RAM maxed out, time for rebuild?

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explorer7

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Hi. I have a Gateway GT5620 that I got about 2 years ago. My main concern is the RAM; it has 2 gb, not that bad. But I'm into PC gaming so the ram is getting old and I want to get more RAM. The problem is, this models max RAM capacity is 2GB. So would I need to upgrade the motherboard so the computer can hold more RAM? The graphics card (GeForce 8500 GT) is getting really old and the PC has a Pentium Core Duo which runs only at 1.6 ghz. So is my best bet , just building a whole new machine?

I'm looking forward to the 2010 (hopefully) release of Half-Life 2 Episode 3, so any upgrades in my computer would be to prepare it for that game. But in the mean time I will be playing lots of games, most of which are new or 2 years old; my graphics card runs those horribly. Or does my other hardware have something to do with it too?
 
Upgrading your GPU will only get to so far, however what will improve your game would be a new Mobo + CPU + Ram + GPU.

Might look at getting some thing like an entry level i7 system. Core2Duo is going to be yesturday's news by the end of the year.
 
no sense in spending any money upgrading your current computer.

Yes you have my approval. Go ahead and build that new machine. :)

What type of budget are you thinking about having and how soon would you want to build?
 
Well hopefully I can spare all that I need to from my old PC, like the case, and hard drive, etc. I will probably buy the other parts separately. Is it cheaper to buy them separately and install them yourself? But I might not upgrade till the end of the year or later because I don't want my new PC to be mediocre when Half-Life comes out; I don't want to upgrade too early. With my budget, I can basically save up to $1000 dollars in the course of a few months.
 
Well my advice would be to start saving and purchase the equipment when you have enough. With the way computer components drop in price it is best to get the majority of parts when you are ready to build.

You can reuse your hard drives and cd drives although depending upon what type of hard drive you have it may be in your best interest to get a new hard drive for Operating system and programs and use your old hard drive for data.

I would definitely get a new case as you can get some nice ones for around $55 and it would be way better than reusing your gateway case which is proprietary and could pose build issues.

With your budget you are looking at an Intel i7 build so start doing a bit of research and check back in with us when it is time to build.

You will need mb, ram, cpu, psu, gpu, operating system, case and possibly a hard drive.
 
I will do some serious research.

Should I get a new monitor too? I have a Gateway flat screen monitor with a max resolution of 1024x768. When I play alot of new games I get the "jagged edge" effect on graphics, like with ropes and circles in the game, they are really jagged edged. Or is that my graphics card?
 
A phenom II + 4890 + 22 or 24 inch lcd sounds like what you need. That will easily play half life 2 episode 3 (It will be the source engine... a stock 4850 probably would be fine for it as well) and any other games out now. I'll let someone else pick out the other stuff if you do decide to go AMD. If your building this for gaming... plenty of sources agree that i7 isn't really necessary.
 
Once I saw that the i7 is the fastest processor out there, and how much it cost, including the motherboard, I don't think I need something that extreme. Any other suggestions?
 
Well the CPU (Core i7 920) is $200, around $250 for the board, < $100 for good DDR3 Triple Channel RAM

A decent GPU, could range from $100 + depending on how much power you need, and you may need a PSU too, which is like $100+ again
 
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