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Upgrade or Rebuild?

S

Shando

Junior Member
Hi, I was wondering if you could help me. My system specfications are as follows:

AMD Sempron 2800+
MSI Socket A motherboard
2gb ddr400 RAM
ATI Radeon 9250 AGP Graphics card

I am an avid gamer, and realise that I will need to upgrade my computer quite soon in order to handle the latest games.The games in particular I want to run well when they are released are Crysis and Unreal Tournament 2007. I am contemplating building a new system from the ground up with the Core 2 Duo E6300 Processor and a DirectX 10 Graphics card, but my dad doesn't want me to spend that much money. I was wondering if there is anything I could upgrade on my current system in order to run these games well, or will I have to build a totally new system from scratch?

Thanks in advance

Shando
 
Your present system is still a very good general purpose machine for non-gamers. It's probably worth more as a complete, working system than you'd get for the parts you'd remove to upgrade.

OTOH, DDR2 RAM and PCI-E vid cards are now getting cheaper, while DDR RAM and AGP vid cards are getting more expensive because they're being phased out.

If possible, try to find a buyer for your current rig, and use the money to help assemble a new one.

JMHO 🙂
 
I concur, build a new system and sell the old one. As was mentioned the complete system is worth more than the parts. And the cost to upgrade an AGP & socket A system won't be worth the increase in performance.

Just my opinion.
 
A 939 motherboard and 3200+ CPU (overclocked) as well as a better graphics card would put you into mid to high performance range. Cheaper than a complete new build.
 
I would go the 939 route if I were you, those Optrons that were ocing so well right before core duo are getting pretty cheap. I would see if I could find one that had a half decent oc, get a good ocing board and an x1900xt. Your ram is still good, enough reason not to go AM2 IMO. You would need a PSU I bet, anything 450-500watts would be enough if it was quality.
 
Another solution is to get the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA and a Core 2 Duo right now. You can keep your current AGP video card and DDR RAM and save a whole lot.

Then, when the time is right, you can upgrade your RAM to DDR2 and then your video card to PCI-E. And then, you might want to upgrade your motherboard later.

Initially, it will cost you $200-400 for the cpu and about $50-60 for the motherboard.

Overall, if you do end up buying another motherboard for you Core 2 Duo, you will only be wasting the $50-60 you spent on the Asrock 775Dual-VSTA.
 
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