Best £100 upgrade

bigbadish

bigbadish

bigbadish

Associate
Joined
2 Mar 2004
Posts
706
Location
Shropshire
Hey!

Have a £100 to change something on my current unit and was after some advice as to what component would give me the best boost to performance.

The rig consists of:

Mobo - ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
CPU - MD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
Gfx - ATI Radeon x1950 Pro PCI-E
Ram - 2gig Corsair DDR 3200 400mhz
PSU - 550w

I know it's an old system, but as I can't afford to blow £600 on a new machine I'd like to either get a component that the others bits will fit in to, and then get others bits and pieces as time goes by. Or get 1 component that will increase the performance and keep me going for a while, until I can get a new build.

Thanks.
 
If you play games then a 5770 or 4890 or something along them lines, or get 4gb ddr2 ram @ 800mhz? or even a intell ssd?
 
O my bad it ddr, I'm half alseep lol.. If you have sata II then maybe a ssd for your os and few apps.
 
Buy a radeon 4870 graphics card for £100 and watch your machine fly! This card is so much faster than the one you are running it will make a big difference.

More RAM would cost too much and make not much difference - assuming you have XP or Vista. Your processor shouldn't be too bad either as it is dual core. Your bottleneck is almost certainly your graphics card so change it.

Good luck.
 
For that money has to be a new GPU. Get a 5770, which will last you a bit with Directx11. You can always crossfire it then in the future if you need more power.
 
If you game, then a second hand 4870 would make an enormous difference. if you don't game much, then an SSD will make the OS and all your apps that much faster.
 
If you upgraded the motherboard in all likely hood you'd have to change the CPU and the Ram as well as current generation motherboards will have a different socket sizes for the CPU or memory. So if you only have £100 to play with then the graphics card is the better route now, then save up for a CPU, Mobo and Ram for later on
 
does everyone on here hate nvidia no one ever recommends them what about two 8800gts 512mb better then a 4890 which is better then a 5770 and cheap about 40pound each card
 
That's very like my system, I was wondering the other day what the best route was and came to the conclusion it was better to save my money for a bit, then grab a new processor, motherboard and memory for a few hundred quid.
 
EpicCarnage said:
does everyone on here hate nvidia no one ever recommends them what about two 8800gts 512mb better then a 4890 which is better then a 5770 and cheap about 40pound each card
Click to expand...

No i don't think everyone here hates Nvidia, I think its more to do with ATI providing more value for money and having inventory which at the moment Nvidia does not.
 
Cold Fusion said:
No i don't think everyone here hates Nvidia, I think its more to do with ATI providing more value for money and having inventory which at the moment Nvidia does not.
Click to expand...

i think currently if you go sli on 8800gts 512mb thats is by far the best value for money considering he has a sli mobo i thought this was the best value therefore better then ati
 
bigbadish said:
Hey!

Have a £100 to change something on my current unit and was after some advice as to what component would give me the best boost to performance.

The rig consists of:

Mobo - ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
CPU - MD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+
Gfx - ATI Radeon x1950 Pro PCI-E
Ram - 2gig Corsair DDR 3200 400mhz
PSU - 550w

I know it's an old system, but as I can't afford to blow £600 on a new machine I'd like to either get a component that the others bits will fit in to, and then get others bits and pieces as time goes by. Or get 1 component that will increase the performance and keep me going for a while, until I can get a new build.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

What res is your monitor capable of displaying? SLi on less than 1680*1050 prob isn't worth it as the lower you go the more your CPU becomes the bottleneck and not the GPU.

Also not sure on what the power consumption of two 8800GTS is, im sure its more than a single 5770 plus you have the addition of extra heat to deal with. Not to mention your somewhat more future proofed going the Ati way here, as its DX11 and im sure when you eventually upgrade the rest of your rig Crossfiring them is a good possibility which by then the 5770 would be even cheaper. You can get a Sapphire 5770 for £120 here at OCUK

Matt
 
EpicCarnage said:
does everyone on here hate nvidia no one ever recommends them what about two 8800gts 512mb better then a 4890 which is better then a 5770 and cheap about 40pound each card
Click to expand...
EpicCarnage said:
i think currently if you go sli on 8800gts 512mb thats is by far the best value for money considering he has a sli mobo i thought this was the best value therefore better then ati
Click to expand...
Plus he'd probably need a new PSU to cope with the dual cards.

My advice would be to go with a 4870 or a 5770 if you can stretch the budget.

Performance would be vastly increased and you wouldn't need to upgrade the PSU.

gt

P.S: What screen do you use by the way?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom