Need advice in upgrading a Dell 9200

[jnr]

I have a Dell Dimension 9200
Its CPU is a Intel core 2 6300 GHz and the PSU is 350W and I have a GeForce 8500GT card in, with one PCI Express16 slot. and OS is Window 7 and 4 GB of ram
Looking inside the express slot is facing away from the other slots
I play mostly MMO
What card can you recommend for this setup?

If I do replace the PSU with something around 600W What would you recommend for the same setup? and if I replace the PSU ill need to take out the mother board to remove the old SATA cables or just cut them of and leave there.
Any advice would be most grateful.

 

[Marine-RX179]

First thing to check is...is your E6300 the newer 2.80GHz one, or the older 1.86GHz one. Secondly check what brand and model is your current motherboard.

If your E6300 is the old 1.86GHz one, and has a low-end cheap as dirt motherboard that can't overclock, then may be you need to consider upgrading your system as well, not only the graphic card.

 

[Owenb]

Something like the ATi 5750 would have similar power consumption but I am not sure if you have a PCI-E connector.
If you go for a larger PSU make sure it will fit in- take a few measurements and compare it to the size of ~600 watt PSU. Also check how much room there is for a new card as many of the high end cards are 9-12 inchs long! Note that some cards take power from the PSU via a connector that will make the card another 3-4cm/1.5 inchs longer.

edit: RX179 makes a good point. From a quick search it seems likely that your CPU is the 1.86Ghz model. CPU's are more important that GPU's for a lot of MMO so even if you get a great GPU you will still get some slowdown when there is a lot going on.

 

[mame]

A GT240 would be a good upgrade. It requires no extra power connectors and is a quite a bit faster than your 8500gt. Got one in a PC with a 280w PSU and has been working fine for months. It works great with an Athlon 64 x2 2.6ghz which won't be much faster than what you have. I'd either do that or buy a new PC.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Just checked the E6300 that the Dell Dimension 9200 used is in fact the 1.86GHz Dual-core

Even cards like GTS250 or 5750 will get bottlenecked by it in any semi-demanding games. But the motherboard is a Intel 965 Chipset board, so it is possible to upgrading the CPU to a Q6600 (don't think 45nm CPUs would works on that board).

As for PSU, I doubt the 350W PSU that Dell use is up for it with any gaming graphic card that require additional external power (PCI-E power connector).

 

[jnr]

I do have the room for a long card and I think I could fit a double card into the slot.
The PSU 350W does have a 6pin power lead
After going on the Dell forum I can use the Q6600, trouble is new one are £200 and second hand around £50.
I may think of buying a new system or have one made up.
But thanks for all your advice

 

[Marine-RX179]

I do have the room for a long card and I think I could fit a double card into the slot.
The PSU 350W does have a 6pin power lead
After going on the Dell forum I can use the Q6600, trouble is new one are £200 and second hand around £50.
I may think of buying a new system or have one made up.
But thanks for all your advice

At where you stand, I think you got two options...
a) You could get a 2nd hand Q6600 (and from what I recalled the 965 Chipset board can overclock it to 3.0GHz, but no higher)
b) Upgrade your system if you can afford. i.e. a 4.0-4.40GHz overclocked i3 530 bundle for around £260~£300, or a Phenom II X4 955BE build for around £300~£340

As for PSU, while it does have a 6-pin PCI-E power connector, I would think the PSU that Dell use would be something cheap and poor quality, and the closer the power consumption get toward 300~350W, the worse the stability of the system gets (higher chances of getting BSOD or crashes).

 

[Owenb]

I do have the room for a long card and I think I could fit a double card into the slot.
The PSU 350W does have a 6pin power lead
After going on the Dell forum I can use the Q6600, trouble is new one are £200 and second hand around £50.
I may think of buying a new system or have one made up.
But thanks for all your advice

It doesn't have to be a quad core- most games only use 2 threads anyway. If the MMO is WoW then a dual core at 2.4Ghz will perform just as while as a Q6600.

 

[jnr]

Thank you for all the advice, played WOW but am more of a EQ2 and LOTRO person, so had word with wife and am thinking of buying a new PC what I got in mind is the Titan Onyx by OcUK
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?catid=&prodid=FS-025-OP
and go with a GTX 460 768M, this set up should for ok for awhile then ill have the option of changing the card or going Sli.

