Upgrade advice

[Wol]

Hello ladies and gents,


Im after a bit of upgrade advice, Ive currently got an SB75G2 which is starting to struggle running some of the latest games im throwing at it. I'd like to upgrade cheaply, I cant really afford to buy a whole new system at the moment so want to upgrade the internals of this one....reasonable idea?


Current spec:
P4 2.4
1Gb (2 * 512) Geil DDR PC3200
128mb 9800Pro AIW

Think of:
2 * 1Gb PC3200 sticks (motherboard can only handle "2 x 184-Pin for Dual Channel PC1600 (DDR200), PC2100 (DDR266), PC2700 (DDR333) or PC3200 (DDR400)
unbuffered DDR SDRAM memory with 100 or 200MHz clock frequency up to 2GB capacity") - £40

3Ghz Northwood - (Socket 478 CPU support Intel Pentium 4 processor for socket 478 with 800, 533 and 400MHz FSB
(Pentium 4 with Northwood core are supported, Willamette and Prescott are not supported.) - £30

Total: £70 (assuming above is 2nd hand)

Not sure about the gfx card, think with the added upgrades elsewhere it should hold out for long enough....

I haven't done this malarkey since I bought the system originally so be kind on me!

 

[Tute]

I don't think you're going to be able to upgrade the processor much. Those Pentium 4 chips didn't scale very well at all, in all honesty you'd be better off overclocking what you have.

As for graphics, well i'd spend the whole £200 and get one of the 3850 Pro cards from ATi. It should help you get a bit more life out of the system.

If I was you though, i'd keep the money and keep saving, and re-do the whole lot. Why not sell it anyway? You could get a pretty reasonable C2D system with PCIe graphics for £200 plus the resale value of what you have.

 

[Wol]

Thanks for the info. Im quite happy buying the kit 2nd hand off here, and after a bit of searching have found stuff a lot cheaper than I thought.
I know what you mean, but Im not realistically going to be able to afford an upgrade until next year (big holiday, car going in for a remap sooner or later)....so the PCs at the bottom of the list. Hence the budget upgrade

 

[Steeps]

sb75 is a great shuttle, got 1.5 of them (one mobo died)

try and find a cheap northwood processor, as some sb75's were not prescott compatible, and they run like toasters. northwoods go all the way up to 3.4ghz but a 3gig should be cheap enough to source.

ram, yeah up to 2gb would be nice. Still only got 1gb in mine.

I'd look at changing the graphics card if you're not using the aiw features, had a x800xt in mine for sometime which wasn't bad, also had a 6800gt in a friends shuttle which was good.

could probably get either for £30, with your card being an aiw you could probably sell it on for similar.

processor and graphics i'd try and change first, then ram if there's any cash left over. Sticking with agp though can be costly in the end.

 

[Wol]

Thanks Steeps. Mines a non-prescott one, so Northwoods only. 3.4 would be nice!

Also thinking about a gfx upgrade to 256mb, quite like the AIW features so would like to keep them if possible. I dont really have any choice with the AGP side of things without upgrading though....or do i?