Best upgrade for games performance....

StevieP · 6 Mar 2007 at 15:50

I am currently running the setup in my sig, but some games are struggling!!

My question is, waht is the best bang for buck upgrade I can make without swapping my mobo?
My hard drive is ooolllldddd and seems to be chugging and I can always hear it working away so I'm wondering if a brand new SATA2 HD would help? (I know my mobo only supports SATA1 but might upgrade to a SATA2 compatible mobo sometime in the future)
Other than that, I'm assuming a new CPU is gonna be the way to go? Anyone know what my current mobo will support up to, and what the best value chip is at the moment??

Any advice will be appreciated, I want to do this on as little a budget as humanly possible!

Steviep

Burly · 6 Mar 2007 at 15:56

It seems the CPU is behind. I don't think a new hard drive will noticeably improve performance, but they are cheap and its always good having more hard drive space.

See if you can get a second-hand AMD64 chip (dual-core 3800+ min)

Will_3rd · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:03

A new HDD would do little to help, I doubt it using all the bandwidth that the SATA bus provides.

Your best bet as the above suggests would a dual core CPU.

StevieP · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:12

AMD Athlon 3800+ Dual Core Processor

Product Description AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2 GHz processor
Product Type Processor
Processor Type AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual-Core
64-bit Computing Yes
Processor Socket Socket 939
Processor Qty 1
Clock Speed 2 GHz
Manufacturing Process 90 nm
Cache Memory L2 1 MB ( 2 x 512 KB )
Features HyperTransport technology, AMD64 technology, integrated memory controller, Enhanced Virus Protection
Compatible Slots 1 x processor - Socket 939

I've seen this processor - am I right in thinking it is compatible with my mobo??

melbourne720 · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:17

I think the motherboard you have might be Socket 754, rather than Socket 939. So you might be out of luck there (but I am far from an authority of Athlon 64s)

Will_3rd · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:17

It might be compatible, I'm not 100% sure though

StevieP · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:19

melbourne720 said:
I think the motherboard you have might be Socket 754, rather than Socket 939. So you might be out of luck there (but I am far from an authority of Athlon 64s)

Definitely a 939!

Will_3rd · 6 Mar 2007 at 16:19

K8N Neo2 Platinum supports 939 according to the MSI website and works with the X2 after some quick googling.

steve258 · 6 Mar 2007 at 17:01

If you have had the mobo for a long time then it's almost certain that you will need to upgrade the BIOS first before it will take X2s.

The rest of your rig seems pretty powerful so a CPU upgrade should improve the performance quite a bit, I'd try to look for a second hand X2 4400+ or Opty 165 / 170 from MM or online auction.

But before you get a new CPU try to overclock your current chip and see how far it can go, if you can get 2.5 / 2.6 Ghz out of it then you probably won't need a new CPU.

StevieP · 6 Mar 2007 at 19:00

I've never dabbled with overclocking, where would I start? I've read somewhere that the A64 chips are difficult to overclock? (although I do have a massive Freezer 64 cooling it so I'm assuming I should be able to do something with it!)

Any tips on this before I go spending my hard earned money?

StevieP

ps. how much should I expect to pay for an X2 3800 for example?