 

[Marine-RX179]

It doesn't have to be a quad core- most games only use 2 threads anyway. If the MMO is WoW then a dual core at 2.4Ghz will perform just as while as a Q6600.

I don't really see the point of moving from a dual-core to a slightly faster dual-core. I would recommend considering the E8000 CPUs besides the Q6600, if his board would support 45nm CPU...but it doesn't.

Thank you for all the advice, played WOW but am more of a EQ2 and LOTRO person, so had word with wife and am thinking of buying a new PC what I got in mind is the Titan Onyx by OcUK
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?catid=&prodid=FS-025-OP
and go with a GTX 460 768M, this set up should for ok for awhile then ill have the option of changing the card or going Sli.

Yea that system is solid, but if you are getting that, you should phone them and ask if the case has a rear fan. Because the case they use normally only comes with one fan for intake, and none for rear exhaust. If it doesn't come with a rear extaust fan, may be you can ask OcUK can they install the fan for you if you pay for the fan, or alternatively you can buy a 120mm fan together with the order of the system, and install the fan yourself.

 

[PhoenixUK]

Erm, I wouldn't spend 900quid on a rig right now when new CPUs and GPUs are just around the corner.

Especially for a user like you mainly playing MMOs, a 500quid setup will play your games just as fast as 900-1000 setup. Your current PC is not only old but it was never top of the range either so why would u want to overspend on something you not going to use this time.


----------

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £110.44
(£93.99) £110.44
(£93.99)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 XXX 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card ***OcUK Exclusive*** XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 XXX 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card ***OcUK Exclusive*** £91.64
(£77.99) £91.64
(£77.99)
Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £86.99
(£74.03) £86.99
(£74.03)
Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS34G1600LLK) Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS34G1600LLK) £70.49
(£59.99) £70.49
(£59.99)
Sapphire Pure 625W Modular Power Supply Sapphire Pure 625W Modular Power Supply £64.61
(£54.99) £64.61
(£54.99)
NZXT BETA Evo Classic Series Case - Black NZXT BETA Evo Classic Series Case - Black £35.99
(£30.63) £35.99
(£30.63)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1156/1366) Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1156/1366) £19.99
(£17.01) £19.99
(£17.01)
Samsung SH-S223L/RSMN 22x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail Samsung SH-S223L/RSMN 22x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail £12.98
(£11.05) £12.98
(£11.05)
Sub Total : £419.68
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £75.50
Total : £506.93


Would blow your mind anyways and you're saving urself over 400 here, that's a cost of new PC.

This will also allow you for cheap upgrades in the future, if you ever decide that you need more power u'll be able to easily slot x6 in there for pennies by that time and add 2nd card in CF as well for pennies if you ever need to.

Better keep ur cash for upgrades in the future than splash it out now and pray for the rig to last another 4-5yrs ( which it wont ).

 

[Marine-RX179]

Erm, I wouldn't spend 900quid on a rig right now when new CPUs and GPUs are just around the corner.

Especially for a user like you mainly playing MMOs, a 500quid setup will play your games just as fast as 900-1000 setup. Your current PC is not only old but it was never top of the range either so why would u want to overspend on something you not going to use this time.


----------

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition "125W Edition" 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £110.44
(£93.99) £110.44
(£93.99)
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 XXX 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card ***OcUK Exclusive*** XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 XXX 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card ***OcUK Exclusive*** £91.64
(£77.99) £91.64
(£77.99)
Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard Gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3 Motherboard £86.99
(£74.03) £86.99
(£74.03)
Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS34G1600LLK) Patriot Viper 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C7 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS34G1600LLK) £70.49
(£59.99) £70.49
(£59.99)
Sapphire Pure 625W Modular Power Supply Sapphire Pure 625W Modular Power Supply £64.61
(£54.99) £64.61
(£54.99)
NZXT BETA Evo Classic Series Case - Black NZXT BETA Evo Classic Series Case - Black £35.99
(£30.63) £35.99
(£30.63)
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1156/1366) Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/775/1156/1366) £19.99
(£17.01) £19.99
(£17.01)
Samsung SH-S223L/RSMN 22x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail Samsung SH-S223L/RSMN 22x DVD±RW SATA Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail £12.98
(£11.05) £12.98
(£11.05)
Sub Total : £419.68
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £11.75
VAT is being charged at 17.50% VAT : £75.50
Total : £506.93


Would blow your mind anyways and you're saving urself over 400 here, that's a cost of new PC.

