Stuck in a rut, need upgrade advise...

[timbomfg]

Okay, so here is the situation...

I have 2 machines, i need to sell what i dont need in order to get my car through its MOT next month. I want to gut the 2 machines i have, and build something as good as i can, for as little as i can.

So the part list is as follows:

• AMD Athlon X2 5000 2.6Ghz
• Intel Pentium D 2.8Ghz (I've gotten it as far as 3.5Ghz)
• EVGA nForce 650i Motherboard
• 2x 2GB PC4200 DDR2
• 4x 1GB PC6400 Geil DDRII
• GeForce 7900 GTX
• Gigabyte mATX 6100 AM2 board
• GeForce 8500GT

I'm thinkin of spending up to about the £80 mark and am stuck on the following parts:

• Intel E5200 CPU
• Asus 8300 based ATX motherboard

I play things like L4D, would like to play GTA4, and dabble with pretty much anything Source based, or based on the UT3 engine.

My idea was to get the new full ATX nforce 8300 motherboard, put the X2 5000 on it, along with the 4GB of Geil ram, and the 8500GT in hybrid-SLI mode. Then sell all the other parts.

If push comes to shove (and i can figure out my free shipping from SCAN), i could push to £100 to get my rig back up to a decent level.

Anyone have any better suggestions, or some generalised advise as to what i can do?

[Biscuit]

I would sell everythig apart from the 4GB PC6400 Ram and start from pretty much scratch. An 8500GT wont perform very well even with hybrid SLI (if it actually works with hybrid?) especially in games like GTA4 which is very demanding.
A cheap 9600GT/HD4670/possibly a 4830, P43 motherboard and E5*** series CPU is what your looking at really but its gunna way over the price you said.
Alternatively you could keep the AM2 chip and board and just get a new GPU.

[timbomfg]

The AM2 board is pretty cack, hence thinkin the new board. Then im in a position to move to AM3 on the cheap. The issue i have with intel is future upgrade paths...or lack of short of buying all new kit.

EDIT: Main reason for saying its cack, is the PCI-E 16x is actually only wired as an 8x which seems to make a dent in quite a few games.

[Biscuit]

Hmm yeah that might be a problem with modern GPUs.
I just realized you said in your first post keep your existing CPU, not sure why u stated the E5200 aswell :/ confuzzled me.

I would look at selling everything except the (geil) ram and AMD cpu then pushing your total max budget to 120-130, getting an AMD 780v motherboard and a 4670

Looked on ebuyer

Mobo
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/150347
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149286
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152752

GFX
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/149199
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152940

Thought i should probs also point out you need to have posted at least 20 posts + be a regular part of the community for free delivery on scan