It's that time of the (3) years again, when I fancy upgrading my pc. It might not happen until March yet, debating over getting actual presents from my parents for christmas or just asking them for money to pc parts, so if I don't do it christmas it'll wait til my birthday. The cpu is holding me back though everything else seems ok. I do suffer from a lot of fan noise on boot up though which just seems to be telling me it's gonna pack up some time soon.

Anyway! Current specs are:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ - definately needs upgrading, want to go Intel again
Motherboard - can't be bothered finding the specs but it's got PCI-E and AMD sockets, very old, about 4 or 5 years now!
nVidia GeForce 7950 GTX - PCI-E slot and happy with it but am willing to upgrade if necessary/budget can afford it

I currently have 2Gb of RAM but being on XP can't really go higher than that I think, considering acquiring Windows 7 however (have a mate who said he could get me a proper key for it so might take him up on that). I'm also considering getting a bigger hdd but the ones I have for now will do just fine.

Anyway basically if you guys see anything that looks good, just let me know here. I'm obviously looking for the best I can get and if possible want to use www.scan.co.uk for it all as that site has always treated me well and has good prices. Not to go above £300 if possible, the CPU and Mobo are the main things, other stuff can come later or if I have spare cash after it all!

Heres what i put together on a 300£ budget.

- I chose a ddr3 mobo so you can upgrade ram to ddr3 in the future when it is cheaper. Its still a socket 775 so you can upgrade to core2quad when games start use 4cores and those will love the ddr3 memory.
- I chose hd4670 beacause its a good entry level card and beats that 7series.
- Cpu well thats 5£ cheaper than 3,ghz (the one on the list 2,9)
- I am a noob!
- HDD is western digital, avoid maxtor like plague.

Prices are based on the website you linked and rounded to the closest full amount but upwards.

As I've mentioned occasionally, I plan on building a new box in Feb/March. I plan on going corei7. Nvidia's new graphics line will be out by then (Fermi I believe), so that'll be a nice kick in the butt. I also plan on going with SSDs in a RAID 0 for my boot drive... I'm thinking 2 128GB drives, so that'll give me plenty of space for all my apps. I'll put any data storage I need on a secondary drive, probably a 1.5TB.

So... not sure what you're looking for in a pc exactly, but the core2duo/core2quad days are going away. You can certainly go that way, and it's cheaper, but if you're looking to build a PC to last you several years, you may wish to go core i5 or core i7. Core i5 is actually fairly affordable.

For graphics cards, right now, ATI makes more sense imo. but I'm an nvidia fanboy... if you look to be waiting until next year, look to Fermi from nvidia. If you want lightning fast load times and boot times, look at SSDs, but be prepared to pay. Though you could go with a smaller 32GB or so drive for not so much. I would also highly recommend Windows 7. I'm pretty impressed with it, to be honest.

How much are you looking at spending?

About £300, that's what I usually go for. But that is pretty much mobo/cpu only really, I'm happy with everything else (though if I can afford it I'll upgrade other stuff). I'm also an nVidia fan, plus I have no clue when it comes to ATI anyway which doesn't exactly help so this new Fermi sounds interesting. Will definately go for one of the new Intel i range cpus as well I think.

Got a while yet anyway, with the new stuff coming out I may well just wait til March though

Well you should take a moment to think at what resolutions do you want to game at and how much are you willing to pay because the new nvidia range is going to be seriously overpriced.

As for Core i5. The cheapest one on that website is 150£ so thats half the budget and cheapest gigabyte mobo is 85£. No matter what you dont get twice the performance out of corei5 for twice the price.

Comparison of Corei5 to core2quad and core2duo:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/20 ... .html?prod[2884]=on&prod[2621]=on&prod[2632]=on&prod[2633]=on&prod[2634]=on



Core2Quad is not even mainstream yet so it wont be going anywhere for atleast two or more years. People still game on pentium 4/amd athlon.

http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
Well perhaps Steam is not that accurate but its users are gamers and its the easiest statistics available.

As for the hd4670, its the equivalent of 9600GT and 9600GSO but it handles AA and anisotropic filtering better than nvidia. Without AA Nvidia usually has slightly higher score, turn on AA and nvidia is down on its knees like 2$ wh..e

The bottom line is that Pevil wont able to get some of that stuff Satis speaks of on her budget because Satis lives in the US and we get screwed over here in Europe.

You'd be a fool not to get a OS that runs 4 gigs(really 6 gigs is the new thing, tri channel instead of dual channel). Also highly recommend if you going to spend the time and money on a new system with a new OS which you will be reloading games and what not, get a fast HD. Like a Raptor. Something that spins faster than 7200rpm.


Wishful thinking
Dream machine would be would Satis is talking about. 2 SSD's Raid 0 for OS and apps then a large drive for storage, Even better 3+ large drives raided for maximum storage and redundancy.

Im sorry but we are not talking about shoes or fashion items here. The gain from going from 3gigs to 6gigs in a game is like 1% or less. The new thing my dear friend is only in your head unfortunately

So your going to "upgrade" to a new computer but your not going to put at least 4 gigs of ram it in? If your leaving XP on your "upgrade" then I can see getting away with 2-3 but if your going to put Windows 7 really want to consider 4 min.

