£490 to spend, please help me spend it

crazymoose

crazymoose

crazymoose

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Joined
23 Nov 2005
Posts
32
Hi,

I have £490 to spend on an upgrade.

I need a new CPU, RAM, Mobo and GPU.

I need to spend it all and only want to spend it on those components so i'd like to get the best combination that takes me to £490 inc VAT and Postage.

I am not entirely fussy about AMD vs Intel, which ever combination will give me the best performance for my cash.

I mainly use my machine for development, and my current spec is fine for my development requirements, but its not doing so well with CoD4 and the latest games. The reason for the upgrade is mainly to improve my games performance, but my current hardware is getting dated anyway.

Current Setup
Intel P4 3Ghz (560)
2GB Geil Ram (667Mhz - I think)
XFX 7800GT
Abit LGA775 motherboard

Thanks in advance,

Chris
 
What psu does you're current system have ?

Cooler is dependant on you're case, but an after market cooler will keep the chip cooler and be quieter.

Went for the BFG card, slightly dearer but decent warrenty, if you want more gfx power then maybe drop the cooler and get a 8800gts.

pc8000 memory to allow for some overclocking in the future when the setup starts to show its age.


Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £64.99 (£76.36)

Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 2.66GHz (1333FSB) - Retail £104.99 (£123.36)

Tuniq Tower 120-LFB CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £22.99 (£27.01)

BFG GeForce 8800 GT OC 512MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £123.99 (£145.69)

G.Skill 4GB DDR2 PQ PC2-8000C5 (2x2GB) CAS5 Dual Channel Kit (F2-8000CL5D-4GBPQ) £69.99 (£82.24)

Sub Total : £386.95
Shipping : £8.95
VAT : £69.28
Total : £465.18
 
Last edited:
as above - you should go for that spec dude

i like your specific budget of 490 rather than 500!
 
overclockersukyourbaskeps3.png
 
Thanks for the advice so far, they both look attractive. Would quad core be better than the wolfdale's? If I did decide to go quad core is it worth waiting for the Yorkfields to come out?

To answer some of your questions my current case is a Lian Li PC 2000, which is a full tower so there should be enough room for that cooler.

My power supply is an Antec True power or something along those lines, I am pretty confident it will be sufficient. Its one of those 500W modular plug doo dahs.
 
rjkoneill said:
as above - you should go for that spec dude

i like your specific budget of 490 rather than 500!
Click to expand...

haha I know - my actual budget is £493 - its in a differnt account and thats all thats in that account, so if it goes over I need to transfer some more cash in and then its another few days. - I thought I'd round it down to £490. But I agree it is very specific :)
 
Thanks for all your input, I went with the bits suggested by BillytheImpaler, I managed to squeeze a new headset in and still come under my budget hehe.

Thanks again.
 
Hi,

Just an update - got my bits on Monday as expected, everything worked first time, which is unusual haha.

My 3dMark06 score with my old setup was a paultry 1,536.
- http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=5712139

My new 3dMark06 score with the new hardware is a cracking 12,048.
- http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=5714962

I dont think I could have spent my £490.00 any better. Thank you for the suggested setup Billy!

only bummer is I put on 32bit XP Pro and its only seeing 3.25GB of the RAM - so I might bite the bullet and go for vista, but I don't think I need the exta 0.75GB enough to make me go through the vista hell! haha.

Thanks again,
Moose
 
Don't forget to upgrade the CPU cooler if you want to overclock!
(if you went with the retail q6600 as billy suggested that is.)

Enjoy!
 
I quite like Vista, once the UAC is off it's not that bad (i turned AERO off too to get som of my RAM back)

Vista 32 bit will still only address 4GB TOTAL! so you'll see less than 4GB, the amount depends on your GFX Memory. You'll need 64bit to address the full 4GB of RAM
 
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