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Upgrade Help

Nicfish

Nicfish

Nicfish

Associate
Joined
27 Oct 2005
Posts
180
Location
Brighton, UK
I have been wanting to upgrade my pc as my last upgrade was a year ago. Another reason for this is that my 6600GT is playing up a bit. I have a few choices to go through all with bad and good points. Can anyone give me some help? I am looking at the best performance for under £200.

Choice 1:
New AGP graphics card (7 series or similar)
Pro: Cheapest option unless i want something really good
Cons: Probably not the best performance and wont be long till it gets as dated as the 6600GT

Choice 2:
New 754 PCI-e mobo and graphics card (7 series or similar)
Pro: Good performance, Within budge range
Cons: May not be very future proof

Choice 3:
New 939 CPU PCI-e mobo and graphics card
Pro:Best performance
Cons: Bit more than i want to spend

I mainly use my pc for games and probly be alrite with just mobo and gfx upgrade but i was hoping for some opinions and best performance for as little as possible. I would like to be able to run games like crysis on average kind of settings.

Any input appreciated and any other options people can think of.
 
Tbh AGP is basically gone now. For gamers PCI-E is the way to go. Buy a PCI-E mobo and I'd suggest you buy a 7900 series card now, as when DX10 comes out the cards will be expensive and drivers not fully developed. Since your on a budget its the way to go. For these it will go over your £200 limit.
 
Just a thought

Go for a setup similar to my sig, obviously to your budget. Nice thing about the Celeron is overclocked it performs really well and u can upgrade to conroe later.
 
So do you think i will be alrite with my 754 cpu? Ive looked at some pci-e 754 boards and found them for around £40ish + VAT. So im left with around £150 to find the best pci-e gfx card for that kinda money.
 
wizardmaxx said:
Just a thought

Go for a setup similar to my sig, obviously to your budget. Nice thing about the Celeron is overclocked it performs really well and u can upgrade to conroe later.
Click to expand...

How much is your setup excluding mem, hard drive etc.
 
Nicfish said:
So do you think i will be alrite with my 754 cpu? Ive looked at some pci-e 754 boards and found them for around £40ish + VAT. So im left with around £150 to find the best pci-e gfx card for that kinda money.
Click to expand...

7900 GTO 512MB.

Same one im gonna buy once I can get the money ready, hopefully they will let it run for today so once I finish work I can buy it.

It's £158. Which if you ask me is a huge bargain, hence the reason im buying it. Same as a 7900 GTX just slightly slower clock speeds which can be overclocked. If your on a budget like I am thats the choice imo.
 
You can get an asrock dual mobo that has ddr1/ddr2 support and agp/pci-e support. I reacon that would be the way you should go if u wanted to use some of your rig (ie mem, etc.) The point of my post was spend as little on a CPU as possible to leave extra for graphics and futureproof your setup as cash comes in.
 
I suppose if i keep apgrades to 1 a year then my cpu and mem might be able to survive another year. I think the main thing in my way is my gfx. It would be easier to get a new AGP. But the outdating thing is a slight issue and the PCI-e versions seem cheaper and faster than there AGP cousins.
 
Nicfish said:
I suppose if i keep apgrades to 1 a year then my cpu and mem might be able to survive another year. I think the main thing in my way is my gfx. It would be easier to get a new AGP. But the outdating thing is a slight issue and the PCI-e versions seem cheaper and faster than there AGP cousins.
Click to expand...

Correct me if im wrong, but games mainly revolve around Graphics and RAM.
 
Macabre said:
Correct me if im wrong, but games mainly revolve around Graphics and RAM.
Click to expand...

Depends which bottlenecks first. In my system the Celeron is the bottleneck, but whack a E6800 extreme in there and then the graphics would prob be the bottleneck.
 
wizardmaxx said:
Depends which bottlenecks first. In my system the Celeron is the bottleneck, but whack a E6800 extreme in there and then the graphics would prob be the bottleneck.
Click to expand...

I would be getting 2GB RAM soon enough because I have 4 x 256MB. So I wasn't sure wheather to get DDR or DDR2.
 
wizardmaxx said:
Depends on the detail you gonna run the game at. Detail destroys 1gb of mem in no time.
Click to expand...

Im happy with average kinda detail. Playing Darkstar One at the mo and i find it a lil depressing seeing all the settings on low :( lol

I just found a foxconn NF4 skt pci-e on a site for £30. Any info on these.
 
I'd get a PCI-e skt 754 mobo and slap a 7900GTO in. This will give you a HUGE boost. Then you can upgrade the cpu next year, and at that stage you could go for ddr2 and either AM2 or skt 775 Intel. I always try to upgrade in stages like this, as it makes it easier to get it signed off from the boss errm I mean wife :D
 
Do you think i am better off trying to get a 7900GTO in the "this week only" or will they go down in sometime like nov? I dont plan to buy anythin till nov but if it will be cheaper to get now then i will.

ALSO what is the ATI equivelent of the 7900gto?
 
Last edited:
They may drop in Nov, when the 8800 series are released, but I'd think that they are more likely just to sell out. The rest of the 79xx series may drop when the 8800s are released though, so I'd probably wait until you are ready to buy all of the parts before getting anything.
 
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