Spec me an upgrade on a low budget.

Chives

Chives

Chives

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2009
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Location
Wales
Hi,
I have £150 to spend and in addition to the spec in my sig I have a 400w Corsair PSU and a Gigabyte m61pme-s2p motherboard.
What is the best thing to upgrade at this price?
Thanks in advance. :)
 
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HD 5770 is all I can suggest for that price range upgrade tbh. Not massively faster than the GTS 250 but it means you'll have DX11 support and most HD 5770 cards overclock nicely.

(if you can't stretch slightly over £100 for that card then you might need to look at getting one 2nd hand).
 
An SSD is meant to be a great addition to any PC, as conventional mechanical hard drives are (in my opinion) the main thing bottle-necking PC development these days.

This Intel X25 is therefore what I would recommend. Installing your OS onto this, as well as commonly used programs such as your internet browser, while using your SATA hard drive as your main storage for music, videos, games etc, would give your PC a dramatic increase in speed and performance.
 
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Ko0lHaNDLuKe said:
An SSD is meant to be a great addition to any PC, as conventional mechanical hard drives are (in my opinion) the main thing bottle-necking PC development these days.

This Intel X25 is therefore what I would recommend. Installing your OS onto this, as well as commonly used programs such as your internet browser, while using your SATA hard drive as your main storage for music, videos, games etc, would give your PC a dramatic increase in speed and performance.
Click to expand...

Say if you hardcore one or two games such as for me COD4/WoW, what are the performance increases like for loading etc?
 
mikeyp123 said:
Say if you hardcore one or two games such as for me COD4/WoW, what are the performance increases like for loading etc?
Click to expand...

AnAndTech actually tested the X25 against other rival SSDs and conventional hard drives. As you can see, the load time in Crysis (as you probably know, a very demanding game) is remarkable improved:

SSD.jpg


Comparing the X25 against the Seagate 7200 RPM, it's more than 20 seconds faster loading...

SOURCE: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2614/14
 
See if you can pickup a second hand HD4890, tend to go around £100.... I think might be a bit tight power wise with the 400W PSU but should *just* get away with it I think...
 
Running a 4890 on a 400W Corsair is probably fine, might be a bit tight if you decide to run Prime 95 and Furmark at the same time though with the CPU overclocked. :p
 
£100 won't see an upgrade for graphic card, as that's only enough to side-step from a GTS250 to a 5750.

If you must absolutely spend the money, I agress with Ko0lHaNDLuKe about getting a SSD.

If you still want to upgrade graphic card instead, then you'd best to save up at least £100-£130 extra for getting a 5850...but then it would be a waste on a Athlon II X2 at stock speed...
 
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I'd get a SSD for a system drive personally. Not really an upgrade, but makes your computer feels so much more responsive. Even with a cheap one (Corsair Reactor, Intel 40GB), you'll see a marked improvement.

Or save the money. You won't get far with 100 given what you have already.
 
If you can track down a used 4890 for about £100 and then sell your GTS250 for £70 that would be a nice upgrade for very little money.
 
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