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So £100 would give you how much more power than an old 3ghz P4?

Jumper said:
Or for less than £220

Motherboard £32.89
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-016-AK&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=808

Processor £43.46
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-200-AM&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=803

Ram £29.36
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-084-CR&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=144

Graphics £76.36
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-083-PC&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=416

Hard Drive £35.24
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-121-MD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=768

Total £217.21
Click to expand...

Again... If I was going to this trouble, I'd do it 'properly'...
1) I'd put Vista on.
2) I'd put a higher spec MB in to try and allow a longer upgrade path, and it would -sorry - be core duo...
3) I'd put a better/bigger HD in, not wishing to have to play around with it later...

As you can see from above, one of my two concerns, Mass Effect, I'll be able to run well with the Radeon 3850... And as Fallout 3 uses the Oblivion Engine, I'll assume with the 3850 I'll be able to easily run that as well (I ran Oblivion OK)?

So for £150 it appears I can almost certainly play all the games I'm concerned with well (Mass Effect, Fallout 3, HL2/TF2, Left 4 Dead)... I can then do a complete upgrade in 2009 (or 2010) if needs be :)
 
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NeilFawcett said:
Again... If I was going to this trouble, I'd do it 'properly'...
1) I'd put Vista on.
2) I'd put a higher spec MB in to try and allow a longer upgrade path, and it would -sorry - be core duo...
3) I'd put a better/bigger HD in, not wishing to have to play around with it later...

As you can see from above, one of my two concerns, Mass Effect, I'll be able to run well with the Radeon 3850... And as Fallout 3 uses the Oblivion Engine, I'll assume with the 3850 I'll be able to easily run that as well (I ran Oblivion OK)?

So for £150 it appears I can almost certainly play all the games I'm concerned with well (Mass Effect, Fallout 3, HL2/TF2, Left 4 Dead)... I can then do a complete upgrade in 2009 (or 2010) if needs be :)
Click to expand...

*slaps you around the head* Dont do step 1! :p You'll find yourself back at P4 speeds if you did... (OK so i dont like Vista)

Going off the mass effect spec my gut feeling is that your P4 will be fine running it with a 3850, it will definately limit the card in some situations... but seeing as you're not spending £250-300, so what?

Check the bottom end results here, with specs for the P4 530 and Athlon 64 3200, no big differences really...
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/chart...,1292,1289,1288,1317,1219,1277,1282,1310,1309

Yack at linky!! ^^^
 
matt_fsr said:
*slaps you around the head* Dont do step 1! :p You'll find yourself back at P4 speeds if you did... (OK so i dont like Vista)

Going off the mass effect spec my gut feeling is that your P4 will be fine running it with a 3850, it will definately limit the card in some situations... but seeing as you're not spending £250-300, so what?

Check the bottom end results here, with specs for the P4 530 and Athlon 64 3200, no big differences really...
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/chart...,1292,1289,1288,1317,1219,1277,1282,1310,1309

Yack at linky!! ^^^
Click to expand...

Thanks! All helpful :)

I'm fairly sure now the 3850 is the way for me to go at the moment to, (a) save spending the rest of the money I'd have to do to go PCIe (properly), (b) an easy life - uninstall my existing drivers, put in the new card, install the new drivers. Done!
 
I will admit, that at the moment my desktop PC is ageing very fast indeed, as I currently have a P4 3.2ghz, Geforce 7950 "Golden Sample" AGP (This was the fastest AGP card left at the time), 2GB ram.

So as you can tell I would love to upgrade my system, but as I have treated myself to a Laptop, and lots of added extras for it, I am a little short of cash to do the same again for my desktop machine.

I will have to admit, that upgrade on the 1st page for a total of £267.85 (ex shipping) did look very tempting as it is a very high spec for such a low cost, but then you have to install everything yourself, and as I have only recently got to installing a graphics card and the ram, it is a very daunting prospect to have to do so much work.
 
I was in the same situation a year ago (3ghz p4, agp fx5200) and wanted to play a few new games, at I first baught the fastest agp going (7600gt? Or something)

What a complete waste of money that was, totally CPU limited in games like supcom, slow and jerky (on low settings and res) in others.

You should do one of the following
1. Second hand 360
2. Complete system build (ideas above are good enough)
3. Just don't buy the lastest games until you eventually upgrade to save dissapointment. Gaming at 800x600? Dude... Just get a 360......
________
DISCUSS VAPORIZERS
 
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sarge78 said:
I was in the same situation a year ago (3ghz p4, agp fx5200) and wanted to play a few new games, at I first baught the fastest agp going (7600gt? Or something)

What a complete waste of money that was, totally CPU limited in games like supcom, slow and jerky (on low settings and res) in others.

You should do one of the following
1. Second hand 360
2. Complete system build (ideas above are good enough)
3. Just don't buy the lastest games until you eventually upgrade to save dissapointment. Gaming at 800x600? Dude... Just get a 360......
Click to expand...

