Advice for replacing middle of the road gaming rig

[emt8q5]

Hello everybody,

The MOBO on my 2.5 year old gaming rig recently crapped out and I need to upgrade now. I use this machine solely for gaming (all other work is done on my Mac) and need to get the best bang for my buck. I currently play games such as Call of Duty 4, Company of Heroes, Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142. There's also a few games coming up on the horizon which I may be buying.

Because this system is definitely a "want" and not a "need," I need to keep costs at a minimum. I want to be able to play these games with good FPS at high quality, though I don't need the absolutely best quality or FPS. Here are the specs of my old machine:

MOBO: K8n Neo4 Platinum
CPU: AMD 939 ~2ghz? (not sure on the exact ghz, I'm at work right now)
Video: Geforce 6800 (once again, not sure exactly on the card, but I'm pretty sure it was a 6 series)
RAM: 2gb Crucial DDR2 ram (once again, this is off the top of my head...but I plan on replacing this as well)
HD: 2 74gb SATA Raptors (I plan on keeping these)
Power: 500 Watt antec (plan on keeping this as well)

I'm hoping for recommendations on decent priced MOBO/CPU/Video Card/RAM options. I'm out of the loop as far as whats hot and whats not regarding performance and prices for DIY PC builds. I'd love some help pointing me in the right direction so I can do some further research on my own to decide just what i need.

Thanks,
Eric


My question to you guys is what Mobo/CPU/video card combo should I go with?

 

[Roguestar]

Why not keep the RAM?

Some suggestions:
Motherboard: Gigabyte P35-DS3
CPU: Intel E2150 (can be easily overclocked to 3GHz or so)
Video card: 8800GT (256 if you're gaming at 1280*1024 or lower, 512 if higher)

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Nah, he's not playing Crysis or something. Get the HD 3850 512MB and save about $50 from the 8800GT.

The motherboard looks good, but sometimes the Abit IP-35E gets rebates to push the price down to $60.

The E2150 doesn't exist, so I assume you mean E2140 or E2160, both of which are fine.

The only reason you wouldn't keep some nice Crucial RAM is if it isn't fast enough, or DDR.

 

[Roguestar]

Originally posted by: BlueAcolyte
Nah, he's not playing Crysis or something. Get the HD 3850 512MB and save about $50 from the 8800GT.

The motherboard looks good, but sometimes the Abit IP-35E gets rebates to push the price down to $60.

The E2150 doesn't exist, so I assume you mean E2140 or E2160, both of which are fine.

The only reason you wouldn't keep some nice Crucial RAM is if it isn't fast enough, or DDR.

Whoops, meant to type the e2140. And his RAM is DDR2 as he said. The HD3850 isn't a bad choice, depending on his budget.

 

[emt8q5]

would I benefit from going with a core 2 duo as opposed to core 2?

 

[themisfit610]

No way he has a 939 and DDR2. He prolly has DDR1.

Also, Core 2 = Core 2 Duo. There are no single core "real" Core 2 series processors.

I would say get a cheap P35 board, an E2160, and 4 gigs of DDR2. It's cheap cheap cheap and Vista loves it - even if you don't plan to use it right off the bat. HD3850 sounds good to round things out. It will all be clean, quiet, and efficient!

~MiSfit