Best card to pair with athlon II x2 240

[fragmental]

nforce 6150SE 430 is really old, made for Athlon 64 (with 1000MHz HT), also 75w!? that's really bad when it comes to AM3 CPUs, I can't see any good option... better replace the CPU+MB when you can and stick with the 240 (if you don't intend to replace the MB now)...

Whoops. Did I say 75w? I meant 95w.

 

[ShreddedWheat]

Looks like you made a good choice on the video card for the price point. When you upgrade the cpu later the vid card should really shine. Post your results when you get it and when you upgrade cpu. Congrats....

When you upgrade full system later be sure to get sli/crossfire mobo and ditch the HP stuff

 

[fragmental]

Looks like you made a good choice on the video card for the price point. When you upgrade the cpu later the vid card should really shine. Post your results when you get it and when you upgrade cpu. Congrats....

When you upgrade full system later be sure to get sli/crossfire mobo and ditch the HP stuff

Sadly, the 650ti can't do sli. For gpgpu rendering it doesn't matter, though.

 

[fragmental]

If I can afford to should I go ahead and upgrade my 3gb of memory to 4gb?

Here's a link to newegg's memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...PC3%2010600%29

 

[Lazlo Panaflex]

If I can afford to should I go ahead and upgrade my 3gb of memory to 4gb?

You're better off putting that $$ towards an SSD now, or saving it towards your next major upgrade later. The extra 1GB ram won't make a difference.

 

[fragmental]

You're better off putting that $$ towards an SSD now, or saving it towards your next major upgrade later. The extra 1GB ram won't make a difference.

4gb of ram is about $20.

why an ssd?

 

[SPBHM]

Whoops. Did I say 75w? I meant 95w.

in that case, if you can find a 945 for a reasonable price, or as I said buy some other 125w CPU and do some undervolt (as long as the MB accepts booting with that CPU), you should be OK, there is definitely a good gain going from the Athlon II X2 to the Phenom II X4.

 

[Lazlo Panaflex]

why an ssd?

You eliminate the hard drive bottleneck...system becomes very "snappy", apps load pretty much instantly. I have a couple, and the spinners are just for storage now. Would be a good upgrade for that system.

 

[fragmental]

You eliminate the hard drive bottleneck...system becomes very "snappy", apps load pretty much instantly. I have a couple, and the spinners are just for storage now. Would be a good upgrade for that system.

For gaming, many of the games I've looked at have a minimum of 2gb and a recommended of 4gb. I know that system performance, decreases tremendously when a computer runs out of memory. Having your pagefile on an SSD will help a computer run a lot faster when it runs out of memory, but not as much as having enough memory that you don't run out.

1gb extra isn't much but it is 33% more in a 3gb system, which is a significant percentage, especially if it makes the difference between running out of memory and not running out.

I have a lot of very large software applications, and might need a significantly sized ssd. My adobe folders alone are over 30gb and autodesk is over 20gb, and that is just software, not files.

I'm not saying that an ssd wouldn't be a good investment. If I build a new computer, it will probably be able to handle memory modules bigger than 2gb, rendering any memory I buy now useless or only temporarily useful. An ssd might continue to be useful longer, but it can be a pain to have your programs split between multiple hard drives, which I've done before, and would have to do unless I got a huge, expensive ssd.

tl;dr

Are you sure?
4gb of memory is $20 shipped.
SSDs are expensive.

 

[fragmental]

in that case, if you can find a 945 for a reasonable price, or as I said buy some other 125w CPU and do some undervolt (as long as the MB accepts booting with that CPU), you should be OK, there is definitely a good gain going from the Athlon II X2 to the Phenom II X4.

I'm having some difficulty finding a 945 for a reasonable price.