£200 upgrade - Mobo,CPU, RAM and GPU

[Nimrod's on]

Looking for advice on my choice of parts, either if I can get better performance at the same price or if a little exta cost would give a big performance boost.

I can't post URL's as I have less than 5 posts, but the parts are all from Scan, I'll post the prduct ID, if you look at a random part on scan and substitute the "WebProductID=********" for the one I post you can see the part.

Motherboard: Asrock CONROE945G-DVI - WebProductID=443860 - £46.17 - Seems like a good feature set for the price.

CPU: Celeron D 347 Socket 775, 3.06GHz - WebProductID=522374 - £31.01 - It'll do for now. I'm going with a cheap CPU to keep the cost down but I'll want to swap in a Core 2 Duo at some point down the line.

RAM: 2 * 512MB Aeneon Major, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800) - WebProductID=498503 - £57.55 - Only needs to be 533 even for the Core 2 but I'll want to overclock at least a little.

GPU: 256MB Palit 7600GT - WebProductID=457256 - £70.49 - Looks pretty good in Tom's VGA charts, and the price is right.

Total comes to £212.24

What do you think? It's not very impressive compared the what a lot of you guys have, but for reference I'm posting from a PIII 733 clocked to 550MHz because I only have PC100 RAM for it.

Will this handle Doom 3, HL2, Oblivion etc?

[Blitzen]

It'll struggle with DOom 3 and Oblivion im afraid.

Try going for one of the P4 6** series instead. The Celeron will really let you down.

Everything else should run Oblivion on mid settings though as the card is decent enough.

[Reapsy]

I would suggest buying one 1 GB stick of ram now with a view to buying another in the future.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Hi

This upgrade is also a fairly decent one for the money:

LN15175
Asrock CONROE945G-DVI, i945G, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 533/667, SATA II, uATX, On Board VGA £39.29 £46.17
LN17135
1Gb Micron Major, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-12 £37.49 £44.05
LN16630
256MB Palit 7300GT PCI-E(x16) Sonic Mem 1000MHz GPU 500MHz 8Pipes D-Sub/Dual Link DVI/S-Video Fan £43.29 £50.87
LN11055
Intel Pentium D, 820, Socket 775, Smithfield Core, 2x2.8 GHz, 2MB Cache, Retail £49.89 £58.62

Net Total £169.96

Carriage £5.98

V.A.T. £30.79

TOTAL £206.73

The Palit/Xpertvision 7300GT DDR3 is faster than a 7600GS and is also a good overclocker too!

http://www.itp.net/reviews/details.php?id=2996

http://www.overclockers.co.nz/ocnz/r...gtshootout0105

[Nimrod's on]

Hmmm, a little disappointed that the CPU won't hack it in modern games but the Celeron is only a stop gap measure, I'll be sticking a Core 2 Duo in there soon enough and there's no shortage of games that I can't run just now that will be plenty playable on the Celeron while I'm waiting.

The board has 4 RAM slots otherwise I would definitely have sacrificed the speed boost of Dual Channel in favour of room to add more RAM without chucking what I have. I was in 2 minds about this however, so I may yet go with a single stick.

The 7300GT looks pretty good, but I'm looking at a 7600GT, not a GS.

Thanks for the input.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would personally increase the budget by 20 quid so you could buy the 7600GT. A 7600GS is as fast(or even faster) than a 6800GT/Ultra so the 7300GT DDR3 should play most games ok. I think I would put the money saved towards one of the new 8300/8600 series cards which will come out in the next couple of months IMHO.Within a year when DX10 games are more prevalent they should be quite cheap also! If the 8800 series is anything to go by then they should be very good DX9.0 cards too.

[Nimrod's on]

I am buying a 7600GT - 256MB Palit 7600GT - WebProductID=457256 - £70.49.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I know - I have known about that card yonks ago.Palit and Xpertvison cards are basically the same. They even use the same Sonic moniker. There have been many posts on forums about their merits when they were first introduced.
The Pentium D will have a higher percentage resale value than a celeron as more and more people "upgrade" to Vista.

[nichomach]

The Celeron-Ds are shockingly poor performers; I would seriously try to find the extra £30 or so for a Pentium D, and I'd say that the best option would be the 915. OK, it's still a 2.8, but it's got double the cache for an extra £5-6.

I'd sub http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=439912