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budget upgrade

nWovance

nWovance

nWovance

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Joined
26 Jan 2010
Posts
158
Location
ESSEX
Brother wants to upgrade his graphics card so he can play games like metro 2033, mafia 2, ect.. ect...

His specs are as follows:
Q6600 @stock (can oc to 3ghz)
2gb of unbranded ram (lol)
Inno3D-8800GT 512mb
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his motherboard doesn't have crossfire option, what upgrades do you suggest for a guy on a budget. I advised him to wait till mid december, for the new radeons to force venders to lower there prices on older models like gtx 470s.

Just a thought, thanks in advance.:p
 
Metro and Mafia might be hard to max out on a budget, they're quite demanding.

I'd normally say to just pop in better GPU and 2GB of RAM but considering current prices of DDR2 and the fact that he can only OC this to 3ghz only I'd stronlgy consider moving over to cheap AM3 setup, this shouldn't cost too much after selling his current parts and along with decent GPU ( 6870/470 ) will give you a very good gaming setup ( around as good as the one in your sig ).

Q6600 still can be sold for around 70quid.
Good 775 mobo is around 30-50.
2GB of DDR2 is around 25.

That's total of 130-150.
Add few quid extra and at around 170-200 you can get something along those lines:
Athlon II / Phenom II unlock confirmed to Deneb based Phenom II x4 ( 955/965 c3 ) = 50-60GBP.

Decent AM3 motherboard = ¬40-50.

4GB of good DDR3 = 50GBP.

That's 150 total, add ¬20-30 extra for a nice quiet cooler and at around 170 ( 20-50extra ) you've got 4GB of fast DDR3, well featured mobo and Phenom II X4 OCed to 3.7-4ghz.

Then just put in a decent GPU like 6850/6870/470 (maybe 560 by that time or 6950 / 570 if prices drop and budget will allow ) and you have a very strong rig for around 200quid total cost.
 
I forgot to mention his only running a 720p samsung monitor (my old one :D), and his more then happy with it, so does he still need to do a complete upgrade?.
 
Firstly I'd say pick up matched pair of 4Gb RAM and flog that 2Gb.

Secondly for 720p screen a 1GB GTX 460 (assuming cost of RAM deducted from your £200 budget) if buying today.

If he can hold out until med December then the GTX 470 prices should come down a little and pick up a reference design on or even better the MSI or Gigabyte with good cooling! Should be good for a couple of years to come.
 
At this res, 460 768mb @ around 120 will be best choice.
1GB version is waste of money at it's current price and at that res it's totally pointless.
If you're going to spend 150+, get 6850 or 6870.

On the other hand I wouldn't be spending too much on the GPU alone at this res, would rather spend the cash on full rebuild like in my first post, that would give you much better result that just buying 200GBP GPU alone.

3GHZ quad is still good but it's just on the edge of slowing stuff down, I'd say around 3.4GHZ is the sweet spot now.
 
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