Possibly Upgrading Computer

[vladimars]

This is my current computer ( I am picking it up tomorrow) and I was thinking on upgrading a couple of things namely the video card, ram, another hard drive.
I plan on adding another gig of ram and looking into at least another 250GB hard drive. The video card however i don't know. I want to be able to play pretty much any game with at least decent settings but i don't really want to spend over 250$ for the video card. Any suggestions or other suggestions for upgrades? I know it'll probably require a bigger power supply ...

I'll have to check the temps of the computer and i'll think about overclocking the cpu and possibly lap it ... is it worth it to overclock the video card?

Intel Quad Core 2.4 GHZ
3 Gigs of RAM DDR2
250 Gig Hard Drive
Motherboard is 64 Bit Intel and Can handle dual channel mem
Nvidia 8600 GTS with 512 Megs of Vid RAM
TV Tuner Card for watching TV
1 DVD RW Write Drive 18X
1 DVD RW Write Drive 18X with Lightscribe
Creative Labs Soundblaster X-FI PCI Express 7.1
Comes with Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
400 W Power Supply

 

[Yami]

My mum's comp has an 8600GT, it can just about play Age of Empires III on full settings @ 1280x1024. Slightly choppy though.

There won't be much point in you getting another gig of RAM, since you're unlikely to see any more than 300MB of it since you only have a 32-bit OS.

Video card upgrade, yes it would require a power supply upgrade; a GTX260 or HD4870 would probably be the best video card for you at this time.
If you get a new power supply get something like a Corsair VX550.

I'll have to check the temps of the computer and i'll think about overclocking the cpu and possibly lap it ... is it worth it to overclock the video card?

You're very unlikely to be able to OC very far (or at all) with stock cooling and a cheap motherboard (the bane of all pre-builts, PSU too).

It's always worth OCing your video card (if you're going to be gaming), depending on how good the case and card cooling is.

 

[vladimars]

Well I have the computer right now I just got it running and have yet to test the temperatures under load. Any good programs to do so with?
Also I i have the box for the motherboard it is and intel classic series DG35EC. From what I have seen it doesn't support PCI EXPRESS 2.0 16X it does have the regular 16x though. What would be the best memory card I could get with this motherboard (450w power supply) or should i just upgrade the motherboard?

 

[Yami]

Any good programs to do so with?

Good temperature programs are Hardware Monitor and RealTemp; they're the ones I use. The latter is able to remain in the system tray so you can just glance at your temp, like you can with the time.

From what I have seen it doesn't support PCI EXPRESS 2.0 16X it does have the regular 16x though.

You mean it has PCI-E Express 1.0 x16? If so it will work fine.

What would be the best memory card I could get with this motherboard (450w power supply)

I assume you mean video card? Anyway, there really is no way to tell without knowing the make+model of the power supply, but a rough guess would be, not much better than an 8600GT.

Oh and just to confirm what I said before, there's no chance of you overclocking (at least to any helpful lengths) if you have a DG35EC mobo.

 

[baron5]

I dont think the intel boards even let your overclock. There was one aimed for that market though, the badaxe, i dont think it was overly popular. Im with yam, a 4870 would be a good choice along with a new psu. The 8600gts isnt all to bad though, it was a reasonable cheap gaming card back in the day, it wouldnt do too much in todays games though.

 

[vladimars]

Thx Guys. I guess I'll wait until I get my next couple of checks ... rent sucks

Any suggestions on which company to order the 4870 and power supply from

Also i thought that if you didn't have a 2.0 pci express 16x slot and you had just a regular you wouldn't get much benefit from putting a 2.0 video card in. Should I just replace the motherboard too?

 

[veg1992]

No, as long as you have a PCI-e x16 slot, you'll be fine with running 2.0 as they are backwards compatible. There really isn't any performance difference though

 

[vladimars]

Thx. Well I decided to eventually upgrade the motherboard/processer/blah blah blah and step by step build a new computer out of my current one then sell my current for like 3ish. I really want two to three cards running at once as I don't know how good I could overclock. Also thinking about upgrading to one of the i7's in about 4 months (christmas present to me)

Any suggestions on power supply and what kind of 4870 to get? Or is their a better card that is only slightly more?

 

[veg1992]

HD 4890.. maybe the GTX 285.