Upgrade for older system

[famas]

Hey all

I gave my old computer to a friend.

He's a very occasional gamer but does like to jump in and play newer stuff with us from time to time.

He only ever uses the pc to play games the rest of the time he's on his laptop.

He's finding the pc is a bit slow with newer games and has to reduce the settings right down for them to be playable.

If possible he'd like a cheap upgrade that would see newer games run a bit more smoothly.

From what I can find the specs are roughly

Asus M4A785TD-V Evo AMD 785G
4GB G.Skill Ripjaw 1600MHz
AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 550 3.10GHz Black Edition
OCZ ModXStream Pro 500w
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 512MB
Asus Xonar DS 7.1 PCI Sound Card

I see you can get a phenom II x4 secondhand for around £50 or even a x6 for a bit more, is it worth upgrading the cpu as well as the graphics card, or is it better to put more money into the graphics card.
Unfortunately the x2 didn't unlock any more cores.

I'm not sure on his budget but lets say £100 as a absolute maximum.

What would you guys recommend?

cheers.

 

[ghost.florian]

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-058-KF&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1854

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-329-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1866

One of these if he wants new cards.
However, at 100 pounds, I would suggest he looks to a popular auction site. An AMD 7850 can be had for around 70 pounds, and that is a good card.

As for the CPU, it really depends which games he is playing. Some games are CPU limited, while most others are GPU limited. It's good looking at reviews of GPUs and see if in game tests the results scale well with better GPUs.
I would start with the GPU for a stronger impact, and wait a bit before forking out for another CPU.

 

[sastusbulbas]

I am in a similar situation to yourself, having a few old systems in the house that need brought up to date for the kids n such.

I planned on buying an SSD for each and Nvidia 750ti or ATI 270X.

A Kingston or similar 240gb SSD can be had for around £75, one of the above GPU's between £100 to £130, a 2nd hand card around £100.

My old PC's use a Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 1GB PCI-E Toxic Edition GPU and PowerColor SCS3 HD 5750 1GB PCI-E passive cooled GPU, not great by todays standards, but on med to low settings these GPU's still played many games at playable frame rates.

These are on single 1080p monitors. And the CPU's are Q9550, E8500, Pentium E6300, with 630w, 450w, 350w PSU's respectively.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Stick with what he's got unless he can upgrade CPU as well. The Phenom II X2 550 is already well balanced with the 5750 (would actually bottleneck it a bit as well depending on the game).

 

[famas]

Cheers for the help guys.

I'll keep a look out for a 7850.

If he did decide to upgrade the cpu as well would it be worth getting a x6, or better off getting a higher clocked x4?

Another friend has a 7990 SLI set up and said he could try one of his 7990 as he's thinking of upgrading but I think the x2 would massively bottleneck it?

 

[ghost.florian]

The 7990 will probably not run on the current PSU. And yes, the x2 will be a huge bottleneck

Between an x4 and x6, depends what your friend can afford. Usually higher clocks are better for games, however I don't believe he will see a difference.