Advice motherboard + CPU upgrade (old Acer)

Spazz

Solid State Member
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Good day!

:SeriouslyChan:

My current system is as follows:

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor 4200+
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro
RAM: 4gb DDR2 @ 400 MHz
PSU: OCZ GameXStream OCZGXS700 (700W)

It is an older Acer Veriton M410 which I put a new PSU, video card and RAM into in Spring 2008. A picture of the motherboard can be found here:

http://www.getcomputerparts.com/imag...3119261250.jpg

I have not done any installation or replacing of a motherboard or cpu before so this will be my first time if I do it. As far as I can tell from rough eye ball measurements with a ruler looking inside my case I think the motherboard is of size Micro ATX. I sent an e-mail to Acer to find out exactly so I should hopefully hear back from them soon.

Here is a picture of the tower:

http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/de.../VTM410_NV.png

I do some gaming and though I don't do a ton I am finding that my computer cannot handle the newer titles. Here is a link to my 3DMARK06 benchmark:

ATI Radeon HD 2900 Pro video card benchmark result - AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor 4200+,Acer F690GVM score: 7522 3DMarks

In essence, my goal with this upgrade is to be able to run titles such as Arma II or possibly Skyrim with frame rate that is good enough to the point where I am not getting hitches when playing. For example, when I was playing Skyrim, I could not RUN with my horse because I would get massive hitches where the screen would freeze for 5 seconds or longer as it renders what I am about to see next. I don't really care about being able to run games at max settings or anything for now at least. My native screen resolution is 1680x1050 so if I can run newer games at that resolution, even if I have the settings on low or maybe medium, it is all right as I want to spend as little money as possible trying to get the most bang for my buck while hopefully spending a maximum of around $270 with trying to keep it closer to ~$190 or less if possible.

I did do some browsing on the web today and these are some of my ideas:

- Try to get at least a quad core
- Quite possibly use my existing video card just upgrading the motherboard, CPU, and RAM
- (Don't know if this will be compatible) Search for motherboard that I can crossfire onboard GPU or APU with my current GPU to try to get better performance without having to buy a new video card. I saw someone post something about buying extra RAM to partition for allowing an APU to have that memory to work with but I only have Windows XP right now so I am not sure how viable that will be but I don't know much about this right now.

I am thinking I will use all of my existing equipment like case, hard drive, and optical drive.

I appreciate what you guys have to say and thanks for your time.
 
I'm not gonna lie, 100% guaranteed your GPU is the culprit. You can stick that 2900 in my machine and it would still jink almost every game out there as that card is VERY aged. Lets put it this way, the 2000 series was ATI's first DX10 line up, and a terrible one at that.

What is your budget? You need a new GPU first. As odd as it sounds, your current CPU/RAM lineup will be fine even though it still needs to be upgraded too. Your GPU just can't handle these modern games. My old 6000+ paired with my old 465 even plays Battlefield 3 at 1080 low to medium settings to give you an example.
 
All right good to know. I was thinking maybe my baby video card can still hold - but I guess it was a delusion lol. Shows how long I have been out of this new computer technology scene.

Good to know my CPU isn't all that bad.

I would just upgrade GPU but my motherboard is limited to a PCI Express 1.0 GPU.

At the moment I am shopping around and I live near Microcenter and I hear they have good deals so I am looking at their website at some possibilities for GPU at the moment, then I will be looking at motherboard, CPU, and RAM.

Honestly, I wanted to try and keep my budget ~$200 but I may be able to push it a bit but I am guessing definitely no more than $280 but I if at all possible want to keep it close to $200. Not very much of a budget but it is what I have to work with at the moment and I don't know about the money flow right now.
 
I would say get a 560ti and worry about upgrading the rest later. You can still put that GPU in a PCI-E 1.0 slot as they are all backward compatible.

Once you do that then your bottleneck will be the CPU but it wont be as bad as your current situation.
 
Damn.

Not sure where I thought I read that it wasn't backwards compatible but this would have saved me years of pain and suffering at poor framerates and video quality.

That changes my game plan, thank you.
 
Time to dispel another myth. When I originally purchased the 2900 PRO I did so because I thought that was the best 1.0 card I could afford and because someone had mentioned how since my onboard video is ATI brand or since I have an AMD CPU (or some similar explanation, it was 4 years ago) that it would be best if my GPU were ATI as this would be "more compatible." Is this false? Or in some cases true?

If it is false then I will look at perhaps just getting a GTX 560 Ti.

I am currently eyeballing

http://www.microcenter.com/product/386982/GeForce_GTX_560_Ti_1024MB_GDDR5_PCIe_20_x16_Video_Card

as with the rebate it will fit under the max budget I had for myself initially.

All right, it seems like the post I just edited disappeared but that sounds great. I have some more thinking to do but I believe that just getting the following video card:

Micro Center - Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCIe 2.0 x16 Video Card ZT-50306-10M

would work nicely. Thank you for your help!!!!

I will come back and post how things go when I get things installed or will come back with any questions I have until then.
 
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Yeah basically that seems to be the path, essentially a "new" PC. I have some time until I get all of the funds together but right now I am afraid that if I do get the GPU that my CPU and RAM will bottleneck it and it won't be able to perform like it should and it will end up not being that great but you know I am sure it will be better than what I have now =p.

When I make my purchases depends on the funding and I should be getting paid soon and then perhaps I can take a look at the next funding source and that will give me an idea of how much I can spend once I get paid. I am thinking I will go for the GPU first though and then move from there.

On the microcenter website, it looks like this CPU is cheap

Micro Center - AMD Phenom II X4 B93 Socket AM3 Processor HDXB93WFK4DGM

and a motherboard should be around $50, then another $30 or so for 4gb or RAM and I should be good but I will come back for advice and ask what you guys think when I get closer to being able to get those things.
 
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