OK guys im planning on building a new pc & need help/advice.
My cureent setup is:
AMD Athlon 3000+ 64 @2.2GHz
Asrock K8 upgrade motherboard
2GB Corsair twinx matching pair ddr400 pc 3200 ram
Nvidia Geforce 6600
Audigy SB 4
400w PSU
I want it to be able to play the latest games,
& maybe for the next couple of years as well.
I can currently run a lot of good games,
but i wont even attemp any of the latest tho it plays The orange box.
I have a budget of about £500
& was thinking of getting the CPU & Motherboard first.
I was wondering if i could get a good Quad Core & maybe a good motherboard for that kind of money?
Because then in another couple of months,
i'd upgrade the PSU & graphics card.
If i kept my existing ram & sound card would that make an impact on performance?
I have a similar setup to yours with a 7600GT G/fix card and 1.5 G of ram, AMD Sempron 3000+ CPU on a Winfast SiS chipset motherboard.
It too plays everything I have thrown at it so far, including CRYSIS but of course with everything on low seettings for that game.
I would also like to build a faster machine and have come to the conclusion that the upgrade will be Dual-core.
I believe I am correct in stating that our current RAM (DDR 400) will need to be changed for DDR2. So you will need new RAM.
My confusion is that I have read that multiple core processors dont actually do much for gaming and its the G/fix card that remains the most important hardware along with RAM.
Therefore with an AMD 3000+ being the equivalant intel speed of 3gz and lots of Dual core processors on the market, I don't know which to go for without taking a step backwards for gaming proccessing speed considering its likely one of the cores will be working at 100% and the other core at 2 or 3%
What do you think?
I know what youre saying mate.
Theres an Asrock motherboard i heard about that lets you use thee DDR 400 with a Core 2 cpu.
As far as i know you can force both cores to work on a game.
I think my Athlon 3000+ has served me well,
but i think i heard of a quad core for about £200,
not too sure about this though, so i may get a Core Duo.
So I guess you're going to wait a few months until better graphics card come out? Because if you wanted to do some gaming now, I was going to recommend skimping out on the processor and use that money on a better video card.
That card being a Geforce 8800 GT 512MB. This card performs just as good as a 400$ 8800 GTX.
500 UK pounds is about almost 1000 Canadian dollars, right?
I spent about 800 CAD dollars on my budget rig.
E2180 @ 2.9 Ghz (100)
Gigabyte P35 DS3L (105) - This seems to be a popular board.
G.Skill 4GB PC2-8000 RAM (120)
GeForce 8800 GT 512 MB (280) - "The only card that matters." hehe
700W OCZ GameXtreme PSU (130)
Total: 735 CAD. You'll have about 126 UK pounds left over. I guess you could replace that E2180 with a quad. This setup can run Call of Duty 4 in DX9 with everything maxed out. 4x AA and 16x AS at 1280x720 resolution. It rarely goes below 50 frames, most of the time in the 60-80 FPS range playing a 24+ player multiplayer game. Crysis was slow though, about 20 FPS at 1024x768 most settings maxed out at DX9.
Don't max out the settings for crysis,turn down shadows and shaders and leave the rest maxed, the game's far more enjoyable as the frame rate is more than doubled, and it still looks good.
As for the setup, don't bother with the PC8000 G-Skill RAM, get either PC8500 Ballistix Tracers from overclockers UK or grab some cheap Corsair XMS2 PC6400 (CAS4) - still excellent memory, I use it, but easier on the wallet.
The setup will run you just short of £500, if you keep the rest of the components the same as confuzed listed.
