best upgrade for £200 to improve game FPS

wesley

wesley

wesley

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Joined
29 Jul 2003
Posts
7,687
hi guys

my current spec is :

E4300 @2.8ghz
asrock 4CoreDual-SATA2 R2 motherboard
Geil 2GB DDR2 ram (2 X 1GB)
Leadtek 6800GT 256mb
antec 900 case
antec 380W PSU (from antec sonata 1)
LG 19" monitor (1280x1024)

i would like to improve game FPS as most games i play get low FPS like trackmania nation forever, farcry 2, half-life 2 ep1 and ep2 etc

i believe only 2 things needs to be upgraded are PSU and GFX.

ht5sgi.jpg


what do you think guys?

cheers
 
that looks like best upgrade for you at the moment, but be aware that your CPU will now be a big bottleneck for that graphics card. So consider a new CPU sometime in the future
 
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yeah you're right i'm little worried the cpu might be bottleneck the FPS but how much % bottleneck?

=on&prod[2111]=on]Tom's Hardware - Benchmark World in Conflict v1.05 grrr i cant get the permalink for compare chart. if you click 9800gtx+ and 6800GT then click compare button

compare the FPS between 9800GTX+ and my old rusty 6800GT. the difference is MASSIVE! but doesnt say which CPU they used for test
 
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you will see a massive increase in FPS, but the 9800GTX will still be bottlenecked somewhat by the CPU. Not by a huge amount though, probably only 20 - 30% performance being bottlenecked.

Edit: just noticed your motherboard only has PCI-E x4 slot. So that will also hinder the performance of the 9800GTX
 
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well i will buy a better PSU later on in the future, i got £200 spare in my pocket so might as well buy the new PSU now?
 
randal24 said:
I'd look at something like the OcUK value 9800GT with a view to clocking it, it's just a shade over a £100 and would give you more options with regards to more memory or even a new board that supports PCIe x16 and possibly more overclocking headroom for your CPU.
Click to expand...

This sounds like the best bet, with your mobo only being at 4x (it's not APG is it?)
 
yeah, maybe the 8800GT is a better option, then you can maybe look at getting a better motherboard and CPU
 
I built my son a new rig for christmas with a 350w Silverstone PSU and that's been happily powering a BFG 8800GT and a E6600 with all the usual gubbins and he's had it on since christmas day. I honestly think you will be perfectly fine with your PSU.

If it were me i would sell the Geil 2GB DDR2 ram (2 X 1GB), Leadtek 6800GT 256mb and E4300 @2.8ghz You should get about £80 giving you £280

Then buy the following

Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB) - £40
Gainward GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB - £135
Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 LGA775 'Wolfdale' 2.66GHz - £98 or a 2nd Hand Q6600

You could also get the cheaper 9800GT as suggested and buy a Gigabyte GA-31-MS2L motherboard for around £35 quid else where.

I'm with you on sticking with Nvidia but you may get some who say a 4850 is a better buy. either way i wouldn't worry about your PSU and Antec make good units.
 
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I'm with Pumaz except I would drop the 4gb and stick with your 2mb and put the money towards an E8400, the Asrock board you have is ok at overclocking for a budget board but not fantastic, so the extra cache and mhz at stock would be welcome.
4 x PCI-E isn't going to make huge differences to things, maybe with top end cards with masses of ram and huge displays you could possibly lose 10% or so, but with a normal 22" display it's not noticeable.
The £103.00 9800gt would be fine for your purposes too, the GTX is 30% dearer but no where near 30% faster and the GT would still give you an up to 400% increase in the framerate over your old 6800gt

A quick look at Toms VGA charts Q3 2008 shows the following
Call of Duty 4
1680x1050
everything maxed out

9800GTX, 78.9 FPS
8800GT (same as 9800GT) 70.1 FPS
6800GT 9.4 FPS

Which kind of tells you the sort of improvements you are going to get lol.
 
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I would try and get that cpu to at least 3.0~3.2ghz.

Then i would definetley want a new psu, gfx and Mobo.

Note the the gfx card is from the clearance section.

Capture-8.jpg
 
You could also go this route

2nd hand - 8800GT = £60
2nd hand - Q6600 = £100
New 4GB Memory = £40
New Mobo = £40

Just raise the extra buy selling off your parts but i still say you don't need a new PSU
 
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