Upgrade advice

pmcf

Hi, ive been thinking about upgrading my pc for a while now but was in pc world today and seen this motherboard bundle wanted to some advice if you guys think its good value or not as ive not been keeping up with pc tech lately.my current machine is 600 watt psu, Ausus A8n-sli motherboard,Athlon 3800+ @2.41Ghz,2Gb Ram,Geforce 8800 gts 320mb.i use the pc mainly for fps games ive a budget of about 250 or would i better of waiting till quad core becomes more affordable




http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@2054831584.1230589303@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccceadegdghjlflcflgceggdhhmdfnn.0&page=Product&fm=null&sm=null&tm=null&sku=272910&category_oid=

Sqaull20

You grahics card is fine and 2gigs is enough to do the job.Your cpu is only single core, which is really holding you back.

I would get a dual and overclock it some bit,to say 2.8-3.0ghz you'd be doing well.Give the pc a clean reinstall, latest drivers and €50 will go far.

http://www.dabs.ie/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4YBJ&CategorySelectedId=11147&PageMode=1&NavigationKey=11147,51940000,51070000

Check this out.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/cpu-scaling-in-games-with-quad-core-processors/3

pmcf

yeah i was going to just replace the cpu but my motherboard only supports socket 939 and cpus for them are crazy money id buy a new motherboard and cpu for the same price as a socket 939 cpu

Sqaull20

My bad mate, saw Sli on the mobo description and with the graphics card you have, I just assumed it was a modern one.

Dual core is enough for everything so I wouldnt bother with a Quad.Something like an E5200 which can be clocked well over 3.0ghz is good enough for everything.

What size monitor do you have?

Ram is so cheap now, so I would get 4gb while you can.

Msi P31 is a great board, loads of overclocking options, supports all 45nm chips and its fast.

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/729340/art/msi/p31-neo-f-775-socket-for.html

ooPabsoo

dont go amd,intel far superior, 2gb ram is enough, gpu is enough,new mobo nd processor

Q6600 nd a decent mobo would be fine

pmcf

Sqaull20 wrote: »

My bad mate, saw Sli on the mobo description and with the graphics card you have, I just assumed it was a modern one.

Dual core is enough for everything so I wouldnt bother with a Quad.Something like an E5200 which can be clocked well over 3.0ghz is good enough for everything.

What size monitor do you have?

Ram is so cheap now, so I would get 4gb while you can.

Msi P31 is a great board, loads of overclocking options, supports all 45nm chips and its fast.

I have a 17" monitor, i might get 3 gb of Ram as ive heard xp cant recognise more than that.yeah i think ill go with intel cpu this time from what ive read they are far better than amd at the minute.would i be better off buying a motherboard bundle or buy them seperately ?

ooPabsoo

depends on what cpu you get, most bundles come with expensive core 2 duo's and quads......not really many bundles with an e5200

PaddyTheNth

pmcf wrote: »

i might get 3 gb of Ram as ive heard xp cant recognise more than that

Any 32-bit OS can only address 4GB of memory. Some of this 4GB will be used to address PCI devices (graphics cards etc), which all get addressed first, then the remainder of the 4 GB is available for RAM.

So if you have XP32 and a 512mb graphics card, 4GB of RAM and the usual other stuff such as cd/dvd drives, ethernet ports etc, then only somewhere between ~3.0-3.5 GB (depending how much memory each of the PCI devices uses) of the RAM will be usable/visible.

64-bit systems have an enormously higher limit, somewhere around 16PB iirc, so you'd need an awful lot of RAM before you'd start missing some of it.

Both XP and Vista come in 64-bit flavours, most of the comments I've seen are to the effect that Vista 64 has better driver support than XP 64.

AlmightyCushion

PaddyTheNth wrote: »

64-bit systems have an enormously higher limit, somewhere around 16PB iirc, so you'd need an awful lot of RAM before you'd start missing some of it.

It's actually around 16 exabytes which should keep us ticking over for a while.