What to upgrade 800XL to for approx £250

2Drunk2Funk · 19 Apr 2007 at 16:49

Looking to upgrade my monitor from the 19" L90D+ to a samsung 22" soon.
I am sure my 800XL will struggle with the resolution change for games.

What could I get for upto £250 that will support the 1680x1024 comfortably?

I mainly play WOW and the odd FPS type game

Would be nice to max out WOW settings at higher res

I will have to upgrade my 1gig of memory soon to 2gig but thats for another forum

melbourne720 · 19 Apr 2007 at 16:53

8800 GTS 640MB - BFG is the best brand, but they're all pretty much the same card underneath.

That was an easy spec me a graphics card thread

FirebarUK · 19 Apr 2007 at 16:56

Pick up a dual core CPU for cheap whilst your at it too

Although if you ONLY play games you may not see an immediate benefit.

2Drunk2Funk · 19 Apr 2007 at 17:05

I generally use my home pc for leisure, so games, office apps and some movies...

I do write .net apps and have visual studio 2003/2005 for work related stuff although I usually do this on my work notebook. With the bigger screen I may do more on the new setup though. That is partly where the 2gb memory upgrade comes into it.

Thinking about it more, I have some old videos of the kids which I would like to get digitised so a graphics card that lets me feed an analogue source and create an avi/divx would be nice.

I do want to stick to budget though, the odd £20 over adds up when you are upgrading a few parts!

Considered changing my 3700+ cpu for a dual core but not sure I will see a big improvement without researching it.

DJKahuna · 19 Apr 2007 at 17:31

Go for an 8800GTS. A Dual core CPU would als be advisable. You'll see a benefit in almost everything. Even games that aren't specifically designed for multi-core, you'll see an improvement. The only things you won't see an improvement in a single-thread processes, which are a very small minority of applications these days. Even Windows itself loves multi-cores!

FirebarUK · 19 Apr 2007 at 18:01

Even games that aren't specifically designed for multi-core, you'll see an improvement.

Not necessarily. Remember a 3700+ can be faster than a X2 3800+ in some games. I would certainly look into Dual core though, its the future and something like an X2 4400+/4600+ would really be a nice touch to your system (along with that 2GB of RAM).

2Drunk2Funk · 24 Apr 2007 at 15:38

Looking at site it only shows a 4200+ as an option on my 939 board.

Waiting for the monitor to come in stock... although a lot cheaper elsewhere so will be watching their stock as well.

Have to be careful I don't go to far, if I end up doing processor/memory/gfx card I may as well get a conroe system, only need a mobo on top of other items!

Dureth · 24 Apr 2007 at 16:01

A 4200 X2 would be a good upgrade for you. At 2.2Ghz its the same clock speed as the 3700 so you'd only be losing a bit of cache (512KB on each core vs 1MB on the 3700). I think it would be worth it. In fact if you got a 320MB 8800gts then you could afford an X2 4200 in the £250 budget. Combined with 2GB of RAM you'd have a very nice PC indeed that should last you another 18 months.

LoadsaMoney · 24 Apr 2007 at 16:22

Have to agree with the above, 640mb GTS for that price.

Darg · 25 Apr 2007 at 02:39

Do I smell a bot?? ^^^

Anyway to the OP. Would you consider C2D?

Considering that you have DDR2 and PCI-E then there's no major component holding you back from the upgrade.

Complete, CPU, motherboard and graphics upgrade:

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
£229.99 (£270.24)

Gigabyte GA_965P_S3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
£59.99 (£70.49)

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail
£66.99 (£78.71)

Sub Total : £356.97
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
Shipping : £8.95
Vat : £64.04
Total : £429.96

Overclock that to a nice 3.2~ and you'd have a system that can beat any current AMD rig at anything.

ACESHIGH · 25 Apr 2007 at 03:47

Dureth said:
A 4200 X2 would be a good upgrade for you. At 2.2Ghz its the same clock speed as the 3700 so you'd only be losing a bit of cache (512KB on each core vs 1MB on the 3700). I think it would be worth it. In fact if you got a 320MB 8800gts then you could afford an X2 4200 in the £250 budget. Combined with 2GB of RAM you'd have a very nice PC indeed that should last you another 18 months.

