Upgrade?

Kannon · 22-03-2011 11:05pm #1

Hi all,

My current comp is farily old now, possibly 8 years.Its a Dell Pentium 4 CPU 3.00 Ghz, 512 MB RAM. The graphics card (ATI Radeon 9800 Pro) I think has started to fail as there are pink and green lines all over the screen. Probably near out of date now anyway.
Anyway I want to be able to play current games and games which will be released in the next few years. Other than than I will only be using it for the internet. Is there any point in updating this system or should I just go for a new build do you think?

Thanks.

seyeM · 22-03-2011 11:34pm

That Dell would be a dead end for upgrading, for gaming you'd be better off building one from scratch. What kind of DVD drive and hard drive does it have? You could possibly re-use them.

A few questions:

What kind of games did you have in mind?
Do you need an OS?
What resolution screen do you have?
What's your budget?

Monotype · 22-03-2011 11:36pm

New build. Definitely.
Single cores are quite outdated, especially the power hungry P4s. It's unlikely that you could get a good processor upgrade. With it being a dell, it would be even less upgradable.

What is your budget, do you need OS/Speakers/Keyboard/Mouse/Screen/DVD drive?

Kannon · 23-03-2011 12:05am

Thanks for the replies lads.

My DVD is a Samsung CDRW/DVD SM352-F.
I'm a big fan of the half life / Call of Duty, basically all first person shooters, but i'm into games too. i can barely run Counter-strike at the moment though.

By OS do you mean Windows? I suppose I do. I have a copy of XP I could use though.

Screen is 1280 x 1024.
Don't really need speakers, keyboard or mouse.

my budget would be maybe 700e, could possibly stretch it to 800e

IrishMetalhead · 23-03-2011 1:55am

700 or 800 is actually quite a good budget and i thinks i'll get onto hardwareversand now and desigin you you 2 comps for each budget
btw you should upgrade to windows 7 as dx11 is fare supirior to dx9

Skerries · 23-03-2011 2:10am

just dump everthing!
the dvd is no good now as most boards don't come with IDE
just have a look at the other threads for your budget and go for something like that and also start playing something more modern than Half Life

IrishMetalhead · 23-03-2011 2:16am

ok got the one for €700 specced out so i shall post it now and probably spec up the one for €800 tomrrow maybe a 2500K? dunno yet beings that we're still waiting for all the P67 B3 boards to come back into stock so i may have to sleep on it to decide but for €700 it's a no brainer a phenom x4 which are good value to money cpu's:

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 965 - €125.97
http://www2.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=27814&agid=1242
(The 955 is out of stock but the 965 is eaily overclockable to 4GHz like mine was

Monotype · 23-03-2011 8:29am

IMH's build is good (I'd give it the thumbs up but you said "no brainer" and that term really annoys me!)

Maybe the extra €100 or so could be allocated towards one of those cheaper HD monitors.
E.g.,
http://www4.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=39748
(although there's a few different versions, you'd need to check for the best)

seyeM · 23-03-2011 11:26am

A 6870 is €20 more then a 6850, very good value and a nice performance boost for upcoming games like Battlefield 3. http://www1.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsp?aid=39510&agid=1004

If you're happy at that resultion, I'd recommend using any extra money to get an i5 2500k & p67 motherboard, it's a much more powerful processor. However, hardwareversand really seem to be dragging their heels on getting P67 B3 motherboards. You could order everything but the motherboard from them, without having them build it for you. You could then order a B3 P67 motherboard from Komplett.ie/Scan.co.uk/Overclockers.co.uk and build it yourself. I think komplett do free delivery to your door with just a motherboard.

Kannon · 23-03-2011 11:31pm

Thanks for the help all.
Some of the recommendations are double dutch to me at the moment as my reading up on it is nearly asking more questions than providing answers...

Also I do when I can play more modern stuff than Half-Life

. I just love it though so I tend to revisit it every so often anyway.

I'm not sure that another monitor matters to me that much. I got my current one from a liquidation sale and its fine. I've never seen a HD one though so I don't know how much difference it makes, although they don't seem to be as expensive as I would have thought. I suppose I would consider it yeah.

marco_polo · 24-03-2011 2:18am

Taking 200 off for a HD monitor and windows tax (120 + 80), 500-600 still leaves you with a very respectable rig for playing games.

I just think personally that spending 700-800 on a PC to play games @1280 x 1024 seems like a a bit of a waste (Absolutely no offence intended to your fine build IrishMetalHead

). Throwing in a 1080p monitor would make a world of difference IMO although to hit the 750is mark it would come at the expence of a slightly lesser CPU and an (very)nice to have but not completely essential CPU cooler .

An Athlon X4 combined with a HD6850, windows 7, a <50 euro case and this Acer monitor (essentially the above build with an Athlon and minus the cooler) should make a very nicely balanced gaming rig which I would estimate to come in at no more than 750 delivered from HWVS. A very mid range CPU of course but more than enough to keep a HD6850 fully 'fed' during gaming.

Upgrade?

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