Upgrade, only £200 to spend

[greywolf]

A mate has only £200 max to spend on an upgrade, this is pretty tight for what he needs, and so am unsure of what to advise him with.

His current spec is as follows

amd 939 3200+
A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard ( can these take a 8800?)
1gb generic pc3200 (2x512)
6600gt 256mb
generic ~400watt psu.
17" monitor

He wants to be able to play cod4/crysis as well as possible with this small upgrade budget.

Any advice ?

 

[Admiral Huddy]

With only £200 to spend, I'd stick a second hand dual core 4400+ (939) and get yourself an 8800GT Might come to a little more than £200 but not much over. You might want to see ig you can get some cheap PC3200 and take your system to 2gb too.

My 4400+ with same mobo and a 8800GTX had Bioshock running on all the higgest settings I only upgraded because 1) I do every two years and 2) the memory controller on the chip died.. otherwise I may have stuck it out longer.

 

[Andeh]

if he wants to play Crysis then £200 simple won't be enough, because he's going to need a new gfx card (8800GT) and a new PSU (VX450W) which will take him over the £200 limit.

 

[Richdog]

AMD X2 3800+ - £30

2GB DDR PC3200 - ~£35

512MB 8800GT - £145

If he sells his current CPU/RAM he should make back about £30 or so.

Just make sure the PSU is up to it (ratings fo each rail will be on side of PSU)... find out the ratings for the 12v rail and post back in this thread.

 

[uv]

maybe an E2140/60, an x1950pro, and an asrock board so he can keep his current ram as a stepping stone?

I just spent £145 on a E2180, Gigabyte P31-S3R and 2GB Geil value PC6400..

Kept my graphics card, but if he spends £220 total, he could get the shiny x1950

The E2140/60/80 chips clock past 3Ghz, and for £200 would kick mud all over the '64 3200

 

[Admiral Huddy]

yep - nice one Richdog