What next?

[benlanky]

Hi

I had been holding back on upgrades for a while, but now the PS3 has been delayed I'm getting the urge to spend again and was wondering what would be the best area to look at....

My general spec is below, but I also have a Seagate HD & external Lacie USB2 250gb, saitek keyboard, decent mouse etc.. and a 17" LCD.

So, if I had a budget of about £300, where would I get most bang for the buck?

I usually play fps games (HL2, FEAR etc) and some sports games (Tiger 06, Toca3 etc), do a bit of surfing etc.

Thanks

 

[semi-pro waster]

I can't find your motherboard on the OcUK site but I'm assuming that it is a PCI-E one based on the X800GTO2? If so I'd suggest going for an X1800XT at ~£210 and 2gb Ram with the remainder of your cash.

 

[benlanky]

Yep, it is pci-e and socket 754.

Would it be worth going for the 2gb memory first, then the GFX later, would it give me much of an improvement from what I have now?

Is my processor up to a better gfx card, or is it starting to be a bottleneck?

Thanks for the help

 

[semi-pro waster]

It is still a good CPU, pretty much all modern CPUs will bottleneck the very fastest cards to some degree but you have the fastest socket 754 chip available which is far from slow.

Yeah as a kind of intermediate measure I'd say that 2gb Ram is worthwhile and if you feel that you still need a bit extra speed then go for the newer graphics card as well.

 

[benlanky]

It is still a good CPU, pretty much all modern CPUs will bottleneck the very fastest cards to some degree but you have the fastest socket 754 chip available which is far from slow.

Yeah as a kind of intermediate measure I'd say that 2gb Ram is worthwhile and if you feel that you still need a bit extra speed then go for the newer graphics card as well.

Cool, I might give something like this ( GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS3 (GE2GB3200BDC) (MY-046-GL) ) a try then & see if it improves things a bit.

Then I can save a bit more & go for a X1900XT instead.... they might be even cheaper by then

 

[benlanky]

Another thought, my existing RAM is something like this:

Crucial 1GB DDR PC3200 CAS3 (CT12864Z40B) (MY-030-CR)

Should I just go for another one of those (making it 2x1gb) or one of the Geil / Ocz kits?

Thanks


(maybe I should post in the memory section instead.... )

 

[Sim]

If your current RAM is a single stick then this should be OK. I think some people have had issues running 4 x 512's so try to avoid that if you can.

 

[benlanky]

Current one is a single stick, so I just ordered a matching one to add to it.

Thanks for the help.

Ben