Upgrading - advice please

fullerand

Hi,

N00b alert. Currenly have an Aldi-bought Medion PC (snigger away) 2 years ago, with these specs:
- Pentium D Dual Core Processor 830 3.0GHz, 2 x 1MB L2 cache, 800MHz FSB.
- 1GB RAM: DDR2-533MHz SDRAM
- NVIDIA GeFORCE 6700XL 128MB GDDR3 1100MHz PCI Express
- Windows XP Home

It wasn't a bad setup for the price/age, but I'm getting a score of about 1000 on 3DMark06, and the Bioshock demo was terrible above 800x600. Hoping to upgrade the system at minimum cost but wish to play the likes of Crysis etc at reasonable res. Not too bothered about DirectX 10 support yet.

Currently plan to upgrade with:
- Sapphire Radeon X1950 PRO 512MB GDDR3 PCIE (150 euro on dabs)
- Additional 1GB RAM: Corsair DDR2-533MHz (about 40 euro)

Any opinions on whether this would bring my setup up to par?

Also, can I presume that since my motherboard has a 800MHz FSB that I can buy 800Mhz RAM?

Thanks

Bigchrome

Crysis with a 1950 is DEFINATELY pushing it! I would go with at least a 2900 pro (aka: cheap XT)

You REALLY, and I mean really shouldn't mix and match ram like that....Buy 2gigs of new ram and not corsairs cheap stuff either....I'd go with Ballistix PC6400 (aka: The ram to buy atm)

Cassiel

Can you download and run cpu-z and find out what your chipset is?
Chances are your mainboard will support ddr2-667 max. Pop of the case cover and check whether you have 2 x 512 stick or 1 x 1gb stick of ram. If its 1 1GB then another stick of 1Gb will be the job. Generic ram will do the job, I've seen it on 7dayshop.com for €23. If you've 2 x 512 sticks then your best of replacing them with 2 1gb sticks of ddr2-667 - best value stuff at the moment assuming you can't overclock the Medion. I'd hold off on the graphics card until end of this month when new graphics cards are coming out with decent performance x2950pro and the 8800gt,a little more expensive but the performance should be worth it, hopefully crysis will be out and you should get a decent idea of what card has what you need, the 1950pro may even be a contender who knows, but it will be cheaper then as well.

PogMoThoin

No need open the case, cpuz wil tell ya whats in each slot

fullerand

Thanks, CPU-Z gives me:

CPU is a Smithfield, Socket 775 LGA.
Motherboard is Micro-Star MS-7204, chipset is Intel i945P revision A1
RAM is two 512MB (slots 2 and 4), manufacturer is Swissbit, max bandwidth is 266MHz

So according to Cassiel (thanks!) my best bet is 2x 1Gig sticks. How do I determine what speed of RAM I should opt for?

I take your point re waiting but tbh I'm tempted to go for the x1950pro cos it's my birthday this week Anybody running Bioshock reasonalby well with one of these boards?

Cassiel

MAx supported memory frequency is DDR2-667Mhz. Someone here will be able to tell you if its worth upgrading from DDR2-533, it probably isn't. 2 x 512mb 533Mhz is about €30 delivered and 2 x 1GB 667Mhz is nearer €50.(7dayshop.com)

Your board according to the manual is a BTX style, same as Dell, this may be a problem when it comes to fitting graphics cards with full size cooling fan enclosures, like 2900xt, 8800gts. As far as I know 1950pro fit in Dell's OK as well as 8600gt(s), 7900gs.

board usermanual here:
http://downloads.medionsupport.com/files.php?cat=10