upgrade one item

Soldato
Joined
30 Aug 2006
Posts
4,776
I am getting the following components. If i could upgrade one item what should it be? Im looking for something to boost games even more. Im running xp.

256MB XFX 7600GT (mem 1600 MHz, GPU 590MHz, 12 pipes)
Upgrade to a 7900GT?

1gb Corsair XMS2 DDR2 PC5400
Maybe get 2gb?

E6300
Maybe get E6600?
 
I'd go for the 7900 GT first, and then hope to upgrade the memory later. You could even look at buying another 2 x 512Mb sticks in the future, since I read that the performance hit here (over 2 x 1Gb sticks) is only about 3-5%, so potentially well worth it. Price of 2 x 512Mb seems to be declining as 2Gb gets more popular, so you may pick up a bargain :)
 
No point in getting a 7900 gt when the MSI 7900GTO is priced at £170. The GTO is basically a GTX with the memory slightly lower clocked but that can be bumped back up, and it is cheaper than all the gt's that OcUK stock :D
 
My suggestion is to get the memory you want now. If you try to buy memory later, even if you buy the same part, you may have compatibility issues. If the memory later is made with different ICs you can have problems. 2 x 1gb is by far the better choice over 4 x 512mb.
 
Yellowbeard said:
My suggestion is to get the memory you want now. If you try to buy memory later, even if you buy the same part, you may have compatibility issues. If the memory later is made with different ICs you can have problems. 2 x 1gb is by far the better choice over 4 x 512mb.

I can see where your coming from and agree that 2x1gb is better than 4x512mb, but as the op asked for a upgrade that will improve his games, I'm sure a 7900gto with 1gig ram would show a greater gain than a 7600 with 2 gig of ram in games.
 
not sure how much you have to play with but might be worth checking this out,

Sapphire ATI Radeon X1950 Pro 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-134-SP) £131 in this week only link

would outperform both the 7600 and 7900gto, and is bout the same price as the 7900. correct me if im wrong ;)
 
ive got the XFX geforce 7900GT 256MB Extremew Edition, could be happier, double the piplines and even higher speeds.

Matt.
 
dale1uk said:
I can see where your coming from and agree that 2x1gb is better than 4x512mb, but as the op asked for a upgrade that will improve his games, I'm sure a 7900gto with 1gig ram would show a greater gain than a 7600 with 2 gig of ram in games.
You are atleast partially correct. However, regardless of card, games like BF2 and similiar run poorly with 1gb of memory. When the disk paging gets heavy, you get stutter. So, even with the best cards made, if your system memory is 1gb, you will lose game play quality.

And, the poster asked about 2 memory options. For this situation, 1gb is a poor option.

For modern games, I would take a system with 2gb of memory and a 7600 over the same system with 1gb and a 7900 GTX
 
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