Help with upgrade options

[primesone]

It being christmas soon,
im intending to upgrade my computer
but im not sure which piece to upgrade
ive got a budget of about 200 pounds to spend on it,
i was mainly looking at upgrading my graphics card to dx10 or to get a new proccesor/motherboard
my computer is:
Pentium D 940 @ 3.6
2gb DDR2-667
Radeon X1800xt 512mb
Soundblaster audigy ls
Gigabyte Ga-8i945p-g motherboard
350 watt chieftec psu
suggestions of overclockable componants would be helpfull too
i look forward to your ideas
also, would i need to upgrade my psu too, it seems to work well with the rig i have now even when overclocking, but im not sure about after the upgrade.

 

[cozumel]

I would suggest a new mobo and CPU but without any overclock due to 350W PSU. The mobo will allow you to upgrade bit by bit.

You could save for memory next. Then PSU. Then GFX. In fact you could ebay your Penium D and motherboard to pay for some nice DDR2 PC2-6400 almost immediately.

My suggestions are:
Asus P5K-E / WIFI-AP £92.46
C2D E6550 £104.56

Total (incl tax) £197.02
Shipping not included

Both of the above are overclockable but not with your current PSU. If you wanted to upgrade your GFX to say an 8800GT that would draw even more power.

 

[primesone]

thanks
i might be able to get a psu off a friend
its 400w, i think
the cpu and motherboard seem the best way to get my system up to spec
when do you think the graphics card will need to be replaced?

 

[cozumel]

Well I'm not saying the GFX does need replacing. It all depends what you are going to be doing. Because you said about upgrading graphics to DX10 I assumed that meant you want a rig with which to play up-to-date games.

What will you being using the rig for?

 

[primesone]

new games, crysis cod4 etc.
as a motherboard how is this:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/...t.php?prodid=MB-100-GI

 

[Denithor]

That's known to be a great overclocking board. Pair with a nice cheap e2180 (10x multiplier) and your current DDR2-667 memory and you should be able to hit 3GHz with very little effort. I would recommend a better PSU though, and cheapo PSU can cost you your whole rig if it fails in a bad way. The best are from Seasonic, Corsair, and Antec (Earthwatts line is excellent with very high efficiency) and try to find a 500W unit so it will power your GPU properly as well.

If you are wanting to play the latest games, you are going to have to sell your x1800xt and move to either a Radeon HD 3870 or a GeForce 8800GT (or the new G92-based GTS when it launches later this month).

 

[cozumel]

If you're gooing to get a Gigabyte then also take a look at GA-P35-DS3R £69.29
This model will also overclock nicely. The southbridge will allow you to have multiple drives in a RAID configuration for security and speed as a future upgrade. The DS3L does not have this function.

I'm going to stick by the Intel C2D E6550 as it has 4MB cache, is 1333MHz FSB and is a genuinely fast Dual Core. £104.56

I suggest you get a 530W Hiper HPU-4M530 V2 SLi Ready Black ATX2.2/BTX SATAx2 PCI-Ex2 £39.95
It is cheaper than the Earthwatts in the UK. The M series are good models. See this review.

This totals £213.80 incl tax but not shipping.

Overclockers is an excellent company and I buy a lot of stuff from there but Scan is cheaper.

 

[primesone]

are ther any advantages of getting a quad like
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products...sp?WebProductID=702631
over getting a duo

 

[cozumel]

tbh I've never benched an E6550 so I cannot give a comparison. But theoretically, it should be able to process quicker partivularly when multi-tasking.

What I can say is Q6600 easily outperforms an E2180 as I have both.