Spec check on £500 upgrade please

broona · 15 Jan 2007 at 18:10

My mate's dad's looking to upgrade his old Athlon XP 2500 with Radeon 9600Pro graphics to something a little more powerful, and he's looking to spend £500 maximum.
He's going to need CPU, GPU, motherboard, memory, and possibly a PSU too, as he's not sure of the wattage (or anything!) of his current one.
I was looking at something along the following lines, any comments much appreciated :-

1337z0r · 15 Jan 2007 at 18:20

That will be a good system for anyone you can play games ect on it plus you can overclock it

. Would suggest adding a Arctic cooler into the mix aswell.

masslac · 15 Jan 2007 at 18:21

FSP sparkle would do the job for £15 less http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-004-SK . I'm sure they'll be back in stock in a few days.

Also this card is nicer - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-065-HT

The rest looks great.

Edit: Typos

Firegod · 15 Jan 2007 at 18:28

Looks good, like suggested, I'd go with the HIS card.

broona · 15 Jan 2007 at 18:41

masslac said:
FSP sparkle would do the job for £15 less http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-004-SK . I'm sure they'll be back in stock in a few days.

How about the 450w version of the OCZ, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-016-OC&tool=3, £10 cheaper and in stock too?

masslac · 15 Jan 2007 at 18:46

broona said:
How about the 450w version of the OCZ, http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-016-OC&tool=3, £10 cheaper and in stock too?

Yup, that'll do very nicely.

Cairnsey · 15 Jan 2007 at 18:48

Ok, please don't beast me but....

ASRock 775Dual-VSTA and a E4300 Chip. This way It'll Cost you only £150ish (no need for new RAM - plus anadtech showed there was little to be gained by using ddr2 over ddr1) and you can o/c the CPU quite a lot. then you have extra to spend on the GPU, maybe a 8800? and a new psu

What do you think? would this be daft?

:confused:

...prepares for rapin' by clenching fists and gritting teeth...... :eek:

broona · 15 Jan 2007 at 19:11

Would it be worth the extra £20 for the 512mb version of the HIS card? Or possibly pay the same price for the 512mb OCUK 7900GS? Think the X1950's the better card, but always worth asking!

masslac · 15 Jan 2007 at 19:20

X1950 Pro >>> 7900GS. Also, you will only really benefit from more graphics memory at quite high resolutions.

The 256MB ATI card really is more than fine.

furnace · 15 Jan 2007 at 20:04

masslac said:
you will only really benefit from more graphics memory at quite high resolutions

a lot of people say that, but surely if you wanna have higher resolution textures you need 512mb... Even if you're on 1024 x 768, you'd still notice the difference in texture resolution if you walk right up to a poster in-game, for example :confused:

I'm pretty sure it's gonna make things better in a lot of games - like Doom 3 on its Ultra settings - even if you aren't on a particularly massive resolution?

I think some benchmarks are in order here! Doom 3 on Ultra, 256mb vs 512mb, and 1024x768 screenshots to compare the two