How far to upgrade?

[krisboats]

Right i bought my pc in march 2005 with a spec of:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (754)
1GB kingston Ram (probably not dual channel as i just stuck the second stick in and had done with it)
160GB IDE drive with 8Mb buffer
Vanilla 6600 256Mb (sparkle - AGP)
17" TFT at 1280x1024

Right well i had the system for my 18th and never really intended it for gaming but i do enjoy playing on it rather a lot, though its not holding up in newer games. CS:S runs 1280x1024 full settings with 2x AA/AF at around 40-60 FPS but plays NFS:MW at 1280x1024 with low everything except car detail and reflections at an alright framerate.

I want to upgrade the system but would very much like to get the absolute most out of it before going full upgrade and going core 2 duo. If i just upgrade the graphics card what sort of thing should i be looking at and what sort of performance increase will i see?

I was looking at getting a geforce 7600gt (AGP) but i have just seen the Gainward goes like hell 7800gs 512Mb card and could manage to scrape together the extra for it.

Is there any point going this far with the graphics card or will it just be bottlenecked and be a waste of my money. I don't need full graphics options but playing my games full resolution with decent setting would be great.

I Just need some help with deciding really.
Cheers

 

[Tetras]

You can't get dual channel mode with a socket 754 CPU btw, it doesn't do dual channel.

A 7600 GT would be a pretty good upgrade, low power consumption (so unlikely to have PSU worries) and well suited to 1280 x 1024, you should notice a decent difference there. An X1950 Pro would be very nice too but it would definately be bottlenecked to some degree and you'd need another gig of RAM ideally for the kinda settings it is capable of.

So yes, 7600 GT makes sense as an upgrade to me, if you haven't considered it then perhaps see if you could get a cheap 754 PCI-E board too (they were only £40 - £50ish brand new) then you could happily go to town a bit more on the upgrade (like an X1950 Pro / 7900 GS or higher) since you could use it with the Core 2 Duo rig later and not be limited to a hybrid AGP/PCI-E board such as the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA.

 

[krisboats]

Forgot to mention my current PSU is a Colours-IT 550watt lump.

So something like one of these? Am i right in thinking this is a DFI lanparty board or is it a different company?

DFI PCI-E 754

Then put in something like an ATI x1950 pro or a cheapo 7950

It does make sense i guess, and leaves me with the optionality of SLI in the future. Although i'm not too confident on if i'd be able to re-fit all the components myself... mainly the CPU and heatsink. I really havn't a clue when it comes to building a PC. I know the components and where they go but not how to set them up and use advanced bios stuff.

Am i right in thinking i'll also need to re-install windows due to the new motherboard?

If i do end up going Core 2 would it just be easier to make a whole new system at a later date if this 7600gt can tide me over for another 6 months to a year? please bear in mind my current card is a measly 6600 that has a broken fan... resulting in my case having no side panel and a desk top fan placed next to it to keep it from dieing

 

[Tetras]

It is the same company but I think lanparty is a seperate branding for their "all out" boards but I don't really know much about them so don't take my word for it (it is definately the same company though).

That board doesn't have SLI either or did you mean saving the 7600 GT for a later build? If so I really don't think that is likely since DX10 cards are already out and you'll be able to get something better, cheaper (if your looking in the short term just get an X1950 Pro or 7900 GS instead rather than a 7600 GT for the SLI).

Assuming you'd like to do it all "proper" then replacing the heatsink & fan) is pretty easy, get a cleaner (Akasa TIM clean if you wanna be thorough), drop or two of that on the CPU and Heatsink, give it a wipe, then re-apply some paste (it is pretty cheap and a tube will last awhile, you need less than a grain of rice per) or if you want to take the opportunity for a new heatsink (perhaps one for C2D too) then it should already have it pre-applied.

What is the +12v rating on your PSU? (combined wattage and A) and is it ATX 2.x (24 pin ATX connector) and with a 6pin PCI-E for graphics cards?

Given what your using now I think you'd be pretty happy with an AGP 7600 GT but I suppose it depends how long you wanna keep it and if you'd like to transfer the buy over to the C2D system. May be you'd rather just get an AGP 7600 GT now to save the hassle then do a complete rebuild with a high end DX10 card when you have the cash in a year or whatever

 

[krisboats]

Given what your using now I think you'd be pretty happy with an AGP 7600 GT but I suppose it depends how long you wanna keep it and if you'd like to transfer the buy over to the C2D system. May be you'd rather just get an AGP 7600 GT now to save the hassle then do a complete rebuild with a high end DX10 card when you have the cash in a year or whatever

I reckon that sounds about the best option at the minute. I'm quite happy with my processor at the minute, it does the job. I would just like the graphics ability to be higher. I reckon that i'll only change to conroe now when vista's out, up and running, and has been relatively problem free for a couple of months... so probably in about a year.

I've seen benchmarks and things for this card and saw the results of someones 2800+ sempron, 512mb ram and the agp 7600gt and they had full settings at 1280x1024, and the same for mostwanted. Which is currently appauling on my rig.

Cheers for the help, looks like its going to be a 7600gt and another 512mb of kingston RAM to set me up for another year-year and a half.

Cheers for the help.