD in the start. Able to pay for a majority of the computer at around the cost of a single Q9550.

*EDIT*

Newegg.com - AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

Newegg.com - Foxconn A7GM-S AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory

Newegg.com - HIS Hightech H485F512P Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

Grand Total: $351.97

Looks like if you decide to go with one 4850 you can afford 2 gigs of ram, a motherboard, and a decent X2 CPU.

 

[veg1992]

Newegg.com - ECS A780GM-A AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - AMD Motherboards

Also noteworthy even though its ECS

Maybe even an Opteron Santa Ana? Newegg.com - AMD Opteron 1210 Santa Ana 1.8GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 103W Dual-Core Server Processor - Processors - Servers it is 90nm though

EDIT: Newegg.com - AMD Athlon X2 4050e 2.1GHz 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W 65nm Dual-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops

 

[Evolv]

While s939 is gone, it is still a good CPU. I'm still running a 4200 X2

Ha, I thought I was the only one running one of those. I like it though, it runs very well.

But yea AMD is definetly the more affordable route. Although if you go for a better s939 chip, they are really expensive, even the used ones on ebay. The setup Vernong mentioned would be good too.