Ageing system - cheapest way to upgrade for games?

Spike · 27 Dec 2007 at 11:37

At the min I have a 3gig Athlon and a gig of memory along with a 6800 ultra. I've just bought a Samsung 226BW for xmas and now I need to run my games at a higher resolution. Having bought that though, I'm proper skint now. What would be the best solution for running games in higher res? A new graphics card? If so what one? I don't want to buy one that won't be able to be used properly due to the cpu/memory, if you know what I mean...

Ben M · 27 Dec 2007 at 11:40

is your current graphics card agp?

i think it is, in which case the best agp card is the x1950 Pro

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17686356

go there and scroll down a bit

Spike · 27 Dec 2007 at 11:43

Yea it is, cheers Ben M.

So if I get that my system won't bottleneck at the cpu, making the update worthless?

Is there an equivalent Nvidia card? I've always preferred them. More expensive though I guess....

waso_dude · 27 Dec 2007 at 11:49

tbh - save up. Upgrade CPU mobo and ram. for about £150

will make a massive differnace.

And get a board that will take a PCI-E gfx card.

artaxerxes · 27 Dec 2007 at 11:53

ASROCK 4 Core VSTA

Core 2 Duo board, takes AGP/ PCI-E and DDR / DDR II.

£40

Core 2 Duo E21X0 overclocked to 3GHz

~£50

Upgrade the rest at your leisure.

Spike · 27 Dec 2007 at 11:54

YeaI really do need to upgrade it all.

Thing is though, I'd have to upgrade mobo cpu and ram like you said. Then the graphics card as well. So it'll be quite a few hundred pounds, which I'm not likely to be able to afford for a long time yet, so it's a tough one to call.

I guess if I get some second hand parts from here it could be made more affordable.

In the meantime, failing that, is the 1950 pro the way to go?

badbob · 27 Dec 2007 at 11:59

No point upgrading your rig with a 1950, do you have a slower Athlon chip? If so it'll be CPU limited. And you really want a dual core CPU now, does your mb support them?

Emlyn_Dewar · 27 Dec 2007 at 12:28

Don't buy anything until you can afford it all at the same time, there's not much point upgrading to another AGP graphics when PCI-e cards are cheaper for much better cards.
There's also no point just getting an AGP mobo that takes dual core CPU's, it's not going to allow you to bump the resolution up.
You really need 2gb memory now to play high resolutions with good detail.

Spike · 27 Dec 2007 at 12:48

Yea I guess it's best to do it all in one go, I'll wait.

My policy has always been, upgrade the cpu when it's affordable to go twice as fast. So when I can afford to get the equivalent of a 6gig system then I'll upgrade (when that'll be I don't know!).