Bit of a conundrum

Holliday · 18 Jan 2012 at 10:57

Current 3-4 years old spec - Core2duo 1.6ghz, DS3 mobo, 8800 GTS 512mb, 4 gig DDR2 geil ram.

My GFX card has recently decided to die. So what better time to upgrade.

I wouldn't be as reluctant as I am to upgrade, but I have my car insurance/tax/service coming up in March so need to save some money.

My options are to buy a cheap pci-e gfx card to tide me over, upgrade pretty much completely keeping my case and psu, to get a premade system from OC, or get a laptop.

My primary uses if I'm honest, is web browsing, photoshop and running dual monitors for watching movies etc. I'm looking to spend no more than £400-500.

Any advice on what the best route would be?

Cheers!

lomez · 18 Jan 2012 at 11:07

If you were happy with your system as it was my advice would be to buy a cheap pci-e card.

After all bills are more important.

If you do decide to bite the bullet and get a new system 500 quid will get you a pretty decent one if you have a good sata hdd and psu already and of course a operating system.

Razargh · 18 Jan 2012 at 11:10

I would get a 6570 around £40, then upgrade when you have some spare cash.

honosuseri · 18 Jan 2012 at 13:21

What PSU do you currently have?

I would suggest just doing a GPU replacement initially. A 6850 is £100, the EVGA SOC 460 is £120. The later is a better card really, faster out the box than the 6850 and can be pushed further on the OC (850mhz is easily possible if not more!). It also has cuda which some software can exploit to help your aging system with extra processing power

Once your car is back on the road and you know what money you have, you could look at bringing the rest of the spec up to date. The cards i've suggested are budget gaming cards and I do realise you didn't state that in the rigs purpose, although the 460 cuda support is a nice lil addition. If you have zero interest in gaming at all, then you can always opt for a cheaper card to tide you over