Spec me half a PC..

ginandmilk

ginandmilk

ginandmilk

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Joined
8 May 2008
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Location
Sunny Devon
I played Need For Speed Shift last night and it suddenly hit me how out of date my PC is. I was surprised that it actually runs alright, graphics up at medium, but the loading times are horrendous - 4ish minutes to get in to a race. But I suppose thats because I'm still using an old 32bit 4000+ and 2gb of RAM.

I'm so out of the loop with what hardware is best for what budget, any help would be much appreciated.

Budget of £400 max, ideally less. Won't be overclocking. Just looking for best possible gaming performance for the money. Ideally a motherboard with a decent-ish sound card, I do a bit of guitar recording through my current one.

I'll keep my case, graphics card, PSU, hard drives etc from my current machine.

So I'm looking for new:
- Motherboard
- CPU
- RAM
- OS? I suppose its time to move on from Windows XP.

Thanks in advance.
 
AMD

AMD Phenom II X4 Quad Core 955 Black Edition 3.20GHz (Socket AM3) - Retail £149.98 (£130.42)
Asus M4A79XTD Evo (Socket AM3) PCI-Express DDR3 Motherboard £84.99 (£73.90)
Patriot G Series AMD 4GB (2x2GB) PC3-10666 1333MHz Dual Channel (PGS34G1333LLKA) £70.99 (£61.73)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail £65.99 (£57.38)
Sub Total : £323.43
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £49.94
Total : £382.87

or

Intel

Intel Core i5 750 2.66Ghz (Lynnfield) (Socket LGA1156) - OEM + Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Game £139.99 (£121.73)
Asus P7P55D LE Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard £99.99 (£86.95)
G.Skill Ripjaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL) £66.99 (£58.25)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium - Retail £65.99 (£57.38)
Arctic Cooler Freezer 7 Pro Rev 2 CPU Cooler (Socket 939 / AM2 / AM2+ / 775 / 1156 / 1366) £19.99 (£17.38)
Sub Total : £341.69
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DPD Next Day Parcel
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £9.50
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £52.68
Total : £403.87


Intel build includes an aftermarket cooler as CPU is OEM rather than retail, though obviously if youre going to clock youll want an aftermarket cooler for the AMD too, what is your gfx card though? as that has most impact on gaming performance
 
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Thanks for the reply

Using an ATi 4850 512mb at the moment, upgraded that a year or so ago. But I'm not really in a position to shell out for a new card just yet.

Forgive my ignorance but is there much extra benefit in choosing the AMD board you've picked over one of the cheaper ASUS ones?

Cheers
 
The one I selected uses one of the best chipsets, 790, where as the cheaper ones use 770/785, the main difference being crossfire support, they all do it but 790 runs at full x16/x16, now with 4850s youre not gonna notice the difference between this and the x8/x8 the others offer, but if you get newer more powerful cards in xfire in the future you might, and the price difference isnt massive hence why I went for the better board
Edit: Oh and dont worry 4850 is fine, thought you might of had an equally old gfx card as rest of your system, an x-1900 for example, lol
 
Heh I was using a x1950 before that :P

I can't see myself using crossfire in the near or distant future. I'll just upgrade my card in 6 months or so for a new mid-range one. Is the better crossfire support the only benefit in taking the 790 chipset? If so I'll take a cheaper board for £70ish.. which would leave me £15-20 left in my budget.

Could any of the other components benefit much from another £20 thrown at them?

Thanks very much
 
not massively no, could get the 965 chip, not much different to the 955 though tbh, add in an aftermarket cooler though, something like the sunbeam core contact, even if youre not clocking your system will run quieter and cooler
Edit: actually could get better RAM, this stuff is bit faster, and I think the original stuff was out of stock actually
 
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