Hypothetical upgrade

gee3000

gee3000

gee3000

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28 Jan 2007
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Just out of curiousity, if you had my system, what would you upgrade (if anything) to get things up to date?

At 3 budget ranges; £100, £200, £300.
 
Probably a new GFX card, you'd see by far the most benefit for your money if you spend on that.

Beyond that, the mobo may be weak, you could get one that could take your chip a bit further, though not much, assuming the motherboard is the limiting factor.

For gaming, the only upgrade necessary is a gfx card, though it'll also depend on what games you play.

At £100 quid, you're in 5770 territory. Could stretch to a 4890. GTX260 gets an honourable mention here too, though they are harder to get now.

At £200 you're almost at a 5850, and £300 obviously a 5870.

Hope that helps.

Could probably help more if you tell us what you use the system for.
 
Whats your screen? Often overlooked. As above the GPU dependant on your screen.

The first 20% your system drive contains your OS? that may be a free upgrade and maybe migrating it to your fastest lowest platter drive? I'm not familar with any of the drives.

Aprt from that your system is not bad at all; the GPU looks the most dated component.
 
I use a 24" monitor at 1920x1200 res. So far I've been able to play Modern Warfare 2 at full res with pretty decent graphics, currently playing GTA4 at max res with medium graphics. Don't really play anything very demanding at the moment but hoping to get some new games. I expected MW2, being fairly new, to make my system struggle, but it didn't at all.

I don't have a need to upgrade, just a geeky itch :D
 
Also @jms198 my system files take up 60GB out of the available 300GB, there's nothing else on the drive and I don't expect this volume to grow by much any time soon.

I'm hoping to make a few changes soon though -- Building a M-ITX HTPC with this dock + enclosure. Gonna stick a 500GB hdd into the enclosure, onto which I will save all of my documents + music (for easy portability when needed, and also for streaming over internet/lan when it's docked), and a couple of 1TB 3.5" drives for storage of larger media ie. movies and tv eps.

My main system (original post) will then require ONLY 1 drive for system storage - would a SSD be worth considering?
 
I would very much recommend an SSD as a system drive. Would normally say get a 64GB M225 drive, but seeing as you use around 60GB, you may be better off with a 128GB one which suddenly seems a lot more expensive, or an Intel 80GB drive would be a nice option too. For media and documents it would be a bit of a waste, but as a system/game drive you'll definately notice the system being a lot more responsive and 'snappy'

But yea, other than that I'd say upgrade the graphics. The CPU is great for gaming, had one for a good while myself and was very impressed with it. Alexhull's advice on what cards to look at is pretty good advice :)
 
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