Looking for the future, upgrading for Battle Feild 2 and others!

[ki9090]

hey all, my curren computer is as follows:

Asus P5PLD-2 Mobo
Pentium 4 630 3.0ghz proccessor
1 GB duel Channel OCZ DDR2 533mhz Ram
MSI NX6600GT


Now i want to upgrade so i can play battle feild 2 and maybe some other games coming out soon, i can run CS source and Age of Empires 3 fine on fairly high settings but battle feild 2 will cause problems.

So i guess im askin what can i do with what i have upgrade wise? Should i switch tha video card next to the 7800 (wait for the G8's) so the 7800 goes down in price. Or i was wondering if i would notice an improvement if i went for Pentium D, or maybe just upgraed the single core to say a 3.4 or 3.6?

Any help appreciated.

 

[TehBestEver]

I would say a move to AMD dual cores but that could cost $400 to $500 so I would say a Pentium D.

 

[U-Toast]

An Opteron 165 would be a good choice. 1.8ghz dual core. Very overclockable. You can hit at least 2.5 on stock voltages with no worry about heat.

As for the graphics card, waiting for the G80 would probably be your best choice, as it will support DX10, which will be necessary to run games under vista.

 

[ki9090]

An Opteron 165 would be a good choice. 1.8ghz dual core. Very overclockable. You can hit at least 2.5 on stock voltages with no worry about heat.

As for the graphics card, waiting for the G80 would probably be your best choice, as it will support DX10, which will be necessary to run games under vista.

Moving to AMD would be expensive as ****, first i wouldhave to change the mobo (close to 200) then the CPU (close to 150-300) then i would need new ram cause AMD does not support DDR2 (so ad in another 100-150) so that upgrade for CPU improvement onl (with out really adding to the RAM) will end up costing about 450-700 dollars. I know very one stresses how good amd is for gaming but its not like Intel is terrible at it, amd just does it better so on the intel side of the fence what can i do?

 

[U-Toast]

Oh man, here i go again.

AMD cpus are more efficient than intel, they are able to do more work per clock cycle, which is why they perform as well/outperform intel CPUs which are in the 3+ ghz.

The AMD Opteron 165 is one of the favorit CPUs for gaming/work related usage. You might want to do a little research about it before posting another comment.

But pushing the voltages up a little, depending on the stepping you get, you can hit anywhere from 2.7-3.0 on stock air cooling. You are paying 320$ for a cpu which almost matches up with the FX series.

 

[ulater6000]

Your current CPU is ok. It is not as good as AMD, however for the price you would pay to switch to AMD vs the performance increase you would recieve; I would personaly not recomend it.

A more practical upgrade would be your video card. Get a 7800gt or a 7900gt, and that will run BF2 on max settings. Also maybe through in an extra 1gb of RAM if you can afford it. (BF2 uses a lot of RAM space)