Limited upgrade

[times_champion]

I may have enough from various relatives over xmas to upgrade my rig a little. Ideally I would like to get Crysis, COD4 and Gears of War to play on high-ish settings at 1280x1024. My PC looks like this at the moment;

Pentium 940 (dual core)
geforce 7800GTX
2gb DDR2 RAM

I was thinking about maybe picking up an E6600 and compatable mobo, and then later in the year upgrading my graphics card and getting Vista. If I just upgrade my mobo and processor for now though will the biggy games play OK with my current gfx card?

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Yeah, they should be playable. You'll just have to futz with the settings rather than just blindly taking every slider to max.

Forget the E6600. The E6750 is faster and cheaper. If you're overclocking the E2180 is the best choice since it'll go up past 3 GHz and will leave you with more money to put toward the new graphics card.

Will you be overclocking?

 

[times_champion]

Probably not to be honest, i dont really know what im doing and probably wont be able to get anything other than stock cooling.

 

[DavidB]

i dont really know what im doing and probably wont be able to get anything other than stock cooling.

Then your in the perfect situation to learn E21*0 have happily overclocked to ~3ghz with stock coolers too.
Id really suggest you have a go, the money savings are fantastic and...whats to lose ?

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Probably not to be honest, i dont really know what im doing and probably wont be able to get anything other than stock cooling.

E6750 it is then.

I'd pair it with an Abit IP35-E.

 

[times_champion]

Cheers guys, ill look into both of those options.

 

[times_champion]

The E6750 seems very cheap at £119; I cant believe it is cheaper than the slower E6600! What would a fairly cheap but decent mobo be? Would the Abit IP35-E be my best bet?

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Yes.