Need Upgrade Advice on which route to take.

[Boma]

I have:

Athlon 64 2800+
DFI Lanparty NF3 (AGP only)
1 GB Corsair PC3200 Dual Channel DDR
Leadtek 6600GT AGP
Regular IDE Hard Drive


I don't know which upgrade path to take, but I would like it to be reasonably priced.

I would like to able to play games such as BF2142 at MAX settings with no lag.

 

[KBlair]

Lets start you off with a nice Intel Core 2 Duo E6300. That should hold you for a year or 2, maybe even 3.

Next, for the video card, I'd get a Nvidia 7600GT. Yes, it is outdated with the DirectX 10 era dawning, but it should be able to play Battlefield 2142 nicely.

For memory, you don't need top of the line DDR2 800 unless you're overclocking, 2 GB of DDR2 667 Corsair ValueRAM should do quite nicely.

For the motherboard, slap all your parts in an Intel DP965LT. Again, not good for overclocking, but it should be able to do justice if you want stock power.

Stock power is very good as it is, but some will encourage you to overclock since it seems like a 'waste' of a processor's potential. Yes, it could increase a little performance, but mostly in benchmarking, and you probably wouldn't notice it in real life situations.

Also, it voids the warranty on the processor (And some RAM), so if your processor goes kaput (not likely if you overclock carefully), you're on your own with no help from Intel.

You can reuse the hard drive, CD-ROM drive, monitor, and maybe the case if it's an ATX form factor from your old PC, but you may need to install a fresh copy of Windows on there when you're done upgrading.

You may also want to sell that stuff to make up for a little of your upgrade.

 

[Boma]

Thanks! That seems like a cost effective path to take, while giving me to upgrade the video card to something even better down the road!

 

[Oreo]

Basicly i reccomend this

AMD Athlon AM2 Dual Core 3800 Orleans Core > 95 Pounds (british pound)

ATI X1950PRO 256MB 1> 140 Pounds

2GB PC 5300/667 MHZ Ram > 140 Pounds

and any PCI-E x16 AM2 Compatible Motherboard (mine costs 37 pounds) so lets say 50 pounds for that

Western Digital 160GB 8mb Cache 7200RPM > 40 pounds

Creative labs audigy 2 zs (not needed but nice to have if you have some good speakers) 40-80 pounds.

So very quickly thats about 500 pounds. Thats a decent PC.


Thanks

 

[KBlair]

Basicly i reccomend this

AMD Athlon AM2 Dual Core 3800 Orleans Core > 95 Pounds (british pound)

ATI X1950PRO 256MB 1> 140 Pounds

2GB PC 5300/667 MHZ Ram > 140 Pounds

and any PCI-E x16 AM2 Compatible Motherboard (mine costs 37 pounds) so lets say 50 pounds for that

Western Digital 160GB 8mb Cache 7200RPM > 40 pounds

Creative labs audigy 2 zs (not needed but nice to have if you have some good speakers) 40-80 pounds.

So very quickly thats about 500 pounds. Thats a decent PC.


Thanks

Mine is about $700 USD, and is more powerful. Yours is $978.90 USD (Though, if those parts were bought in America, they'd be much less).

 

[Oreo]

Kblair what are your system specs ..... then i'll find them as cheep as i can and tell you the costs in uk.

How did you get 498 Pounds ! .... This is what it really costs ik the uk.


AThlon AM2 Duel ore 3800= 92 Pounds.
ATI Sapphire X1950XT= 176 Pounds
1GB PC5300 RAM (2x1GB) = 124 Pounds
Gigabyte PCI-E x16 Single GPU AM2 Socket=37 Pounds
Western Digital 8MB Cache 7200RPM=38 Pounds
(diff sound Card) Creative Xf-i Elite Gamer=56 Pounds

Altogether that equals > 523 Pounds you were 25 pounds off


Thanks