Spec me a upgrade

neil3k · 11 May 2008 at 22:55

Hi Guys

After many years of faithful service my PC seems to be on it's last legs. Currently Running

Athlon 64 3000+ Socket Socket 754 ?
1 Gig of some ram
Motherboard
AGP Radeon X800 Pro.

Looking for a new cpu , mobo and another gig of ram ( want to reuse my old ram if poss) Now i know the new motherboards are PCI-E but is there a way to get my old AGP card to work in a PCI-E slot? I will also be needing a new case as well. So can someone spec me a build for around the £300 - £400 mark. Would like a copy of vista as well. Will not be wanting to play crysis all maxed out etc so something that can handle CoH Wow etc would be fine.

Thanks!

neoboy · 11 May 2008 at 23:07

No I'm afraid there's no way of making an AGP card work in PCI-E slot.

You might want to invest in one of these motherboards are they will let you use your current graphics card and RAM.

neil3k · 11 May 2008 at 23:44

neoboy said:
No I'm afraid there's no way of making an AGP card work in PCI-E slot.

You might want to invest in one of these motherboards are they will let you use your current graphics card and RAM.

please explain. In which case I might as well just get a new gpu I thought old ram would work in a new Mobo. Its ocuk corsair ddr

jak731 · 11 May 2008 at 23:56

your ram is ddr ram and 99% of modern mobos use ddr2 or ddr3 ram which for starters it is a different length physically, so will not even fit in.

how about something like this

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK Huntkey 550W PSU £34.99
(£41.11) £34.99
(£41.11)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2200 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.20GHz (800FSB) - Retail £44.99
(£52.86) £44.99
(£52.86)
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GV-RX385512H) £79.99
(£93.99) £79.99
(£93.99)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66I-01939) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Sub Total : £289.94
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £52.48
Total : £352.37

you need to pick a case

i put the psu into the spec as i dont know what psu you have, so remove it if you know your psu is up to the job of powering these parts.

change to 32bit vista if you dont want 64 bit.

if you know something bad about the 3850 i speced or think you can afford a better card go ahead and change it.

neil3k · 12 May 2008 at 07:20

currently have a qtec 550w psi

neil3k · 12 May 2008 at 14:52

What sort of graphics card is the 3850? Is that a budget model ?

ajbuk · 12 May 2008 at 15:00

Id personally go for NVIDIA over ATI, but I dunno ive had ATI graphics cards in the past and I havent been that impressed. They may have upped there game though since then.........

Grimley · 12 May 2008 at 16:27

neil3k said:
currently have a qtec 550w psi

Better ditch that if you are planning on a new PC, you are asking for trouble if you plan on using it, chances are it will explode & take your new system with it.
'Been there, done that'

neil3k · 12 May 2008 at 17:02

Are Athlon still preferred over Intel for gaming ?

neil3k · 12 May 2008 at 17:21

Just had a look at the Dell XPS range Is this good value for money?

Components
Intel® Processor Q6600 Quad Core™ 2.40GHz, 1066Mhz FSB, 8MB cache
Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium - English
1 Year Base Warranty
Display Not Included
3072MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM [2x1024/2x512]
500GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA/100 Hard Drive with 16MB DataBurst™ cache
512MB ATI® Radeon® 3870 Graphics card
DVD +/- RW Drive (read/write CD & DVD)
Dell™ Enhanced USB Multimedia Keyboard - UK/Irish (QWERTY)
Dell Optical Scroll Premium Mouse
Accessories
Integrated Sound Blaster® Audigy™ ADVANCED HD software
No Speakers (Speakers are required to hear audio from your system)
19-in-1 Bluetooth Media Card Reader
No Modem
Microsoft® Works 9 - English
Services & Software
No Accidental Damage Support
No Security/Anti-Virus Protection - English
Also Includes
XPS 420 English Documentation with UK/Irish Power Cord
D05X403
XPS Desktop Order - UK
1Yr XPS Premium Warranty Support - Priority Call In and Onsite Support
XPS 420 Resource DVD

£629

neoboy · 12 May 2008 at 18:57

You can do better if you shop around with separate components.

neil3k · 12 May 2008 at 21:50

Which Cpu set is better AMD or Intel ?

jak731 · 13 May 2008 at 15:37

intel is better at the moment

Dark_Angel · 13 May 2008 at 15:45

Intel are better at the moment, not as much as they were now AMD have released the Phenoms, but still AMD are trailing behind.

Intel realy have a few killer chips at the moment, the E2160 really in some ways (in my oppion) is / was the new celeron 500A, extemely cheap (around 40 pounds) and once you clock it to around 3GHZ will murder almost anything. Only things that require 4 CPU's like Supreme Commander and complex creative applicatios, such as video encoding, 3d rendering, that kind of thing really can cause it to stutter (and probably the upcoming Alan Wake, which apparenly will use up to one CPU core to render the physics alone).

The Q6600 is the chip I am using in my current home PC, and is amazing value for money. While it can be argued not everyone needs quad power, for those that do it feels amazing. I truly enjoy actually trying to make the CPU work - because it takes a *lot* to really make it grind to a halt. Even at the default speed of 2.4GHZ,and most will run in the low 3GHZ range easily, with a decent motherboard some people push them to the high end of 3GHZ, sometimes rarely even 4GHZ (usually on high end water though for that).

EdGey · 13 May 2008 at 17:03

jak731 said:
your ram is ddr ram and 99% of modern mobos use ddr2 or ddr3 ram which for starters it is a different length physically, so will not even fit in.

how about something like this

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
OcUK Huntkey 550W PSU £34.99
(£41.11) £34.99
(£41.11)
Intel Core 2 Duo E2200 "LGA775 Conroe" 2.20GHz (800FSB) - Retail £44.99
(£52.86) £44.99
(£52.86)
Gigabyte ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GV-RX385512H) £79.99
(£93.99) £79.99
(£93.99)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L Intel P31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 64-Bit - OEM (66I-01939) £59.99
(£70.49) £59.99
(£70.49)
Sub Total : £289.94
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £52.48
Total : £352.37

id do exactly that^

neil3k · 13 May 2008 at 21:16

Might Push to a 3870 and a Antec Sonata Piano Black

[KH]Shadow · 13 May 2008 at 21:18

+1 for Nvidia and Intel

jak731 · 13 May 2008 at 21:21

if you are going to be able to afford a 3870, get a 8800GT instead as the cheapest 8800GT http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-071-OK&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1008 is the same price as the cheapest 3870 http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-165-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=416 . the 8800GT is the more powerful card.

neil3k · 13 May 2008 at 21:44

Ok how does

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 G0 Stepping (2.4GHz 1066MHz) Socket 775 L2 8MB Cache (2x4MB (4MB per core pair) Retail Boxed Processor
ASUS P5K AiLifestyle Series iP35 Socket 775 eSATA 8channel Audio ATX Motherboard
Corsair 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 XMS2 Memory Non-ECC Unbuffered CL4(4-4-4-12) E.P.P.
Antec Sonata III Piano Black Quiet Mid Tower Case - With 500W EarthWatts PSU
Inno3D 8800GT 512MB DDR3 256bit Dual DVI HDTV Out PCI-E Graphics Card Maxtor 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm *32MB Cache* Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium -SP1-
Sound ok?