Cheapest upgrade with value for money: Intel or AMD? Budget £100

[staffsMike]

Wait, those rankings don't include the 780G or nvidia 8200. The 780G's performance is comparable if not identical to that of the ATi HD3450, more than a match for the 6200 i'm sure.

Spend £10 more on the mobo.. save £15 on a naff card

[ackrite26]

Not the best comparison - its way down on the hierachy. The 8500GT is almost the same as a 9500GT

Tom's

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

If you are interested in going the Intel route you can get the following off Ebuyer with the free Supersaver postage:

PowerColor HD 2600 PRO 512MB DDR2 Dual DVI HDCP HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card £28.99

OCZ 1GB DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5400 Memory Unbuffered CL5(5-5-5-15) 1.8V LIFETIME WARRANTY £12.51

Intel Celeron Dual Core E1200 Socket 775 (1.60GHz) 800FSB 512KB L2 Cache Retail Boxed Processor £30.52

ABIT I-45CV i945GC Socket 775 onboard VGA 6 channel mATX Motherboard £27.17

Cart total inc vat: £99.19

The 2600 Pro will destroy any current IGP for gaming. It should also be faster than the 8500GT. The E1200 would be fine for general purpose tasks and light gaming also.

The Supersaver postage option is not too bad. The last time I used it they despatched the order using Citylink Next Day postage.

[Andaho]

Decided to go for:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e AM2 Dual Core 2.5GHz, 512KB x 2 Cache, Retail £46.94

Asus M3A78-EMH HDMI, AMD780G, S AM2+, PCI-E 2 x16, DDR2 1066/667/800, SATA II, SATA RAID, HDMI, µATX £45.53

1GB Corsair Value Select, DDR2 PC2-5300 (667), 240 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 5-5-5-15 £11.74
Total: £104.21

Many thanks to all who have helped me make my choice.

[Andaho]

I ran 3D Mark 2001SE on the new system to compare it to the geforce 6200 (both installed with WinXP)...

The geforce 6200 scored: 4762

The new setup as described above scored: 8604

Very happy with my cheap upgrade

[staffsMike]

Yep very strong IGP in those You might find yourself wanting a bit more RAM for gaming later on but that will certainly double as a decent blu ray setup.

[Andaho]

well, I actually only bought 1gb cause I had a spare 1gb already lying around so I have 2gb in it anyway

[staffsMike]

Haha then that will work very nicely indeed

[heyuptiger]

lol im forking out £260 for a mobo alone... i jus can't help myself...