Christmas Upgrade

[Azndude2190]

I want to spend $500 dollars or less on gaming upgrades.I'll be buying primarily from Newegg unless anyone recommends otherwise.I have no preference in brands.I'm going to reuse my case,PSU,hardrive,sound card,floppy drive,optical drive,monitor,2.1 speakers,keyboard,and mouse.

I picked these out on newegg:

MSI NX8600GT-T2D256E OC GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model PDC22G6400LLK - Retail

ASUS P5N-E SLI LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80557E6750 - Retail

The grand total after adding tax and shipping and subtracting rebates comes came to $472.78

Couple of questions:

How important is the hardrive in terms of gaming performance?My hardrive is pretty old but it serves well since I'm the kind of guy that conserves a lot of space and although I'm a gamer I only have around 4-5 games installed at a time.I don't mind loading time but if there is a legitimate reason to upgrade I will.

Will a 8600GT suffice for a gaming?I'm on a budget.( I want to play games like COD4 and Bioshock.)

I'm not sure if I want to overclock.Which is why I got the E6750,at stock speeds its already pretty fast.But should I invest money into a cooler?

 

[Quiksilver]

Replace the 8600GT with ATI 3850 as it rapes it but it does cost more.
Replace Asus P5N-E with Abit IP35-E as it is a better board if you don't need SLI or RAID.
Replace E6750 with E4600, dude your on a budget if you want to skimp do it were it won't hurt you the most.(IE: your not going to lose a whole lot from a decrease of 266Mhz; Now if you were to keep the e6750 and 8600GT the 8600GT would hurt you the most).

For the egg, it would be about $495, a little over after shipping. Shop around you should get it a bit cheaper.

 

[jkresh]

8600gt is really weak, you should try to step up to a 3850, and if you cant then look for a deal on an x1900 or x1950 (both are much faster in dx9 then the 8600, and dx10 on the 8600 is basically worthless so ...)

 

[Azndude2190]

Alright I'll check into the 3850...but what about harddive?

 

[Quiksilver]

Would their be an small performance boost by upgrading to a 16Mb or 32Mb hard drive, in short yes but for now I would just keep the 8Mb hard drive and if in the future you feel that it's slowing down I would purchase a 32Mb cache hard drive.

 

[xgsound]

That $500 budget is going to cut you a little slim in every area. How about just getting a great video card now and moving it to the new system when you can get the SATA II drive and 1033 or better DDRII to go with it? The GPU is where you'll get the biggest gain.

That should allow for a ATI 3870 or NV8800GT (256 MB is ~$200 if your monitor is limited resolution anyway) now. The CPU at 2.4 Ghz should be fine for awhile and 1 GB ram should allow reasonable game play with those cards.


Jim

 

[Azndude2190]

My max res for my monitor is 1280x1024.I just want something that can play these newer games with high settings.My current PC(In the sig)can't handle these games.

 

[j0j081]

Originally posted by: Azndude2190
My max res for my monitor is 1280x1024.I just want something that can play these newer games with high settings.My current PC(In the sig)can't handle these games.

in which case the 8600gt isn' that weak. it only really begins to suffer when you start playing at higher resolutions than that. just check the ut3 benchmarks here for example.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Acer AL2216Wbd Black 22" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor with HDCP $230

XFX PVT88PUDF4 GeForce 8800GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 $216

or

GECUBE GC-XHD3850PG3-E3R Radeon HD 3850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 $216
- if you plan to play at 1680 X 1050 max resolution on that LCD with a bunch of texture

Edit: I fergit - yer mobo/cpu will werk for now but with the $$$ you have left you could almost squeeze a X2 4200+ Manchester 2.2GHz for $74 if you wanted to go dual-core as a last hurrah for s939

btw - I think that cpu has gone up in price $15 over the last few weeks

 

[xgsound]

Originally posted by: Azndude2190
My max res for my monitor is 1280x1024.I just want something that can play these newer games with high settings.My current PC(In the sig)can't handle these games.

It's your current video card that can't handle newer games. The rest of your computer is adequate , and 2 GB ram would help ; but the video card is probably keeping you to 800 X 600 for any kind of game play with newer games.

Whatever video card you decide on, why not try it in your current machine before you buy the other new stuff? If it goes like I think it will, you'll be done. If it's not enough, you still get the new system, but you're under less pressure to do it immediately.

EDIT: Here's someone with a similiar system that got an 8800gt and they liked it. http://forums.anandtech.com/me...=2131083&enterthread=y


Jim