Advice on upgrading my PC

[Steve_UK]

Hi,

I'm looking to upgrade my current system but on a limited budget. I mainly pay games (Battlefield BC2, ETQW and soon Brink) but I'm not really a hardcore gamer so I'm not interested in the latest and greatest tech but obviously don't want games to run at 10 FPS!

My current system is:

- AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+
- ASUS M2NPV-VM
- 6 x 1Gb Kingston PC2-6400 (400 MHz)
- BFG GeForce 8800 GTS 320Mb
- 2 x 1TB SATA

What I'm not sure is if I should upgrade my CPU/MB/RAM or just buy a better graphics card for my current setup. For a new setup I was looking to keep my Graphics card (to keep the cost down) and buy:

- Intel Core i3 540 3.06GHz (Clarkdale) (Socket LGA1156)
- Asus P7H55-M Intel H55 (Socket 1156) DDR3
- 2 x 2GB RAM DDR3 PC3-10666C9 1333MHz Low-Voltage Single Channel Module
Total £186.74

If I was just going to get a new GFX card then I'd probably look at buying an ATI Radeon HD 5850 Sapphire Extreme - 1024MB GDDR5 at £107.99, saving me a bit of money to keep the wife sweet!

What do you guys think?

 

[cmndr_andi]

Your board seems to support some Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs, so long as you update the BIOS to the most recent version.

Instead of spending £187 on a new i3 system I would suggest going for this CPU and this graphics card - this will give you a quad core CPU and a much faster graphics card for the same price as an new dual core i3 CPU/mobo/ram upgrade. Here is a comparison of the 8800GT (a card about 25% faster than the 8800GTS 320MB) and a HD 5850.

May I ask what make and model of PSU you are currently running?

 

[Steve_UK]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I think you suggested makes more sense otherwise I'd just be replacing what I've already got with a similar spec i3 but still have a slow GFX card.

With the AMD Athlon II X4 Quad Core being AM3 would I need to modify the motherboard part that the CPU sits in as mine is currently an AM2? - hope that makes sense!

My PSU is an Arctic 700W so should be enough for a powerful GFX and CPU.

 

[sk82jack]

You shouldn't need to modify anything. You just need to flash the BIOSto version 5005 which has beta AM3 support. You can download the BIOS here. Just scroll down to 'Athlon IIX4 640(ADX640WFK42GM),3.0GHz,512KB,rev.C3,95W,SocketAM3' and clock on the 'Go' button.

PSU should be fine.