Budget PC upgrade time

Lysander

Lysander

Lysander

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Yes, the time has come to upgrade my system from paltry P4 to Core Duo. However, I'm not really looking to spend a lot of money so I won't be upgrading things like the RAM or the PSU.

Here are my present specs

Coolermaster Praetorian 730 case
P4 2.8 Ghz
Gigabyte GA 81PE-1000 Pro mobo
1 GB RAM PC2700
400 W Antec PSU
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro [still a good card for what it can do]
2 x 80 GB IDE Hard drives
2 x DVD drives

As I said, a lot of things will stay the same, but the new PC will probably look like this:

Coolermaster Praetorian 730 case
Core Duo Conroe 2.4 Ghz
Gigabyte GA 965P DS3 Mobo
1 GB RAM PC2700 [I don't know if 2GB is entirely necessary??]
400 W Antec PSU
Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro 256mb
2 x 160 GB SATA Hard drives
2 x DVD drives

So what do you think? This upgrade shouldn't cost me more than £600. Is there anything that could or should be improved?
 
if you game a lot, and multitask as well as video editing, and photochopping then 2g is required...a lot of the top games, i.e.s FEAR, BF, Splintercell run well on at least 1.4g

I would also go for pc6400 ram...

re the gpu 1950.....please note i do not think its really worth you spending that much of a gfx card atm....dx10 will be out in a few months so sit back and wait then get a card which will last you longer then the 1950 will.....usually it wouldnt matter but with new tech around the corner its better to sit n wait....thats just my opinion...

i would consider getting a 500w psu also esp if overclocking as you dont want to find the 400w is not sufficient power...
 
No, he's upgrading to a Core 2 Duo. You will definately need new DDR2 RAM unless you go for the AsRock board which supports DDR1 but then you can't overclock much.
So your choices are : sell the old RAM & put the money towards new or do as above.
 
In that case I could save on the graphics card and buy RAM instead.

I need to upgrade the RAM at some point soon anyway. I am using RAM taken out of an old Dell machine :p . I see the GeIL 2GB DDR2 RAM is PC5300 so that might be worth it, and it's quite cheap.
 
It may be worth it to invest in a good DDR2 800 kit. The Geil 2Gb PC6400 4/4/4/12 is on this week only for under £170, it's a good price considering how much DDR2 ram cost these days.

If you don't game much then a 7600GT or maybe a 7900GS will do just fine.
 
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steve258 said:
If you don't game much then a 7600GT or maybe a 7900GS will do just fine.
Click to expand...

But it's eeeeeeevil nVidia [there's pointless brand loyalty for you].

The Sapphire X1600 Pro 256MB has SM3 support and is cheaper...
 
Lysander said:
But it's eeeeeeevil nVidia [there's pointless brand loyalty for you].
Click to expand...

LOL obviously the Sapphire 1950pro you put in the first post is the best bang for the buck choice atm (cheaper than what i paid for the 1800XT 256Mb just a little under 2 months ago!! :mad: ).

Only reason I suggested 7600GT / 7900GS is because I can't think of any decent mid-range ATi card except from the half-decent 1800GTO.
 
I've got a new but unused X800 GTO 512 MB sitting around somewhere but I went back to the 9800 Pro because the X800 was too bloody noisy. The fan rattled like Mo Mowlam's teeth when [edit] - driving a tractor.

Sorry for that image.
 
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Right, after much thought I've decided on the final line-up. This is based on the fact that I wanted - ideally - to spend under £500 on upgrading but still wanted a decent PC for the year ahead. It is -

Coolermaster Praetorian 730 case
Core 2 Duo E6400
Gigabyte GA 965P S3 mobo
2 GB RAM PC5300
400 W Antec PSU
Creative X-Fi
Sapphire Radeon X1950Pro 256mb
2 x 160 GB SATA Hard drives
2 x DVD drives

The parts I will have upgraded will be the CPU, RAM, mobo and graphics card.

I don't play games that often but I still want to be able to run Prey and NFS Carbon at 1280 x 1024 at min 2 x AA. Think this'll be enough?
 
Is the extra money for the E6400 really worth it? You'll be able to overclock the E6300 pretty much as far as you could get the 6400 anyway. essentially you're paying for the 8X mp instead of 7X. Apart from that the chips are identical.
 
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