worth the upgrade?

[Richimself]

I was just wondering whether it would help me any whatsoever to upgrade my graphics card with the setup I have now. Right now I have a 2GHz CPU 512MB of ram and upgraded graphics card from the 32mb card it came with to an FX5500. I really just want to know whether it would really be worth the upgrade and if the setup would be able to keep up with any better card than the current 5500. I would really love to be able to play HL2 deathmatch and CS:Source with better frames. Any help is appreciated.

 

[beedubaya]

If you have an AGP slot, pick up a 6600GT or 6800NU...and you will get much, much better framerates in the games you play. 2GHz isn't too bad, although no hardcore gamer would want it, it sounds okay for you. I would also think about upgrading your memory from 512MB to 1GB.

 

[Richimself]

Ah thanks for the input. I was also wondering if my slot being agp 4x if that will effect performance. And i forgot to mention my motherboard right now holds 168-pin SDRAM (pc133) and was also wondering about the RAM, so would upgrading to 1GB of pc233 (i think that's the highest my mobo will take) also yield better gameplay? thanks again for the help.

 

[beedubaya]

Ooooh...you are still using PC133? That PC is older than I thought. I wouldn't worry about upgrading that then, I would just save and build a new system. Sorry, mate....PC133 is not good for gaming these days, especially games as RAM intensive as HL2 and BF2.

 

[Richimself]

Ah, I was afraid of that. I'm a little new to hardware so it couldn't be that it's 168-pin memory but can take 184-pin or anything like that? And yeah I think it is a little old, my sisters boyfriend built it for free, i'm pretty sure it's just an old HP vectra office pc :/

 

[beedubaya]

No, 168-pin is not comaptable with 184-pin...they are completely different types of memory. 184pin is DDR, which is dual-data rate and supports twice the speed.

 

[Richimself]

Alright, hrm.. maybe i'll look into a full upgrade in the near future, it's just so much I was hoping just a graphics card might be able to help. Oh well, thanks for all your help beedubaya

 

[waynejkruse10]

i would wait and build a completely new system some time next year, thats what i am doing.

Next year heaps of cool stuff is being introduced, it will be a great year for computers!

Windows Vista will be released - a new operating system that fully supports 64 bit and multi threads. Also it puts all the work of rendering the desktop to the gpu instead of the cpu so your brand new gpu will be used in things other than 3d games.

Dual core will become even more affordable next year. It is still quite new and expensive, next year it will be more adopted and prices will drop. Also other programs and games will be released with multi thread and 64 bit capability so things will be even faster.

Also, AMD (which is a big favourite in this forum) will be releasing socket M2 which has DDR2 support which lets you have higher bandwidth, and by then the latency problem should be fixed up.

Wayne