I don't want to play Supreme Commander...

I only want to play (in the coming year(s)), Mass Effect, Left 4 Dead and maybe Fallout 3. So the question is black and white for me (not being much of a game at all). Spend £150 and play everything I do now (TF2 and HL2) beautifully, and the games I mentioned above adequately at worst, or spend £400-500 to do a 'proper' system upgrade (not worth doing a half-cocked one)...

If £150 gets me what I want for the next 1-2yrs, why spend £400-500? :)

Yes, you can do a system upgrade for £250-£300, but then in effect mean you're not taking advantage of the rebuild to jump much forwards as I'd personally want to. And you'd only have to spend money again sooner, and/or upgrade core stuff again sooner...
 
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I still think that the 3850 is a bit "too much".

Did you look into the X1950 at all? Its still in the reccomended specs for Mass effect and its a lot a cheaper.
 
I must admit, paying the £270 for something that is more powerful than my current PC is really embarassing, assuming that you have the HDD drives & the separate Sound Card to slide into the new system, which I do so its not really a problem.

The only thing is, when you start going into that kind of money, you really do feel like spending the extra money and just buying a pre-built system, as you normally get a good deal with those, as its guaranteed to work and you dont need to do any hard installing & putting everything together piece by piece and possibly buggering it up somewhere.

I might be wrong, but thats how I feel
 
£150 for a 3850 seems like a waste of money given that on PCIE you could get an 8800GTS 512 for that. But yes in your situation the alternative is actually spending more, so...

IMO you will be fine to play games with the 3850, games are mostly GPU-limited.
 
Trunks9486 said:
I still think that the 3850 is a bit "too much".

Did you look into the X1950 at all? Its still in the reccomended specs for Mass effect and its a lot a cheaper.
Click to expand...

I've recently stuffed an X1950 pro into an aged AGP system and everything in the games dept is much improved.

I was contemplating a £250 odd system upgrade but could not justify the extra outlay when other than for some games, my existing setup fits my needs perfectly.

So for £100 odd, the 1950Pro has really given me the required boost without breaking the bank.

If you have the extra funds handy then go for the upgrade, otherwise, don't think a 1950 / 3850 AGP will be wasted in your current rig, it won't, the point is for an extra £100 or so you could get so very much more for your money.

:)

A64 3000+
Gigabyte Nforce 3 AGP Mobo
2.5GB DDR400
HIS X1590Pro 512MB AGP.
 
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R124/LA420 said:
I've recently stuffed an X1950 pro into an aged AGP system and everything in the games dept is much improved.

I was contemplating a £250 odd system upgrade but could not justify the extra outlay when other than for some games, my existing setup fits my needs perfectly.

So for £100 odd, the 1950Pro has really given me the required boost without breaking the bank.

If you have the extra funds handy then go for the upgrade, otherwise, don't think a 1950 / 3850 AGP will be wasted in your current rig, it won't, the point is for an extra £100 or so you could get so very much more for your money.

:)

A64 3000+
Gigabyte Nforce 3 AGP Mobo
2.5GB DDR400
HIS X159Pro 512MB AGP.
Click to expand...
That's very useful! Thanks!


Sniper123 said:
His PSU in sig would have a heart attack with that lot;)
Click to expand...
I've got a (second-hand) OCZ 700W PSU ready! Like all 'silent' PSU's though it's a bit on the noisey side! (I'll probably change the fan in it like my previous Antec)
 
Can you get an AGP+PCI-E mobo?

I used to have an AMD one, it only cost £40 and took DDR+DDR2 and socket 939+AM2 with a riser card. If there's an Intel one, then you could get one + an 8800GT or something for £150.
 
To be honest, the best way if you still have a P4-based system, you might as well buy the best AGP card you can get hold of, then keep going until you get to the stage where the games you want to play dont work at a suitable speed and quality.

With my P4 system, I decided over a year ago to buy an AGP based card, a card that was in a limited batch of about 500, which was Gainward's 7950GS+ "Golden Sample", converted themselves from a PCI-e card and did a good job to make it an AGP card, expensive at the time but my system is still going well now, but will start to struggle a bit with the latest games that are released this year, but surprising how a graphics card can make you last for, which means more time to save for a better, more future-proof system the next time around!
 
R124/LA420 said:
What was its make / model number? I would like a dual AGP / PCi-e board but the 1x speeds have swayed me against so far...
Click to expand...

ASRock 939Dual-SATA2

Has 1 1x slot and 1 16x slot, I went from a 9600XT to an X1950XT on that board and games were sweet, as sweet as you could expect from a 1950XT of course.

Never used the AM2/DDR2 riser card, but there are benchmarks of it and from what I read, the performance was great. Suprises me, but then again, old CPUs used to come on cards...
 
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