Originally posted by: ixelion
Thanks for the suggestions guys.
He doesn't know exactly which mobo he has but I'm sure it's just the old AM2. As for PSU, I think he has an Enermax 520, will this need to be upgraded as well?
I forgot to mention it's for gaming so don't think that 4200 is going to do it.
We are just looking to swap the CPU and video card, keeping the mobo.
Maybe and Athlon X2 7850 BE and a 4850/4870?
If the Enermax is working well right now, it will be fine. It will provide plenty of power for a new video card. You will probably need one of these adapters
PCIe 1x 6 pin to PCIe 2x 6-pin if you go the HD 4870 route, though.
Well, if you can figure out what the Mobo is, you can find out for certain what CPUs are supported. Some manufactures were better than others about handling the transition to the AM2+ CPUs, which were supposed to run on any AM2 board, but that didn't always happen. If the mobo maker offered proper support, a BIOS update should allow you to run a newer chip, including AM3 chips.
Here's an oldie-but-goodie that would certainly improve your processor performance:
Athlon 64 X2 6000+. It's also guaranteed to run on his board. On the other hand, it's not quite as good as the Athlon 7850. Some older AM2 boards will run AM3 chips, so you really should find out what he can run. Open the case and look for the model number on the board and google it if you have to.
If you're gaming at 1680x1050 or below, the 4850 is a great card. Larger than that and a 4870 is probably a better choice.
Your friend probably won't listen to me if he won't listen to you, but let me try an analogy about what he's doing if he can't upgrade to an AM3 processor. It's like having an old car with the floor board rusting out, the breaks getting unreliable, an engine that doesn't go very well, and so on, and taking that car down to the mechanic and paying $2000 dollars to work on the car so that it will go back an forth to work for another 6 months until he has to buy a new car for $4000. If instead, he just junked the car and forked over $4000 for a new one, he'd save $2000 in the long run. Everybody wants to tell you about "future proofing" and "upgrade paths" but sometimes, it's not a realistic possibility. For under $400, your friend can get a new mobo, new graphics card, new processor and new DDR3 memory. For under $350, he can stick with old DDR2 memory that he recycles and get all of those. The upgrade you're talking about is about $190. It's his choice, but throwing down an extra $160-200 is going to get him a much better system--basically a new computer that would be pretty darn good.
So here's what I would do if I were your friend: new Gigabyte AM3 770 ATX ($85), 2 x 2GB corsair DDR3 1333 RAM ($70); AMD Phenom II X3 720 processor ($120); ATI HD 4850 512MB ($100). That's $385 and will make for a very good new computer. You could shave $80 if you already have at least 2GB of DDR2 800 memory and get an AM2+ board instead.
