Hi guys.
I'm planning an upgrade in a month or two. I'll have about £300 to spend, but want an idea of whether to budget any more and what to expect for my money.
I'm currently running an Athlon XP Mobile at 3200 speeds, with 1GB of RAM and a Geforce 6800LE unlocked to be roughly equivalent to a 6800. I'd like to upgrade to current generation tech on a relatively low budget with scope for upgrading again in the near to mid future. I'm not looking for massive performance increases, but obviously a boost to framerate and some AA and AF wouldn't hurt.
My preference is to go AMD, mainly due to familiarity and price. For this reason I'd figure my best option is to for an AM2 board and get a decent but low end CPU, perhaps an Athlon 64 or an absolutely bottom end X2. If I want, I can upgrade later, as AM2 should stick around for a while. Does that sound about right?
Graphics wise, I'm pretty keen to stick with nVidia, as I dual boot linux and don't fancy my chances with getting an ATI card working. The 7600s look like a good bet, given my price range.
On top of the motherboard, CPU and graphics I'll want a gig of RAM, minimum. I guess all AM2 boards are DDR2, right?
I guess I'd just like to know that this is broadly feasible on the given budget, and that I'll get some improvement in performance. If anyone can provide me an example setup, that'd be very helpful.
Oh yeah, my PSU is a pretty cheap came-with-the-case job, and my hard drives are old and crappy, so if there's any money left over for a new PSU or SATA hard disk, that wouldn't hurt.
Cheers for any help you can offer.
I'm planning an upgrade in a month or two. I'll have about £300 to spend, but want an idea of whether to budget any more and what to expect for my money.
I'm currently running an Athlon XP Mobile at 3200 speeds, with 1GB of RAM and a Geforce 6800LE unlocked to be roughly equivalent to a 6800. I'd like to upgrade to current generation tech on a relatively low budget with scope for upgrading again in the near to mid future. I'm not looking for massive performance increases, but obviously a boost to framerate and some AA and AF wouldn't hurt.
My preference is to go AMD, mainly due to familiarity and price. For this reason I'd figure my best option is to for an AM2 board and get a decent but low end CPU, perhaps an Athlon 64 or an absolutely bottom end X2. If I want, I can upgrade later, as AM2 should stick around for a while. Does that sound about right?
Graphics wise, I'm pretty keen to stick with nVidia, as I dual boot linux and don't fancy my chances with getting an ATI card working. The 7600s look like a good bet, given my price range.
On top of the motherboard, CPU and graphics I'll want a gig of RAM, minimum. I guess all AM2 boards are DDR2, right?
I guess I'd just like to know that this is broadly feasible on the given budget, and that I'll get some improvement in performance. If anyone can provide me an example setup, that'd be very helpful.
Oh yeah, my PSU is a pretty cheap came-with-the-case job, and my hard drives are old and crappy, so if there's any money left over for a new PSU or SATA hard disk, that wouldn't hurt.
Cheers for any help you can offer.
