Worth Upgrading Yet?

Gormond · 5 Jun 2007 at 09:53

Hey,

I have been pondering over whether to upgrade my PC now or leave it till later. It's mainly used as a gaming rig:

Case: Antec Super Lanboy
Processor: Athlon 64 4800 X2 S939
Motherboard: Asus K8N
Ram: DDR 200Mhz (800Mhz Dual Channel)
Graphics: Nvidia 7950 GT
HDD: 160GB Raptor & 500GB Storage
DVD: 16x Samsung DVD Writer

I can of coarse use any of these components on a new build, is it worth me upgrading now and if so what to? or should I wait till later on?

Cheers,

Gormy.

Will_3rd · 5 Jun 2007 at 09:56

does it still do what you want it to?

Delvis · 5 Jun 2007 at 09:58

I dont see why you would want to quite frankly....It's a nice build, i have an X2 4400+ at stock, and ax1900xtx and it runs everything rather nicely to be honest.

How much ram do you have?

The only other thing you 'could' do for noticeable improvement is maybe upgrade the graphics card.

Gormond · 5 Jun 2007 at 10:00

I guess so but i'm getting the need for speed

and its been a while since my last upgrade.

3D Mark 06 Score: 5292

It does what I want it to do but I want to take the DX10/Vista Leap at some point, when would be the optimal time for this?

Cheers

EDIT: I Have 2GB RAM

Delvis · 5 Jun 2007 at 10:09

Well considering Vista is still buggy for many people, i wouldnt do it yet, unless you are prepared to have some form of driver issue or something. Then again you might be one of the people who hppen to not run into any troubles with it

I'm going to wait for vista to drop in price, and for a service pack to come out / a lot of seperate bug fixes to come out.

Like i said, getting one of the Nvidias would be your only worthwhile upgrade, unless your that desperate to go onto c2d... =/

I'm personally going to wait on the grpahics card front, unless i somehow see a graphics card for realllllllllllllly cheap. Unlikely though

Gormond · 5 Jun 2007 at 10:27

Delvis said:
Well considering Vista is still buggy for many people, i wouldnt do it yet, unless you are prepared to have some form of driver issue or something. Then again you might be one of the people who hppen to not run into any troubles with it

I'm going to wait for vista to drop in price, and for a service pack to come out / a lot of seperate bug fixes to come out.

Like i said, getting one of the Nvidias would be your only worthwhile upgrade, unless your that desperate to go onto c2d... =/

I'm personally going to wait on the grpahics card front, unless i somehow see a graphics card for realllllllllllllly cheap. Unlikely though

That sounds like a good idea, I was also thinking if I wait for DDR3 to settle I could skip DDR2 totally.

The only game that my computer struggled at max res recently was Supreme Commander and it wasn't a massive frame drop, just a little where there was loads of units on the map.

Might be a good call to wait and see, if my comp starts to struggle at more recent games I will get a new GFX card and hold out on the Processor/Motherboard/Memory.

If i decide to get a new card will a Antec 460 Watt power supply cope? and which card is the best bang for your bucks atm ?

Delvis · 5 Jun 2007 at 10:42

By all means, if you have money to throw around, upgrade...But i really dont see any point unless your that concerned about having the 'max' frame rate possible =/...But a bit of tweaking tends to solve those issues anyway.

On the graphics card front bang for buck wise, i believe the Nvidia 8800GTS is probably the best one...Its damn cheap, and its a good performer. Going by what other people say it would do a hell of a lot better than my current card (x1900 xtx)...Well apparently it will. How it compares to yours i dont know, just have a look on some vga charts or something

I'm waiting for games like Bioshock to come by, ill probably buy it, see how it performs, then go from there. Also theres apparently an Intel price cut within the next few months, so thats something to keep an eye on. Maybe AMD's prices will drop even further, who knows.

pastymuncher · 5 Jun 2007 at 10:54

There's really nothing wrong with what you have. That's a decent spec pc.

How about delving into the black art of overclocking for some free extra performance?

Delvis · 5 Jun 2007 at 11:03

pastymuncher said:
There's really nothing wrong with what you have. That's a decent spec pc.

How about delving into the black art of overclocking for some free extra performance?

Amen

I'll probably do that when my system really starts struggling.

Gormond · 5 Jun 2007 at 11:04

pastymuncher said:
There's really nothing wrong with what you have. That's a decent spec pc.

How about delving into the black art of overclocking for some free extra performance?

Would you really expect to get that much extra out of my chip?

pastymuncher · 5 Jun 2007 at 12:06

You will be surprised at what gains you can make by clocking it. Your graphics card should clock well and if you are lucky you should get up to 2.7 or even 2.8ghz on your cpu. Make sure you have a decent cooler though and have a read of the overclocking sticky in the overclocking section of the forum.

Gormond · 5 Jun 2007 at 14:34

pastymuncher said:
You will be surprised at what gains you can make by clocking it. Your graphics card should clock well and if you are lucky you should get up to 2.7 or even 2.8ghz on your cpu. Make sure you have a decent cooler though and have a read of the overclocking sticky in the overclocking section of the forum.

I have a Arctic Freezer 7 cooler so i may give that a go. My graphics card i'm not so sure about, I am using one of the XFX cards that has no fan so I assume it runs quite hot under load as it is.

pastymuncher · 5 Jun 2007 at 15:10

AC Freezer 7 should give you some headway. As for the graphics card you could tactically place a 120mm fan near it or get an Antec spot cool. They are only about £7 and can be placed just about anywhere.