Which to upgrade or both.

welshjim22 · 27 Jul 2012 at 20:10

I am currently running an intel core duo e6600 with 8gb ram and nvidia 260. I play at max res 1280x 1024. Games crysis 2, oblivion, railworks. I want to be able to play Crysis 3 and far cry 3 with high settings when thy are released. I also do a fair bit of photo editing on photoshop elements 7.

My question is do I just upgrade graphics card and if so what is a good improvement for £120-150 or do I go for an i5 2500/3570 CPU upgrade?

tamzzy · 28 Jul 2012 at 08:28

you're not gonna do much with 150 quid mate. just save your $$$ until crysis 3 actually comes out then upgrade

Leeroy123 · 28 Jul 2012 at 08:32

Yeah as already said its difficult with little funds on an old system like that, you could try and pick up an old nvidia 295 off the bay which was a quality card . Youll get one cheap enough and there will be no issues maxing games out on that res you use

ince · 28 Jul 2012 at 09:09

Both but wait for release

welshjim22 · 29 Jul 2012 at 13:08

I didn't make that clear, budget is max £400 for CPU, motherboard,ram etc or 120-150 for just gpu.

LukieBoy007 · 29 Jul 2012 at 13:18

Might need a new PSU too. What model is your current one?

welshjim22 · 29 Jul 2012 at 13:30

Still the original from when this was a 2006 mesh pc build. It's 500w I believe. Seems to be ine at present. Starting o look at motherboard bundles around 300 for i5 2500/3570 plus radeon 6870. It's not like I have a large monitor.

DavieJG · 29 Jul 2012 at 13:32

in which case your best upgrade with regard your pc experience would probably be a 1080p monitor...

LukieBoy007 · 29 Jul 2012 at 13:44

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-3570K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor (77W) - Retail £179.99
1 x MSI HD 6850 OC 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £94.99
1 x Gigabyte Z77-D3H Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £78.98
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £39.95
Total : £405.31 (includes shipping : £9.50).

How about this?

honosuseri · 29 Jul 2012 at 13:49

welshjim22 said:
Still the original from when this was a 2006 mesh pc build. It's 500w I believe. Seems to be ine at present. Starting o look at motherboard bundles around 300 for i5 2500/3570 plus radeon 6870. It's not like I have a large monitor.

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA GeForce GTX 460 Superclocked FTW 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (01G-P3-1363-KR) £124.99
1 x ASRock Z77 Extreme4 M Intel Z77 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard £101.99
1 x Samsung S23A350H 23" Widescreen LED Monitor - Glossy Black £101.99
1 x Intel Pentium G840 2.80GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail £54.95
1 x GeIL Dragon 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (GD38GB1600C11DC) £39.95
Total : £423.86 (includes shipping : FREE).

It's worth discussing your options till you atleast get free P&P. For £400ish I got you a HD screen, decent budget gaming GPU, SLI/Xfire capable Z77 mobo, 8GB of RAM. The G840 is a very good budget CPU, cheap enough that you could "justify" writing it off down the line for a i5K upgrade. The Z77 mobo also has lots of nice features not just overclocking.

The 460 GPU adds cuda support and HDAO lighting over the AMD GPUs. I personally prefer the 460 over the 6850 but both a good budget cards. Ideally you want to be looking at 2GB of VRAM of GPUs now though. The 7850 maybe just out of reach for you though

It's certainly worth telling me your thoughts

welshjim22 · 29 Jul 2012 at 14:43

Interesting idea about the G840 had kind of dismissed that as too slow initially I will give that idea a bit more consideration as it frees up the monitor money which again I had dismissed.