Really, your bottle neck isnt your processor these days anyway. For gaming video and memory are your meat and potatoes


http://www.brighthub.com/computing/wind ... 16293.aspx



Im just trying to help you out bro. If you "upgrade" to a new CPU leave the memory at 2-3 gigs and dont upgrade your video card or upgraded it to something that doesnt give you more than say 20-50 more fps in games your going to be greatly disappointed.

Here you go.

http://www.insidehw.com/Reviews/Memory/ ... -Mode.html

They tested Crysis and World in Conflict



Article goes on to say triple channel doesnt provide the performance boost expected. Me personally, if a memory intensive games like Crysis runs a little better in tri channel Im going to be running tri channel.

I've actually noticed a slight but very real performance increase going from 2GB to 4GB of memory. It's not huge, granted... if you're going to just jump up to a core2quad, screw it. But if you're upgrading to core i5 and Windows 7, I would high recommend you splurge and go to 4GB+ of RAM.

How far in the future you'll be doing your build makes a huge difference too. If you're gonna wait until March of next year, there are going to be entire new lines of processors and video cards out, which should hopefully drive down prices some. Also, motherboards for core i5/i7 should be cheaper. I think an SSD is probably out of your budget, but those should be significantly cheaper by then as well.

Too bad you guys pay so much for hardware in Europe. 300 lbs is what, like $500? That'd get you a pretty decent upgrade in the US, at least if you're recycling the case, drives, etc.

And this is exactly why one should read before they start posting because i have no idea what you are talking about
Sorry for derailing the topic Pev.

That article is just for testing triple channel, it ran both games on 800x600 resolutions which helps to bring out the difference because the difference is so small it is unnoticable (you do not gain 20-50fps from triple channel) but should you run the game at normal resolutions with AA the difference would disappear, like it has in the following benchmark. Interpretation and understanding here being the key factors. The following is test of 3, 6 and 12gb of ram on games how they act in various AA and Filtering situations.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/memory-mo ... 549-3.html

Besides games are optimized for 2gb of ram max and should they use more it means there is a memory leak and the program will crash very soon after that. You could shove a terabyte of ram in there and you still wouldnt get 25-50fps performance increase. It comes from the operating logic of the computer.

Lol ok skimmed most of that. Anyway thanks for the examples there.

Yeah I know Corei and Fermi stuff will be hyper expensive but the way I see it is that the last generation stuff that is still way better than what I have now will go down in price, that's why I will wait I'm actually considering having money for both Christmas AND my birthday for pc upgrades so the budget may go up anyway, but I figure if I stick to £300 for mobo/cpu/maybe gfx then if I want more RAM/HDD I can do that out of any extra I get.

So what Intel cpu would you recommend looking at that may drop to £100/£150 in the next few months?

As for Win 7 I would love to get it but am only going to if my mate can get me a key. I refuse to pay for Windows and am definately not going to touch Vista, I'd rather stick to XP if I have to! However as I see it RAM is always nice but is also always cheap so that can come in summer/whenever I can afford it anyway. I will definately go to 4Gb or more at some point but it's the least important thing right now.

If I'm honest I don't need a top of the range type upgrade anyway; currently it's only my cpu that lets me down but I can still run 90% of games on max. However I think my mobo is on its way out (already got a dead RAM slot) and might as well take this opportunity to upgrade. I don't game as much as I used to, recently it's just Sims 3, DA:O and Sacred 2 so it really isn't necessary to go overboard but... well... I love my pc!

If you spot anything good, please post it, I'll bump this thread occasionally anyway up until I decide to go ahead with the purchase.

This is how you should proceed:

1. Figure out at what resolution you want to game at (14x10; 16x10 or 19x12)
2. Check whats the max res on your lcd, coz if you want to game at 19x12 you might need to change that as well.
3. Set a concrete budget because otherwise it is mission impossible. Unlimited resources is as bad as lack of resources.

And once you got those 3 down we can work from there. Keep in mind though that a new gpu, cpu and mobo means new PSU. Dont expect that old 400W grandpa to live through the upgrade.

1. Dunno in those but I game at 1280 x 1024 and plan to stick to it
2. as above
3. I have, £300 for cpu/mobo

power supply is brand new and not a problem on wattage.

Ok thats a good start.

When you are sticking with that resolution you should know that you dont need much to run games at maximum detail (16or8xAA, high Anisotropic filtering etc.)

In fact if you want to keep that resolution you should forget Core i5 and the new nvidia range because you would just waste money. That hardware is for running games starting from 16x10 to 19x12 resolutions. You would be running games at 60 and above frames per seconds but you only need 40 for smooth gaming. Extra might look appealing but its wasted because it is humanly impossible to see the difference, its like trying to see the difference of single sand grains.

Gtx260/275 with Core2Duo@3ghz is all you really need for that resolution.

Pevil, i know you want to ride the wave of cutting edge technology but in the end you will only find a hole the size of atlantic ocean in your wallet.