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best cpu/mobo/ram combo upgrade for $450

$

$pade

Senior member
a friend of mine is looking to upgrade his system and has abou 450 to burn. He already has a radeon 9600 and will just recycle all other components (hd, case, etc...). What are his best upgrade option taking into consideration that:

-he could also ebay his current radeon
-is willing to conservatively oc his system
-hoping to be able to play farcry and hopefully half life 2 at decent speed levels.
-currently he is running a celeron 1.7 system with maybe 256 ram and the radeon 9600.
 
My two cents:
NF7-S mobo $85 approx
Mobile Barton 2600 $I00(goes to 3200 and up speeds easily)
Ram, either 2 sticks of low latency or one LL stick of 5I2MB (and add another for DC later). Don't know prices lately
Decent heatsink. Got my SLK for real cheap, $25. Oh, an may need a fan. Check out a Vantech aeroflow, approx $25 too and comes with fan.

Take any money left over, sell 9600 (pro or not?) and get a 9800 pro. The vid card is very important for gaming. Hope he's a decent HD in there too (7200rpm).
 
currently he is running a celeron 1.7 system with maybe 256 ram and the radeon 9600.
Click to expand...

Ouch. ouch. ouch.

Hmm...well here i'll try to be of some remote assistance, since you have yet to recieve any feedback....

I would definitely if i were him, watch the anandtech hot deals forum, they can find some really nice cpu/mobo combo's...

First of all...he could spend like 80 dollars on a CPU that totally outclasses his current Celeron...

his 9600 is a pretty sturdy card for now...i'm sure it will be able to play HL2 at lower resolutions, fairly well...

If he isn't really worried about 64-bit, he could easily go for the 2500+barton Barton--newegg it is really cheap, and coming from newegg, that is a very reliable retailer.

mobo...also from newegg asus-nforce 2

RAM is the tricky part...i'd probably go with a gig of pc2700 ddr....i'll find you some... christtt RAM has gotten expensive as a biz-natch... RAM--kingston style

Anyway i just checked over really quick, so you can probably find some better deals, but all those are from NEWegg...RAM was most expensive by far...if you live in california you may want to check Ebuyer.com they are based in Arizona so noooooo Tax whatsoever...anyway, if he got all that stuff he would happily be on his way toward better gaming... Good lucK!
 
thanks for all the recomendation. looks like the xp mobile route is the way to go. Just a couple more questions.

I don't think he cares about 64 bit performance but how much faster (percentage?) in games is an equivalently clocked athlon 64 512kb cache vs an mobile barton? I am wondering if he should get the athlon 64 2800 and clock it to 2.2 ghz or get a mobile barton clocked at 2.2 ghz.

the abit nf7-s 2.0 sounds good but what is the difference between that and the abit an7 something? also newegg has some nvidia ultra 400 mobos going for 50 dollars. are they any good?
 
Hi Insane, how've you been?

I'm looking for an upgrade on a similar budget, it was good to see your recommendation.
 
I'm with Insane3D for the most part, although that kind of cooling is unnecessary unless you want to overclock it extremely high. Those 35W Mobile 2400's can easily hit 3200+ speed and stay very cool with a totally standard heatsink.

I'd get

$87 Mobile Athlon XP 2400+ Barton 1.35V 35W
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-103-439

$82 ABIT NF7-S
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=13-127-166

$230 2x512MB OCZ Enhanced Latency Platinum PC3200 CL 2-3-2-5
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-146-889

That's $399, and then depending on how high you want to overclock, I'd get one of these:

$14.99 + $5.00 shipping: Arctic Cooling Copper Silent 2TC Rev. 2
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-186-104

$19.99 + $5.00 shipping: Zalman CNPS3100-Plus Pure Copper Silent
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-118-102

$35.99 + $4.00 shipping: Zalman CNPS7000A-AlCu
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-118-108

Or if you don't care about noise so much, I'd just get the Volcano 7+
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=35-106-014
 
 
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