Upgrading my old PC *Need Advice*

[Liquid Gear]

Hello, AnandTech community. I'm in need of advice regarding my rig. You see, I have a somewhat old PC and I want to buy a video card for it -to play games-, of course it won't be displaying glamorous graphics but it should be working just fine to reproduce a wide selection of games (on the lower settings, at least).

Let's talk about my specs. Firstly, my CPU is a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ that runs at 2.2GHz so I'm looking for a video card that will run nicely with it (preferably from Radeon). I have to mention that I currently have an ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO video card and, of course, my motherboard has PCI and PCI-E ports but keep in mind that the motherboard itself is around 6 years old.

Anyhow, I was thinking of buying an ATI Radeon video card from series 4000 or 5000 but I'm not entirely sure about it. Please, feel free to share your opinions.

 

[cbrunny]

An AMD 4200+? You mean those ones from 2008? (Impressive, btw - My first build ever was a 3000+. Fond memories.)

What games are you hoping to play? I can't think of a single modern non-indie game that you could play without being severely CPU bottlenecked.

 

[Liquid Gear]

An AMD 4200+? You mean those ones from 2008? (Impressive, btw - My first build ever was a 3000+. Fond memories.)

What games are you hoping to play? I can't think of a single modern non-indie game that you could play without being severely CPU bottlenecked.

Yes, the CPU is that old.

You're probably right. I mean, I know I won't be getting to play any modern games the way they are meant to be play, but I was hoping I could get a better performance at some games (like MMOs). Although, it isn't really my style to settle for a poor performance, especially in gaming (especially with the frames per second).

Now, I would rather save money to buy a decent gaming PC. Anyways, thanks for answering.

 

[cbrunny]

Keep an eye on this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2192841

Mfenn does a great job updating it weekly, with great picks.

 

[SlowSpyder]

With such an old CPU, it probably isn't worth a video card upgrade.

 

[SPBHM]

some games would benefit from a faster VGA, specially with higher resolution,

I mean the HD 2600 PRO probably uses 1GHz DDR2 and only have 120sps from 2007, it doesn't even support flash video acceleration.

if you throw let's say the R7 240 which is pretty cheap it would be a big difference in all games, but realistically it's a slow card, I'm just recommending something like it, because the Athlon 64 X2 really is a huge limiting factor for games newer than let's say, 2008(not all).

so I think it's worth getting a new CPU+MB+Mem and even go with an IGP (like the A8 7600), it's going to be a great upgrade... but without knowing how much money you intend to use for this upgrade is hard to make a good recommendation,

 

[tollingalong]

If you want to go absolutely cheap, a dual core celery with mobo and 8GB RAM will hit you for about $400. You can get a Radeon 7770 for like $60 if you watch slickdeals. For under $500 you can game at 1080p with small loss of eye candy.

 

[toyota]

no point in getting a decent gpu when your cpu does not even meet realistic minimum requirements. and with a cpu that old you probably dont have enough ram or modern 64 bit os either.

its time for a NEW pc.

 

[lopri]

I am very skeptical that current PCIe 3.0 cards will work on what is likely one of the first PCIe 1.0 boards.

The system needs an upgrade, but without such an option I might try out something like HD 5770 (Juniper?).

 

[SPBHM]

I am very skeptical that current PCIe 3.0 cards will work on what is likely one of the first PCIe 1.0 boards.

The system needs an upgrade, but without such an option I might try out something like HD 5770 (Juniper?).

well, it's a possibility, but even the 5770 (PCIE 2.1) can have problems, also I've seen 3.0 cards (like a 640) running fine on G31 chipset (1.x)