Sub £500 Upgrade - Am I getting it all wrong?

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17 Jan 2006
Posts
69
Hello,

As the title suggests I have a budget of roughly £500 to spend on a little upgrade. I mostly play BF2 and X3 and I notice them slowing down with the detail cranked up so I guess its time to beef my system up!

Current Setup:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ S939
Asus A8V-Deluxe
1Gb Corsair PC3200 DDR TwinX
Nvidia 6800GT AGP
2 x 74Gb Raptors in Raid 0

So to begin with I will definately have to change the Mobo as its basically a bit broken, with only half the SATA ports working and a PCI slot dead etc etc. It doesnt allow me to overclock to any degree and it only has AGP... so basically has to go!

So my first option for upgrade is as follows:

Keep exisiting CPU and Overclock
Keep exisiting RAM
*New* Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra = £64.57
*New* Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB = £149.17
Total cost = £213.74

I also thought about using the HIS ATI Radeon X1900 XT ICEQ 3 512Mb Graphics card but from reading the forums it seems it is overkill as I only use 1280x1024 resolution. Is this correct?

Second option is to delve into DDR2 and AM2:

*New* AMD 3800+ AM2 CPU = £81.02
*New* Asus M2N-E (Socket AM2) = £70.44
*New* Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C5 TwinX = £152.69
*New* Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB = £149.17
Total Cost = £453.32

Or thirdly something completely different suggested by the wise folk of these forums... I guess Conroe is gonna go over the £500 mark?

Anyway please rip my spec to shreds and tell me im stupid, but remember to suggest an improvement!

Cheers :)
 
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MB-061-GI Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
£89.95 £89.95
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£126.95 £126.95
MY-058-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB6400UDC) (MY-058-GL)
£129.95 £129.95
CP-126-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - Retail (CP-126-IN)
£115.95 £115.95
Subtotal £462.80
VAT £80.99
Total £543.79

Slightly over the £500 mark, but you could only get 1GB of ram and bring it in budget. Bear in mind that you could always add some more when you can afford it. Also i went with a retail cpu to keep it as cheap as poss. In the future you could add a better heatsink and really overclock the e6300 to unlock its full potential.
 
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I assume my power supply would be sufficient?

I have a Tagan TG480-U22 480W ATX2.01 2Force SLi Compliant Silent PSU (CA-004-TG)

I understand the newer graphics cards are a little power hungry now!!
 
So the next question being....

Would

GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC) (MY-034-GL) £111.57

Make more sense than

GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC6400 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX21GB6400UDC) (MY-057-GL)

Larger capacity but lower speed?
 
Most helpful!

I hadn't even thought about overclocking and how the RAM affects it!

Hmm what else can I ask you now? you seem to be an Oracle of information! :p

Thanks very muchly
 
Well im sure i've read somewhere that BF2 really really likes 2Gb RAM so the system pretty much has to have that much. I will probably want to dabble with overclocking so I will go with the spec you suggested.

£40 over budget isn't a massive amount (it just means my better half will be getting a slightly less expensive ring this weekend!) This upgrade is my engagement present to myself. :D
 
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Your right with BF2, it is ok at very low settings with minimal apps (use to have a 64 3200+ and 9800 Pro with only 1GB and it was ok) but anything respectable for a modern gaming system hammers the RAM in that game.
 
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