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What do I need to upgrade in order to run a 8000 GTS?

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Drooling over the Xmas special on that BFG 8800 GTS (£299.61 Inc. VAT)...I was going to splash out on the X1950 Pro AGP (£205) but now I am wondering if I sold my current card and mobo to claw back some monies (on a tight budget: £300 to £400 max), would there be a possibility for me to keep current CPU & Ram and just buy a PCI-e mobo? Will my PSU work with it(connections and power)?
Or is the harsh reality that I need to go down the DDR2 memory, x2 CPU and bigger PSU route?

I know that if I upgrade to the X1950 Pro AGP card I would most likely get 5300 3DMarks in 3DMark06 compared to 2136 3DMarks with my X800XT PE now.
I think the GTS kicks in at 10000+ 3D Marks, but that's most probably with a pretty modern system.

My current system:
Opty 146 @2.7 (1.4 Vcore/on air)
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC4000 Dual Channel Platinum Series EB-DDR CAS3
Asus A8V Deluxe mobo (AGP)
OCZ PowerStream 520w Power Supply
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 NCQ 250GB 6V250F0 SATA-II 16MB Cache
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 250GB SATA 16MB Cache
Asus X800XT PE graphics cards (AGP)
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro Sound card
Dell 24" LCD
Coolermaster ATC-110 Case
Windows XP Pro

Any advice would be much appreciated

Cheers

S!ap
 
You've got 2 Choices. Unless you're a fool, you wont go with the Athlon x 2 route, as Core 2 Duo really kicks its ass (my stock 6600 Core 2 Duo spanks my mates heavily overclocked Opty 146 by a good 20/30 fps). So you can stick with your current kit, and get a 2nd hand SLI mobo for Skt 939, or go the core 2 duo route :

Asus P5b (£100)
Core 2 Duo E6300 (£125)
G.Skill (2x1GB) CAS4 Dual Channel Kit (£182)

total £407. just outside your £400 budget.

Or you could spend say £50 on a 2nd hand Asus A8N32-SLi Deluxe nForce4 SLi X16 and save the rest of your money to get an Nforce 6 for intel board (£200), and a proper conroe 6660 (£225 ish). Your power supply is plenty powerfull for an 8800 gts. Just needs a PCI-E plug, and you usually get a molex - PCI-E adaptor with your graphics card. It will need a 24 pin ATX mainboard plug though, not sure if yours has that or not. But i think it should looking @ the OCZ website.

*edit* was the budget of £400 to include the graphics card as well ? in which case buy the £300 8800 GTS and a 2nd hand PCI-E skt 939 mobo.

You most certainly dont NEED a Core 2 Duo or Athlon 64 x 2 to have an 8800 GTS. Yes your system would be faster, but thats not to say it wouldnt provide a massive improvement over what you've got already. Do it. You can get a decent PCI-E skt 939 mobo for £30 2nd hand.
 
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That means a total overhaul.

I would just get a PCI-e mobo and use all your current kit for now.

Why MrLOL is suggesting an SLI mobo is beyond me with S939 when the 146 would bottle neck 2 x 8800 GTS in sli.

Just get a quality s939 mobo.

Add me to MSN slap or email me. :)
 
easyrider said:
That means a total overhaul.

I would just get a PCI-e mobo and use all your current kit for now.

Why MrLOL is suggesting an SLI mobo is beyond me with S939 when the 146 would bottle neck 2 x 8800 GTS in sli.

Just get a quality s939 mobo.

Add me to MSN slap or email me. :)
Click to expand...

thats purely because the Nforce 4 Sli motherboards are good motherboard, not because their SLI. and you need a single x 16 slot to run the 8800 GTS, not sure which mobos has these or not. But easyrider is more or less saying the same thing, just get a decent 2nd hand Skt 939 SLI mobo, of which Nforce 4 SLI boards are very good, but take whatever you can get cheaply.
 
Interestingly for some reason I have yet to figure out (maybe a setting I did a while ago when doing 7800GTX SLI) but my PCI-E slot is showing up as x8 and the GTS runs fine and scores about 9k (with a X2-3800 @ 2.6ghz).

Cant see myself needing a Core2Duo. A mate just upgraded to the E6600 and a GTS and he scores at stock just over 8k... granted when he overclocked the cpu and gfx he got nearlly 11k :p But I have to say that I surprised my X2-3800 has lasted well over a year now and still isnt slow.
 
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