Help speeding up my brothers system!

[benjo]

Hi,

My brother is looking to upgrade his system soon to make games like FEAR run smoothly at 1600x1200 on high etc.

His current spec is:

AMD 3200xp Barton
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
1GB (512x2 in dual channel) Value stuff...
X800XT-PE
Soundblaster Audigy LS

He wants to keep the graphics card for a bit, and the soundcard is ok for now.

Need - Faster processor, Motherboard to support both AGP and PCI-E and around 2GB of memory.

Budget - £400-£450

Any price specs would b great.

thnx

 

[nyzrox]

Id recommend staying with a amd core, but the question is, socket 754 which is supposed to be out living 939, or go for 939, but i have not seen a board that supports both slots on a 939 board at the ocuk shop.

or do you wait a little longer for am2 and dx10 and move to pcie.

 

[benjo]

I've seen the ASRock Dual SATA which supports PCI-E and AGP, its 939.

Need a 939 processor, but I'm not sure what would be the best value for money?

OEM 3800 X2? Or a single core 64?

Also, I've seem some Crucial mem (2x1GB on the This week only section on OCUK).

Any ideas or thoughts?

 

[Explicit]

Personally, I would take dual core as it's more "future proof" and they overclock very well.

The Asrock Dual SATA2 is a good mobo and lets you keep your AGP card, as well as providing a PCI-E x16 slot for future upgrades.

RAM: stay away from Crucial Ballistix. GeIL Value ram is very good and fits your budget perfectly. OCZ Platinum is also excellent if you don't want value ram.

But has that X800 got enough power to play at 1600 x 1200? I don't think it can handle that, especially not FEAR with high settings.

 

[trojan698]

CP-121-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)
£126.95 £126.95
MY-057-OC OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC3200 Dual Channel Platinum Series EL-DDR CAS2 (OCZ4002048ELDCPE-K) (MY-057-OC)
£139.95 £139.95
Subtotal £266.90
VAT £46.71
Total £313.61


ASRock dual sata should only be ~£40.

Although, if I were him, I'd sell the X800 agp on the auction site and just go PCI-E, AGP cards still sell for a bit more than brand new PCI-E equivalents cost afaik.

 

[Energize]

An x800 wont play fear at 1600x1200 on high, Id be more inclined just to upgrade the gfx card and ram.