For a 19" screen the 8800GTS 320MB would do great, so this would be my choice.

schnipps · 25 Apr 2007 at 07:15

Isnt the jump from a 19" to a 22" just a resolution increase of one level? If thats the case i cant see why you would need a 640 meg card, seems a bit overkill (My X1800XT 256Mb runs a lot of games at 1920x1200 no problem). People seem to forget what you need and just recommend the most expensive card for the budget. If It were me i would go C2D and think of graphics after.

chaparral · 25 Apr 2007 at 07:27

Darg said:
Do I smell a bot?? ^^^

Anyway to the OP. Would you consider C2D?

Considering that you have DDR2 and PCI-E then there's no major component holding you back from the upgrade.

Complete, CPU, motherboard and graphics upgrade:

BFG GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
£229.99 (£270.24)

Gigabyte GA_965P_S3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
£59.99 (£70.49)

Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail
£66.99 (£78.71)

Sub Total : £356.97
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
Shipping : £8.95
Vat : £64.04
Total : £429.96

Overclock that to a nice 3.2~ and you'd have a system that can beat any current AMD rig at anything.

But he would need to buy DDR2 memory as well,,,,So total would be £500+....and the OP said he had up £250 to spend...

Vertigo · 25 Apr 2007 at 07:48

Darg said:
Anyway to the OP. Would you consider C2D?

<snip irrelevant stuff>

Err, he said he had a budget of £250 so you're recommending a graphics card which alone costs £20 more than that plus a new mobo and processor. He'll also need new memory as he's currently got DDR, not DDR2. Hardly relevant to his original question, was it?

Naffa · 25 Apr 2007 at 08:04

If it was me I'd go for...

Product Name Qty Price Line Total
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £87.99
(£103.39)
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail
£66.99
(£78.71)
Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3P (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £74.99
(£88.11)
Sub Total : £229.97
Shipping : £8.25
Vat : £41.69
Total : £279.91

As I think it would see you through better. And looking at your rig, I'd imagine you don't have an overly powerful PSU. Which you need if you're running a GTS. But if you do and I'm wrong then a GTS maybe the way to go.

Cartho · 25 Apr 2007 at 08:34

That's a very nice cheap righ naffa!
But no Graphics card which is what he wanted!!!!

If you are a hard core gamer then get the 8800 GTS
However if you mainly play WOW and only the odd FPS type game then you could save yourself some money by either buying the 320 MB GTS or even an X1950 PRO.

Considering my vanilla 6800 can max out WoW and still average 60 FPS then you wont need to go much further than your X800 to do very well.

Or you could be patient, and wait and see what ATI is going to come up with for its R600 range...

Darg · 25 Apr 2007 at 10:24

Vertigo1 said:
Err, he said he had a budget of £250 so you're recommending a graphics card which alone costs £20 more than that plus a new mobo and processor. He'll also need new memory as he's currently got DDR, not DDR2. Hardly relevant to his original question, was it?

I wasn't the first to start speccing him CPUs. I'm just giving him the option. If he can afford to spend a bit more then he is already then it'll be well worth it.

And "Corsair XMS4400". I assumed PC4400 would have to be DDR2. I never knew they had any DDR memory at higher speeds then PC3200.

There's nothing wrong with having all the options clear to you when you upgrade.

2Drunk2Funk · 26 Apr 2007 at 02:06

Back on topic I am looking to change my monitor to the 22" sammy and wanted to get a GFX card that would run at it's 1680x1024 res maxxed out in wow and any FPS I play (COD 2 generally)

I do feel a memory change to 2gb would help as well.
Unfortunately the current memory, although specced to 275 fsb would not run over the default 200fsb on my rig, even following guides with manual settings in the NF4 bios.

Although a full new conroe setup would be nice it ain't right for me at the moment so I will be doing;

Sammy 22" Monitor
GFX card to support
2g mem that'll work on my rig

Looking at posts I thing a 8800 640 will be my choice

Thanks for input

Tom|Nbk · 26 Apr 2007 at 02:20

Wait for the HD2900XT.