PC Upgrade, help me out...

[Nubbins]

Hello overclockers!

Im due my company bonus a week on monday and I have been pointed this way by my house mate to ask for advice!

I need to buy a new mobo, cpu and gfx card plus possibly another 1gig of ram to take me up to 2gig.

My budget is £500-£600 but id like to keep it down as much as possible. Basically I have a TFT so I dont play in anything above 1280x1024. I want to be able to run WoW at full detail and full view distance perfectly and the game I really want to be able to play this year is Quake Wars do any upgrade must be able to play this flawlessly (this will hopefully replace my CS addiction). I also want to be able to play BF2 at full detail (thus the extra gig which Im told is essential plus its supposed to make a massive difference to WoW).

What should I buy, Im basically ready to order so what is going to guarantee me gaming pleasure for my favourite games?

Cheers

 

[fenderbass86]

I'm thinking:

An Asus M'board
AMD 3700+ San Diego CPU
Nvidia 7800GT graphic card
1GB GeiL Value RAM
Hiper 580W modular PSU

It should do exactly what you need it to. Comes to just under £575.

 

[Nubbins]

I have a Antec 480W PSU in my Sonata II case, would I be better dropping the Hiper PSU and getting a X2 3800 for the dual core, or am i better going for the pure power of the single core?

Is the GT definatley enough for WoW and Doom 3/Quake Wards (apprently if you can run Doom 3 well Quake Wars will be fine)...

 

[BigDom]

IMO a better option, the XL is reputed to be nicely and easilly overclockable.
580W PSU is way overkill btw. WOW will be fine on utterly max settings as honestly the graphics are low quality. Doom3 etc. it'll run well but can't guarantee max settings as your talking a much more leading edge game.

GX-042-HT HIS Excalibur ATI Radeon X1800 XL 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-042-HT)
£189.95 £189.95
CA-007-TG Tagan TG430-U15 430W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU (CA-007-TG)
£46.95 £46.95
MY-046-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL)
£109.95 £109.95
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR)
£14.95 £14.95
MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS)
£69.95 £69.95
Subtotal £431.75
Shipping (City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)) £8.95
VAT £77.13
Total £517.83

 

[Nubbins]

The 1800XL is a definate possibility, but there is no CPU in your price up abov.

Do i definately need to upgrade from the Antec PSU I already have?

Just out of interest are all 7800GTs the same, there is quite a difference in the price of some of them, I know most ATI cards are all the same, is this the same for the Nvidia ones?

 

[BigDom]

ooops silly me - lol

Difficult to get a CPU in budget too :/ have to be a Venice 3200. I went for 2gig ram as it's best to have it all in 2 simms for Dual Channel best performace.