Good setup for 1600x900 gaming?

Gamefreak501

Gamefreak501

Gamefreak501

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Hey everyone,

I'm looking at the following upgrades:

AMD Phenom II X3 720 £99.99
Asus M4A79XTD Evo £89.99
Geil Value 4GB DDR3 GV34GB1333C7DC £88.99

To replace my aging 3800+ X2/M2N-SLI/2GB DDR2 setup.

I have a 8800GT that this lot will go with, but is there anything wrong with my upgrades, I'm going to be buying next month as money is a bit tight this month and wanted to try to stick within a tight budget of £300-£400.

Kind Regards,

David
 
You will also need to include a decent PSU if you don't have one already.

If you don't need Crossfire you can get a cheaper motherboard. If you don't overclock then I would look at getting an even cheaper motherboard.
 
Hi,
It's good, except you can get 1600MHz ram for that much, but the differences aren't that big and you can overclock it anyway
 
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Oh of course - the PSU - I have a 600W Stealthstream at the moment.

I'm wondering if a cheaper Motherboard might be AAC enabled, so I can try unlocking the 4th core.

Cheers for the help,

David
 
Should be good enough for gaming at 1600x900 yeah. I'd say the cpu/mobo may be somewhat more powerful than your 8800gt after the upgrade so you could consider selling it and putting the money towards a shiny new gpu as your next upgrade.
 
just ordered exactly the same stuff except i got g.skill ripjaw 1600mhz RAM, going to wack a 5770 in there maybe a 5850 if i can convince the lady in my life lol
 
Thank you for the help again all - I may go up to 1600mhz stuff when I do this - would something like a GTX 260/275/285 pair well with those upgrades?
 
Get a Radeon 5850 instead - much better than any of those cards. It runs cooler, quieter, faster, more efficiently, overclocks better and supports DX11. Also it's much better value!

And why would you want a Crossfire board if you're only interested in Nvidia GPUs? :confused:
 
Cheers for the reply PCM2,

I mainly picked that board for the potential of unlocking the 4th core on the Phenom CPU - that was my only deciding factor.

The main reason I have shyed away from NVIDIA GPUs (until about now, judging by the price!) is my one and only ATI card - a 9600XT artifacted all the time; even though it wasn't overclocked ever in it's life - so I got rid of it and went to NVIDIA.
 
I had an old Radeon X1800XT that did the same... My next upgrade was a BFG 8800GT OC2, which I really loved and it had served me well for a few years. I have replaced that relatively recently with an XFX 5850, however, and since my last ATI card was such a troublesome one I did have some nagging doubts. I have been running it (mildy overclocked) without a single hiccup for 4 months now and I have not regretted the purchase for a minute :). It was really easy to fit in my relatively small Antec 300 case, it makes very little noise, runs cool even when overclocked and is very fast indeed! Love it.
 
Agree with the above, if you're thinking of going for something around the gtx 285 price range then go for the HD 5850, if you'd rather keep the budget lower then the 5770 is still a very nice card.
 
Cheers for the reply PCM2 and Redmint,

I'm going to take a long look at benchmarks and prices over the next few weeks and see what I'm going for.

I'm struggling to run Bioshock 2 without periodic jumps - it's playable, some of the time but it's probably the lack of memory and CPU power really as the 8800 GTS I have is plenty fast for everything else.

I have an old Lian Li PC60 (so old, it doesn't have a top blowhole!) with no front USBs as they failed in my ownership and it's been my work horse for so many years - I bought it from the MM here, way back in 2004 I think! It's a bit beaten up but it's nice and spacious and has done me well :)
 
What speed is your CPU at? I'm on what is essentially an identical setup - subbing the 3800+ for a 6000+ and 8800 for a 9800GT - and so far I'm yet to find a game that makes it struggle @ 1440x900 (apart from Crysis obviously). A quick solution to boost some performance would be to ramp up the CPU clocks.

If you're set on upgrading, however, you should be able to get a quadcore within that budget, AMD I'm pretty certain anyway, i5 route not so sure.

With regards to a graphics upgrade, a 5770 would be a nice upgrade from your current GPU, but if you think you can afford it, a 5850 would be perfect, however slightly overkill for the res you play at.
 
bJN said:
What speed is your CPU at? I'm on what is essentially an identical setup - subbing the 3800+ for a 6000+ and 8800 for a 9800GT
Click to expand...
:confused: I thought the 8800 and the 9800 had pretty much the same performance, unless you went for one of the super overclocked 9800s. I guess the CPU upgrade would have helped a fair bit though considering the stock speed of the 3800+.
 
Redmint said:
:confused: I thought the 8800 and the 9800 had pretty much the same performance, unless you went for one of the super overclocked 9800s. I guess the CPU upgrade would have helped a fair bit though considering the stock speed of the 3800+.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm saying, he has an 8800 (GTS?) and I have a 9800GT - near enough identical cards, yet I'm having no issues with mine which led me to believe that his problems lie elsewhere in the system, namely the CPU :)
 
Oh sorry, misread the post, thought you meant you had an 8800 and changed to 9800 (which would obviously be silly). :p
 
Hey everyone,

I think the CPU is the weakest link in my system - it's running at stock 3800+ levels, and I could probably squeeze out some mhz really. My lack of memory (only have 2GB) is probably a bit of a factor as well.

I haven't really changed much with the config I'm buying, but I am thinking of adding Windows 7 OEM 64 bit as well, so I can use all of my 4GB of memory.

Kind Regards,

David
 
I've just had some brilliant news - the Socket AM3 Phenom IIs will work in my AM2+ M2N-SLI Deluxe and I will only need to flash the BIOS - so I am tempted to spend the spare cash on a Phenom II quad core instead and 2x2GB of DDR2.

How does this lot look:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition: £135.99
Kingston Hyper X DDR2 6400 2x2GB: £77.98
Windows 7 64 Bit OEM: £116.99

Total: £330.97

Although there is a question mark against the memory I've picked, because it's not listed as compatible on the Asus web site.

A work colleague may be selling me a GTX 260 on the cheap, otherwise I will go for one of the ATIs by the looks of it!

Any help greatly appreciated,

David
 
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Dunno where you got that price for Win 7 from but OCuk have the full retail version for £89.99 inc VAT. Seems a lot to be spending on DDR2 800MHz RAM now... maybe see if you can pick some up in the MM for cheaper if you want to stick with your current mobo?
 
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