Upgrade Opinions...

Well Some of the latest PC Games are running quite sluggish, and I also want to be able to play things like HL2: Lost Coast...

My current spec is..

Win 2k (yeh, im stuck in my ways!)
XP1700@2.1ghz,
1GB Corsair PC3700
2 x 120Gb HDD (WD)
Gainward Golden Sample GFFX5700Ultra
Sound Blaster 5.1
Mitsubishi 19" Diamond Plus 93sb

I don't want to do a complete overhaul, i'd rather upgrade one thing for the moment. I'm thinking that probably the Graphics Card will make more difference as my current card isn't DX9 Hardware compatible... My CPU isn't amazing, but it runs everything else still very well, its just gaming in which I am let down...

So, opinions please!

Ben

i would recommend a complete overhaul to pci-e, but ince you dont wanna do that then upgrade grapics to a 6800gt and feel the new speed :D

of course by doing this your cpu would become bottleneck, which is why i seriously sugest an overhaul.

As said, i'm really not prepared to do a full overhaul, i don't want to spend much more than £100.

Would a card like either of these be appropriate?

GF 6800...
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=97506

Radeon X800..
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/produ...duct_uid=97827

Ben

yup, both of those you would see big performance increases, or for a cheap £50 upgrade, find a 9800pro in the for sale forums :P

cant you get that CPU any higher? or isnt it one of the famed clockers?

if not it will be a bottleneck but not too bad.

Go for the X800GTO from those above, it should give an amazing increase in performance over the quite poor 5700ultra.

possibly, although i like my pc to run very quitely so dont want to turn the fan right up in order to cool it.

To be perfectly honest i got fed up with all the fiddling with pcs and just want it to work. I've had it running at 2.3ghz but lowered it to 2.1ghz as there was little *real world* performance increase.

I've always gone for nVidia cards, and to break the mould and buy an ATI card would be interesting, having said that both cards look quite good on paper but i really cant be bothered trawling for hours to find performance comparisons! Are there any real advantages of ATI over nVidia as every article i do read talks about ATI "Keeping up" with nVidia... is there much truth in this?

Ben

If you want the X800GTO, these folk do it for £114.99 inc VAT, delivered.

http://www.lowestonweb.com/products/...8B20BB324&td=1

Not sure what they're like as a company though...

My old pc, XP 1800+ @1.53 or somehthing like that, with a 64mb ti 500. Well it's very sluggish. Really most graphics cards are gonna bottle neck with your cpu, so think about.

939 mobo: £60
A64 3200+ Venice : £100
GeForce 6600GT 128mb :£100

You could almost half them amouts, apart from the mobo prehaps, by buying second hand. Give you a good system, and the possibility to go for a better graphics card in the future. And you can stick with your origainal ram and HD's. Personaly I dont see much point spending over £100 on an AGP thats gonna be useless soon, and with your prosesser it will be hard to make the most of a 6800.

SoA Sempron and a low-end gfx card with unlockable pipes?