This will also allow you for cheap upgrades in the future, if you ever decide that you need more power u'll be able to easily slot x6 in there for pennies by that time and add 2nd card in CF as well for pennies if you ever need to.

Better keep ur cash for upgrades in the future than splash it out now and pray for the rig to last another 4-5yrs ( which it wont ).

Erm...if you haven't noticed already, the OP seem to be someone who would rather buy pre-build system than building one himself.

If he doesn't care about Crossfire/SLI too much, then he should just get this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=FS-163-OE&groupid=43&catid=1444&subcat=

The i3 530 at 4.40GHz will be much faster than the Phenom II X4 955BE at 3.20GHz in the games he's playing, since they don't use more than two cores.

 

[PhoenixUK]

It won't be any faster.
Even if the game doesn't fully support quads it will be as smooth with the phenomII if not better than with the i3.

Either way, that i3 bundle looks overpriced, you can have x6 or nearly i5 for that price.

Considering that he knows already how to open PC and he knows which slot is the PCI-E I'm sure he'll be fine building himself .
If not, maybe he's got a friend that can help him.

@jnr - where are u based?

 

[Marine-RX179]

It won't be any faster.
Even if the game doesn't fully support quads it will be as smooth with the phenomII if not better than with the i3.

Em...is that your "opinion" or have you seen comparison results?
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/62
The i3 530 at 2.93GHz is faster than even the Phenom II X4 965BE at 3.40GHz at mmos that don't use more than two cores such as WOW. I don't know if you are a mmo person, but I play my fair share mmos, and I sometimes wish I had a dual-core that can overclock to 4.0GHz or above rather than a Q6600 at around 3.0GHz, as most mmos simply don't use the extra cores (some odd ones even use just one core!), and graphic card is hugely bottlenecked by the CPU in busy areas with frame rate drop like hell despite the GPU usage is only like 25%.

Pre-built system will always cost more than just buying components...otherwise, why do you think companies even bother wasting their time building them to sell at all?

If not getting a pre-built system, I think he should at least spend a little extra getting a overclocked bundle, considering he himself most likely won't be touching overclock.

Better graphic card and PSU, and with a HDD (which seems to be missing in the above AMD build )

 

[colzboppo]

If you are desperate for a real difference in gaming performance, like has been said, you will need to upgrade your CPU aswell as your GPU. I reccomend selling your 9200 on some bidding sites / to friends/colleagues and using the cash to put into a brand new system, thats what I did, much more future-proofed for upgrade paths now

 

[PhoenixUK]

The difference between 74 and 77 FPS is unnoticable at all ; ).
On both it will run as smooth, the quad should have better minimum frames.

Also most MMOs started using quads actually, it's only WoW that doesn't.
WoW also hates SMT that gives i3 it's main advantage.
Remember that even if the game doesn't fully use the extra cores, the OS and whatever
else you've got running in the background will, therefore taking load off that 2 other cores that run the game.

I havn't been playing WoW for ages but last time I've checked, AoC, WAR and LOTRO seen a huge fps increase going from dual to quad.

So, I wouldn't sacrifice going from quad to dual just for the sake of 3fps difference in one or two games on the market, will you ?
--------------
I've been a die hard dual core fan too but recently the price difference is sooo low that it's not even worth it anymore, it's not even worth going for 40quid athlonII dual core for web browsing because 10quid extra can get you 3rd core, and it helps.

i3 is good htpc CPU with low power usage and igpu but that's where it ends, if you want a gaming rig, spend the 50quid extra on i5. Or if you want to save money badly, grab x3 on cheap am3 board.

 

[jnr]

I have been using a pc for 15years now and I have built one or two in the that time around ten years ago, now days it’s just as easy to buy one pre made, can ask a friend to put one together after pricing up the parts used in the Titan Onyx but that not me.
Now day’s most ill do is change a card or memory, and I don’t overclock.
I do play MMO a lot and WOW is not a good example of a MMO for graphic, best graphic I seen in a MMO game was Vanguard.

