How to upgrade this system for £350

fish99

fish99

fish99

Soldato
Joined
19 May 2005
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Doncaster
Right, let's start with my current system-

Asus P4C800 board (Skt 478, ddr400, AGP)
P4 3.2 Prescott Skt 478
X800 XT 256 mb AGP
1.5 GB Twinmos DDR400 (2*256 dual channel, 2*512 dual channel)
Enermax 475W PSU etc...

And I'm looking for faster gaming performance, which means going PCI-Express since there's nothing significantly faster than an X800 XT on AGP.

The options would seem to be -

1) A64 3800+ Skt 939 + board, use current ram and get X1800 XT - £295
2) A64 3800+ Skt AM2 + board, 2GB DDR2-667 and X1800 XT - £410
3) Core 2 Duo E6300 + board, 2GB DDR2-667 and X1800 XT - £480-500

The first option I could afford now. The problem it that it's a dead end, and my ram might not work with all four sticks at DDR400 in dual channel mode, so I could end up buying new ram anyway. The other options I'd need to save up a little longer. The AM2 option again is a little bit of a dead end. The problem with the Core 2 option is the price.

There are other options involving Asrock boards (775Dual-VSTA / 775Twins) which would let me go Core 2 on the cheap and use my current ram but sacrifice some performance. If Twinmos is as temperamental as people say though, it might not work in those boards and I'd be down to 1 GB until I replaced the ram with DDR2.

I just need some guidance finding the best path. Sorry for the long post, and all help is much appreciated :cool:
 
CP-135-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN)
£114.95 £114.95
HS-017-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 775) (HS-017-AR)
£14.95 £14.95
MB-061-GI Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
£94.95 £94.95
MY-012-GS G.Skill 2GB DDR2 LA PC2-5400 (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (F2-5400PHU2-2GBLA) (MY-012-GS)
£91.95 £91.95
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£136.95 £136.95
Subtotal £453.75
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95
VAT £80.98
Total £543.68


Thats what I'd do. Selling your current gear should help recoup some of the expense.

;)
 
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Yeah, that's almost exactly what I was looking at for my option 3.

I know that's the best option, just trying to figure out whether it's worth it. I mean the X1800 XT is going to be the bottleneck in all three options, so option 1 and 3 are going to be roughly the same speed for games. So all I'm getting for spending an extra £250 is better upgrade options in the future.
 
Nah, it's ATX v1.3. It's the noisetaker 475W.

Damn, more expense. Can't you get 20-24 pin converters - I see to remember some PSUs used to come with them.
 
Yeah just found them on ebay, 20-24 pin converters for a couple of quid. It's a very good PSU so I think it can handle the load.
 
Anyone know if that would/should work, just using a 20-24 pin converter with an ATX 1.3 PSU on an ATX 2.0 board? That's what the converters are for afterall.

Also any addtional comments on whether people think the Core 2 route is really worth the extra £250 when it's just for a gaming rig and so few games benefit from dual core?
 
no need for the converter, all you do is end up with 4 pins not connected.

trojan698 hit the nail bang on, thats what you should do.
 
Won't be overclocking no. The price of a PSU pushes it up to £600. I just can't see the point in spending twice as much for little if any extra performance. Mega-fast dual core CPU twiddling it's thumbs etc....

At least with the Skt 939 route I've moved over to PCI-Express so the next upgrade doesn't need to involve graphics card. The top A64s are very quick CPUs for gaming too so I would still have a gaming PC good enough to keep me going for a year.

Half the point of the upgrade is so my brother can have my old kit (which he desperately needs), and my parents can have his old kit (likewise), and so I can get an extra 10 fps in oblivion. That's all it's gonna take to make me happy :)

With the extra £300 I could get a new exhaust and stop my car choking me to death :D

Anyway, advice noted and I'll think about it. Cheers lads :)
 
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