Time to upgrade an old tired PC!

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1 Aug 2005
Posts
477
Hello again

My system specs haven’t changed in a while (see sig.) and I have a couple of hundred quid to upgrade a few bits. The processor is probably the bottleneck at the moment, but if I change that I will need to change the mobo and memory too, which could get expensive. A friend of mine has offered me his Opteron 146, Gskill Memory (2gb) and Ultra-D mobo for about £200, but I was wondering if this is the best way to go, considering dual core and quad core technologies on the horizon… the main thing I want to do is to be able to play Crysis when (if?) it comes out, but getting decent performance from Stalker now would be good too.

Thanks for any help, and sorry for the same old ‘what’s my best upgrade’ thread!
 
About the only thing worth getting in that deal would be the Opty, the ram won't be much of an improvement, and the board would be better but wouldnt see a massive boost unless you did some overclocking imo.

Nice try by your mate though.... ;)
 
t31os said:
About the only thing worth getting in that deal would be the Opty, the ram won't be much of an improvement, and the board would be better but wouldnt see a massive boost unless you did some overclocking imo.

Nice try by your mate though.... ;)

The Opty wouldn't work in my mobo though would it? I thought I'd need to change the lot at the same time?

Or is going for a Core 2 Duo a better bet? Can I do that for about £200?

Sorry for the noob questions....

Thanks
 
Sell your stuff for £200, put the £200 you've not given to your mate for his old kit, then buy a core 2 duo system.

This is probably what your friend is planning to do anyway :)
 
benlanky said:
The Opty wouldn't work in my mobo though would it? I thought I'd need to change the lot at the same time?

Or is going for a Core 2 Duo a better bet? Can I do that for about £200?

Sorry for the noob questions....

Thanks

Yes i know all i was saying was the only thing worth upgrading to in that deal would be the opty, and even then unless you give in a decent overclock the increase in performance wouldnt be worth it.

I'm with telescopi on this one... ;)
 
Do you think I could get £200 for my stuff? Sounds a bit optimistic, but that would be a result!

What entry level core 2 duo system to aim for then?

Not worth going for a bargain AMD X2?

Thanks
 
Thats why i love the MM, we actually get good deals, not over the odds prices.

I can't believe what people pay for some things on the auction sites, usually more then the new price to... :rolleyes:
 
So how about:

Intel Core 2 DUO E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £94.99
(£111.61) £94.99
(£111.61)
Asus P5B (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 NCQ 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (0A32728) £29.99
(£35.24) £29.99
(£35.24)
Sub Total : £194.97
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.25
Vat : £35.56
Total : £238.78

I'll need memory too, but have no idea what works! Realised I may need a decent HD for gaming too, as mine is ancient and full!

Thanks
 
The cpu isn't the fastest but will overclock very nicely, being 800 fsb means it's not only cheaper but has a much higher multiplier, this means you won't have to ramp up the FSB so high to achieve a certain overclock and you can run slower memory too.

I'd suggest you double check this, but if it's 800 (200 in reality) fsb at 1.8GHz thats a 9x multiplier, to get 3GHz out of it you'll need 333 fsb, easy enough on most boards I reckon.

Looking at memory you may as well get 6400 as you save nothing going slower, 6400 is 800 MHz which is really 200 (I think), so you'll need a divider of 3/5 or a board that can fix ram and fsb seperately.

You'll want 2GB of ram and a good heatsink (think at least an arctic cooling pro) and at some point an 8800 GTS to make use of all that cpu power.
 
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