I made a mistake when buying the Dell in not paying the extra and getting the best CPU I could at that time, lesson learned.
Have thought about a lower price set up to, but I was thinking the more of a i5 then a i3 and yes I know what ever I do it will be out of date next week.
If I buy a new up to date pc then its needs to be able to handle all types of game not just MMO and any thing else I may do as a hobby, and as I don’t overclock buying one all ready overclock would make sense, most I want to update in the future would be the graphic card, I can buy the basic set now and next year go all out and buy a good card knowing the machine I have can handle it.
But you all have give me something to think about.

 

[Marine-RX179]

The difference between 74 and 77 FPS is unnoticable at all ; ).
On both it will run as smooth, the quad should have better minimum frames.

Regarding higher minimum frame rate, that's baseless assumption. Take Crysis from bit-tech's review for example, the i3 530 and Phenom II X4 965BE at the same clock speed pretty deliver identical frame rate (both minimum and average) with a 5870. However the i3 530's frame rate start to get ahead when overclock to beyond 4.0GHz, when the Phenom II X4 965BE refused to go beyond 3.83GHz stable.

I got nothing against AMD Quad...and I do think they are great for their price. But if I was to use one, I certainly will not use one at stock speed. While OcUK does do overclocked bundle system for 955BE, it is only moderate overclocked from 3.20GHz to 3.60GHz, and is using a old 760 chipset board. I actually made a post to ask Naithwrath if OcUK would consider doing a higher overclocked 955BE bundle (i.e. 3.80GHz+) on a 8xx chipset board that got USB3.0/SATA 6Gbps port, but I think he missed the post and I never gotten a reply. Sure there's the X6, but besides encoding and other software that use all 6 cores which they are great for, it has been proven again and again that it simply offer no extra performance over the x4 for gaming.

When it comes to raw power, Phenom II X4 ain't exactly in the same league as the i5/i7 (they are more around the same league as the Core2Quad 9550/9650). So I think for mmos and games in general, either get the i3 530 4.40GHz overclocked system on a budget, or a i5/i7 4.0GHz overclocked system/bundle if he has no problem paying the extra.

jnr if you could wait, wait for couple more weeks for the launch of the ATI 6000 series card before ordering a system, and then see how it compare to Nvidia performance/price wise and then decide on which graphic card to get. I think CPU/system wise, a overclocked i5/i7 4.0GHz build is the best bet (since you already stated you won't be overclocking yourself), as mmo is arguably one of the most CPU intensive category of games (with lots and lots of people raiding together)...more so than most FPS games.

One thing to note is the the motherboardboard that OcUK use for the i5 overclocked bundle/builds don't support Crossfire/SLI, so if you want Crossfire/SLI, you would most likely need to go for i7 overclocked bundle/build.

 

[opethdisciple]

I personally would avoid a core i3.

As I understand it, core i3 is only dual core. Even if its overclcocked to 4ghz....

I would rather get a quad core, whether thats an AMD (if your budget conscious) or intel...

Games are more and more able to leverage the power of a quad core, so buying a dualcore, is not a good use of resources...

Just my two cents..

(I admin I havent read the whole thread!!)

 

[Marine-RX179]

I personally would avoid a core i3.

As I understand it, core i3 is only dual core. Even if its overclcocked to 4ghz....

I would rather get a quad core, whether thats an AMD (if your budget conscious) or intel...

Games are more and more able to leverage the power of a quad core, so buying a dualcore, is not a good use of resources...

Just my two cents..

(I admin I havent read the whole thread!!)

I don't disagree more and more games starting support the use of Quad, but as far as I know, any games that released prior to the release of Win7, they don't use more than two cores, and for those games a faster dual-core will deliver better frame rate than slower Quads.

But if with "future proof" in mind, the i5 Quad would be better pick over the Phenom II X4 for just little extra. Let's assume a stock speed Phenom II X4 955BE 3.20GHz is as fast as a i5 750 at stock speed 2.66GHz in terms of frame rate for gaming. A Phenom II X4 955BE 3.20GHz overclocked to 4.0GHz (25% overclock) is only around as fast as a i5 750 overclocked to around 3.33GHz (25% overclock)...so a 4.0GHz i5 (50% overclock) will last longer than the Phenom II X4 as a system goes for gaming.