£200 to spend need help

fatus

fatus

fatus

Associate
Joined
10 Aug 2003
Posts
82
My friend has about £200 to spend on his pc.
specs now are
stock intel q8300 quad
7800gt gfx
4 gig ram
coolmaster 400w psu
not sure the res he tries to games at.

overclocking not really a option

I was thinking a 64gb ssd and the rest on a new gfx card to get the best boost for the money.

but not sure with that cpu and the psu if it is worth upgrading the gfx.

any ideas?
 
That Q8300 is going to hold you back a bit and will bottleneck higher end graphics cards, especially when it's at stock speeds.

Do you know what model the Cooler Master PSU is? Their range varies from pretty crap, to half decent.

If I was you, I would just save up another £100 or so and do a complete overhaul. If not, I would go for something like this GTX 650Ti Boost, and this SSD.
 
Last edited:
Sprite isn't fully right. The CPU is still pretty capable. Though the psu may be an issue. A new gpu would be my suggestion but a new psu is a must really. £50 for a 500/550w PSU and £150 on a 7850. :)

You open to secondhand buying?
 
psu is a RS-400-PCAR-A3

So even with the bottle neck would we seen much improvement over a 7800gt say if we put a 650ti boost in.

£200 is all we that he wants to spend right now so we are trying for the best boost even if there is some bottleneck.

other option i saw was to skip the ssd for now and go with a trinity cpu board and ram.

not sure whats the best route.
 
Doomedspeed said:
Sprite isn't fully right. The CPU is still pretty capable. Though the psu may be an issue. A new gpu would be my suggestion but a new psu is a must really. £50 for a 500/550w PSU and £150 on a 7850. :)

You open to secondhand buying?
Click to expand...

Yep it's still a decent chip, but in some CPU intensive games it will hold you back, especially when at stock 2.5GHz. I have no idea how much it will bottleneck, but theres a nice little overview of a Q6600 vs a i5 2500K showing less performance gains than I thought here. Bear in mind that Q6600 is at 3.2GHz and it's only 4 games.

fatus said:
psu is a RS-400-PCAR-A3

So even with the bottle neck would we seen much improvement over a 7800gt say if we put a 650ti boost in.

£200 is all we that he wants to spend right now so we are trying for the best boost even if there is some bottleneck.

other option i saw was to skip the ssd for now and go with a trinity cpu board and ram.

not sure whats the best route.
Click to expand...

That PSU isn't great, I would recommend getting a newer 400/500w model (or higher if you plan on more upgrades in the future).

You should see a fairly big gain over that 7800GT (which is 8 years old now!)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom