Final Spec advice

vern190374

vern190374

vern190374

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Joined
30 Mar 2007
Posts
14
Hi all. I hope you guys can give me some advice. My machine is beginning to look a little long in the tooth now and I would like to upgrade it to give performance a boost. Haven't been on the boards for quite a while and in my absence it seems that Intel is now the new AMD! Totally confused over their processor range hence seeking advice if this the way to go over AMD.

The pc is mostly used for general web surfing etc including running a lot of web based Java apps. I occasionaly play online games such as COD2 and would like to give COD4 a spin.

My budget is £200- £300 and as a starter I am thinking of new mobo, processor and memory if this would give a decent performance boost over my current setup. Poss a new graphics card as well.. possibly 8800GT? The only real requirement is to have a reasonable upgrade path for later in the year, ie maybe a better processor. Am willing to do some basic overclocking to get better performance. A tall order I suspect!

My current spec is as follows:

AMD 3700+ San Diago core - overclocked
ASUS ASN 8 SLI SE motherboard
1GB Geil value ram
XFX 7800 GT graphics card
Pioneer DVD
Lian Li AO5B case
Tagan PSU (500w - I think)
Samsung 500gb SATA drive
Running Windows XP

Thanks!
 
Update

I have found the spec thread and have come up with the following:

OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2 (OCZ2G8004GK) 31.99 (37.59)

Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail 49.99 (58.74)

Asus P5QL Pro Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard 61.99 (72.84)

Gainward ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail 94.99 (111.61)

Total: 280.78

So this the best bet bang for bucks for my money before ordering or can I possibly save some cash ie cheaper mobo or only using 2gb ram?

Any advice appreciated as I am hoping to order and have built by the end of the week.

Thanks in advance.
 
A further thought...

I will be running XP 32bit so is there any point in 4gig? I understand from reading round the net that it's fairly contentious if this version of XP can actually use more than 2.5gig although the official line is 4?
 
you will not get the full 4gb. xp 32 has a 4 gig memory addressing however you must subtract graphics memory as well as any other memory usage you have. so your proberbly have 3 - 3.5gb of ram to use with your current choice of graphics card
 
For the price of the ram you may aswell get 4GB, you will probably see around 3.25GB in windows, besides you might upgrade your OS eventually :P
 
True. It's hardly a saving on the bill in reality to go down to 2gig with the current offers.

And the rest of the kit is ok, I mean compatible no major issues etc? The only prob I can see with the ASUS board is the location of the power connectors, bearing in mindmy Power supply is front mounted in the Lian Li.
 
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Ok so my final build. Hopefully this makes sense:

Gone for the ASUS board fromreviews, overclocking potential and to form the basis for system. Hopefully will be in a position to upgrade processor at later date to quad. Also the power connector is in the correct place as my Lian Li AOB5 has the PSU mounted at the bottom front of the case. It seems that the cheaper ASUS boards are now locating it in the middle of the board towards the back plate for some reason. Did think of going for Abit IP43 Intel P43as but seems very little info about this board on the web and I have heard rumours Abit are going to the wire so possibly limited support in the furture.

Memory - running XP so don't think will get full advantage of 4 gig at this time. Fairly cheap upgrade if move to Vista in future.

CPU - Cheap bang for bucks processor to overclock.

Heatsink - To faciliate said overclocking.

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Going to wait for the graphics card as having nothing that will take advantage yet but like the look of the HIS x4850 Ice Q turbo as it will exhaust hot air out of the meshed PCI slots. Maybe it will be on offer this week? (hint!)

If anyone can offer any better advice for £200 then please say... will be ordering later today!
 
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I see you've opted to leave your current gfx card. A wise choice, if you don't intend to game much as the XFX 7800 (pci express I assume) is more than adequate for COD4. I would upt the memory to 4GB if budget permits though as I have 4GB and only use 32 bit Win xp. It gives me 3.25GB memory to play with, which is a good amount to have and also gives me a good amount to use with Vista 64-bit, when I decide to upgrade to a dual-boot setup.
 
I had read somewhere that using 4 gig in a 32bit environment actually slowed the system down.... though how true this is I don't know. Yes budget could run to the OCZ 4gb offer. I guess I should really be looking at Vista 64bit sometime soon so does make sense.
 
Thanks for the heads up.

This has thrown up a panic as the board is the bit I have spent so long deciding on. Maybe will have to go for Abit after all.

But isn't it only the Deluxe model of the Asus board it won't fit? If the images are correct there seems to be more heatsink obstacles around the Deluxe version than the pro?

Is anyone using the pro board and the arctic? If so do you have to start customising to get it to fit?

Thanks in advance.
 
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