Upgradings help.

robmol · 24 Sep 2011 at 17:47

Been out of the scene for a while, so I don't really have a clue whats decent these days, but It's getting to the stage where my poor old thing is starting to show it's age!

My current system is Dual Core E7200 OC'd to 3.2ghz with a Gigabyte motherboard, 2GB RAM, ATI 4850 512mb, CoolerMaster M520 PSU (do not really want to change this if I can help it). I have plenty of ok harddrives/disc drives etc so that is not an issue.

What parts of this should I upgrade to bring me up to speed a bit? (all of it I hear you say) I'm on a fairly tight budget of £250, is it just worth upgrading CPU/MB/RAM? If so what to? Obviously not after a beast of a machine for this price, just bang for buck. If there are any relatively cheap Nvidia GFX cards around that will be worth upgrading to, I'll consider that as well (quite happy to use members market for parts).

Cheers

CinderzFTW · 24 Sep 2011 at 19:04

First of all, get a new motherboard, memory, cpu and gpu.

You might as well go AMD, they are cheap but powerful and will out perform your current intel dual core system by a mile.

Specs:

Motherboard: GigaByte GA-M68MT-S2: £33.98 (Cheap but cheerful)
CPU: AMD Athlon X3 Tri Core 450 3.2ghz: £59.99 (Our you could go quad for £80)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (2 x 2gb) 1333mhz DDR3: £24.98
GPU: OCUK GTX550Ti 1GB: £99.98

Total: £218.93

This would do you for a while, plus I would get a better PSU if you want to run the GTX550Ti. Go for this: CoolerMaster GX 450W @ £35.98... Will be £2 over your budget, but will do you nicely.

Reaper 392 · 24 Sep 2011 at 23:10

CinderzFTW said:
First of all, get a new motherboard, memory, cpu and gpu.

You might as well go AMD, they are cheap but powerful and will out perform your current intel dual core system by a mile.

Specs:

Motherboard: GigaByte GA-M68MT-S2: £33.98 (Cheap but cheerful)
CPU: AMD Athlon X3 Tri Core 450 3.2ghz: £59.99 (Our you could go quad for £80)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB (2 x 2gb) 1333mhz DDR3: £24.98
GPU: OCUK GTX550Ti 1GB: £99.98

Total: £218.93

This would do you for a while, plus I would get a better PSU if you want to run the GTX550Ti. Go for this: CoolerMaster GX 450W @ £35.98... Will be £2 over your budget, but will do you nicely.

intel currently poos all over AMD. there is almost no reason to go for an AMD build over an intel one right now (and this is coming from an AMD user).

also, what you've specced really wouldnt be much of an upgrade:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/55?vs=202

i would stick with your current processor, motherboard and RAM combination and get a big GPU upgrade. obviously the next upgrade should be a CPU + motherboard + RAM upgrade, but you can deal with that when you come to it.

i'm really not sure if your PSU could cope with the upgrade, so i've put a modular PSU in that can cope with two of the cards in SLI

YOUR BASKET
1 x OcUK GeForce GTX 560Ti 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card **Supplied with FREE Batman: Arkham City PC game** £165.59
1 x Antec TruePower New Modular 650W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £64.98
Total : £230.57 (includes shipping: FREE).

robmol · 25 Sep 2011 at 10:48

Thanks guys I'll look into the above options. Must admit I've never been an AMD fan to be honest, always gone Intel in the past. I'm also still on XP, so maybe I could upgrade to 7 and get some more RAM too? I've noticed that when opening/closing games, or when I have too much going on it really starts to slow down which I assume is RAM related.

robmol · 25 Sep 2011 at 15:47

Looked into this a little further, my current PSU is modular, and its 80 PLUS certified (Real Power range) how would a GX 450 be an improvement? (GX is the mid range according to CM site) all the specs given on their site are far lesser than my current.

honosuseri · 25 Sep 2011 at 15:58

I would agree with reaper. He only added that PSU as he wasnt sure about yours.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/330?vs=290

That link compares a couple of gpus. Feel free to change the search criteria to find something you like in your budget. It's worth bookmarking you can compare CPUs as well as SSDs etc.

It would be nice to have 4GB of RAM for gaming but im sure you are aware that you wont be able to "take it with you" when you upgrade the mobo in the future.

I think I would opt for the Win7 OS and GPU myself. I'd know i could "reuse" these parts. I'd get more RAM when I did a mobo bundle upgrade. Your call though fella, have you considered selling your current mobo bundle to help fund an upgrade?

*edit*

I compared the 6870 as it's roughly £30 cheaper than the 560ti. This might allow you to do the GPU,OS and add some more DD2 RAM if you so wished in one hit.