Upgrade advice needed.

simon78

simon78

simon78

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Joined
6 Jan 2009
Posts
7
Looking to upgrade power supply and GPU. I Have about £140 to spend and very little knowledge.
I understand my choice of GPU is limited by my CPU, i.e. it could be a bottleneck.
Any advice would be appreciated.

Current system (3 years old)
compaq presario SR1839.
Microsoft windows XP (home edition 2002) SP 3.
Processor intel pentium D 930 ( D CPU 3.00ghz)
Mobo ASUStek( chipset i945P)
Graphics interface PCI-express.
Memory 3gb DDR2
HD 270gb
GPU Radeon x1300/x1550
Power output 300watts.

Thanks,
Simon
 
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Gaming and internet. Not after some super gaming computer, just want to upgrade abit. After looking at minimum specs for recent games ie Cod WaW and fallout 3 i realise my computer needs updating.
re: GPU was considering the Radeon x1950 series.
 
simon78 said:
Gaming and internet. Not after some super gaming computer, just want to upgrade abit. After looking at minimum specs for recent games ie Cod WaW and fallout 3 i realise my computer needs updating.
re: GPU was considering the Radeon x1950 series.
Click to expand...

It's probably more worthwhile to get a mid-range current series card like the 4670, which outperforms most if not all the x1950 series, as well as supporting DX10 and other modern features, and being smaller and quieter. Let's be honest: the x1*** series is over 2 years old now.
No comment on CPU limiting from me, I don't know enough about it to say whether you'll be better off upgrading CPU and mobo.
 
presonally i woudl save up more and jsut replace that pc, but if you must buy
Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU (CMPSU-450VXUK) £51.99
(£59.79) £51.99
(£59.79)
Gainward ATI Radeon HD 4650 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £49.99
(£57.49) £49.99
(£57.49)
Sub Total : £101.98
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL @ Home Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.49
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £15.30
Total : £117.28

you will be limited by your CPU

4650 blows the x1950series out of the water ,you can get the 4670 if you want.
 
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The above specs sound good and under budget. Very tempting especially as price includes next day delivery.
Regarding the limitation of my CPU i can always upgrade latter.
It is tempting to save up and build a new system. Just looking through this forum its appears you can build a pretty decent machine at low cost.
I'm not a heavy gamer (mainly battlegroundeurope which isn't demanding).

Thanks for the help,

simon
 
for a better upgrade (overbudget)

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Asus P5QL-E Intel P43 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £71.99
(£82.79) £71.99
(£82.79)
Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5200 "LGA775 Core 2" 2.50GHz (800FSB) - Retail £59.99
(£68.99) £59.99
(£68.99)
Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU (CMPSU-450VXUK) £51.99
(£59.79) £51.99
(£59.79)
Gainward ATI Radeon HD 4650 512MB DDR2 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail £49.99 (change to 4670 if you wish)
(£57.49) £49.99
(£57.49)
Sub Total : £233.96
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
DHL @ Home Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £8.99
VAT is being charged at 15% VAT : £35.09
Total : £269.05

reusing your
case if possible (needs to be atx compatible)
ram
HDD
 
When you say ATX compatible are you talking about the PSU? If so how do i find out if it (or any other PSU) is compatible?

Also i was looking on the radeon website and the 4650 series bus type is PCIe x16 Gen 2.0, my PCIe is Gen 1. Under system requirements it just states:

"PCI Express® based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard "

Will this mean that the GPU wont work or is this what people mean when they talk about bottle necking, i.e. the full potential of the card is not realised?

Thanks for your further upgrade suggestion, very, very tempting at £269.05 but not immediately necessary. What case would you suggest for the suggested upgrade?

Thanks
Simon

Just read "...pci-express 2.0 is backwards compatible with pci-e 1.1..."
 
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personally i like my full tower lian li cases (bit outside your current budget, i think) but the antec 300 is a popular choice or maybe the akasa zen if you want a very cheap but still well constructed case

4650/4670 should not bottleneck under pci-e 1, GTX series and 4800 may start to bottleneck under pci-e 1
 
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