Advice on cheap upgrade

Jegethy

Jegethy

Jegethy

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Bristol
Hey,

I feel I need to upgrade my computer as it's not really performing that well anymore, despite a recent ram upgrade. I don't run anything too demanding. Just a few games such as CSS and Rift. I want to get a few "upgrades" and I have around £250 to spend, but ideally, I NEED to spend less.

What I have now:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+
Asus M2N68-AM MoBo
4GB Corsair DDR2
1TB Samsung F3
Radeon HD 5770

I intend on using my Hard drive and graphics card in the new build.

As I have £250 to spend, I was thinking I would just get the "Xenon AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.80GHz Bundle" for £239.99

How would this perform compared to my current spec? Are there any options that I should consider, such as buying seperate parts?
 
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Google suggests that's an AM2+ board. The most cost effective thing to do would be to slot in a Phenom II X4 and spend the rest on the best graphics card you can afford. You would gain very little gaming performance going to an AM3 board and DDR3. 6 cores are no help for gaming, so the bundle you link to isn't your best bet.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys. I should mention though, that I do other things on the computer other than gaming, such as video editing, watching 1080p videos and occasionally compiling programs in Visual C++, which can be strenuous on my current CPU.

How future proof would the quad core be? I'll probably be upgrading my entire system late this year, but I need something to last until then.

If I opted for the quad core, would it be worth paying a little extra for an AM3 MoBo and DDR3 Ram, as I assume the upcoming AMD chips will support it?
 
The new bulldozer chips will require an AM3+ motherboard. The X4 955/965 will easily last you through this year. It will handle all your want in the above post.

You would see a small boost by going from DDR2 to DDR3 but you'd see a bigger boost (in gaming) by upgrading your graphics card.
 
R088ieS86 said:
The new bulldozer chips will require an AM3+ motherboard. The X4 955/965 will easily last you through this year. It will handle all your want in the above post.

You would see a small boost by going from DDR2 to DDR3 but you'd see a bigger boost (in gaming) by upgrading your graphics card.
Click to expand...

I just read that on Wikipedia.

In that case I don't see the point in throwing away money. I'll order a Phenom X4. What graphics card is best in the £150 range? GeForce GTX 460?
 
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