New PC, upgrade or Xbox360?

[cheesemp]

Hi,

I'm a major budget gamer - what with a mortgage and a 70 mile a day commute. To give you an idea of how my budget is I've just bought COD4 and half life 2 (The orange box). I've currently got an Socket 939 PC with a Athlon 64 3700 (@2.4), 2Gb OCX PC4000 and a Geforce 7800GT which I purchased second hand just under two years ago.

In an attempt to get a bit more life out of to play COD4 at half sensible resolutions and settings I bought a cheap 7800GT to SLI the system. I'm now releasing that was a mistake. Its not powerful enough still. Even worse Colin Mcrae grid I've just purchased barely runs at 800x600!

I'd like some advice from some people more up to date with gaming. Would I do better to put my meagre resources
a) into an upgrade
b) a new off the shelf box
c) an Xbox360 and upgrade the PC after spring next year.

I not too keen on a as I'm half tempted to sell the old box or use it a media box.

Can anyone offer any good suggestions? I've got a budget of about £500 which should get me a decent dual core with a 4850 (i.e www.yoyotech.co.uk YO-PC Intel Spartan 300 XT). I've recently purchased a cheap 22" TFT with HDMI so I could run the Xbox or PC off that quite happily so that not an issue.

I'm happy to build a PC if neccesary (Been building since PII 350 days!) but would prefer not too - also legit Vista is a must (I am a software developer after all).

Hope this doesn't sound to silly but I'm going round in circles with this at the moment.

[Webby]

If the games you want to play are available on the Xbox and your happy to play them using a controller rather than keyboard and mouse then that is probably the more sensible idea for £170 you could get the middle console (not sure what its being called these days) after the price cuts soon and it will require no upgrading to play all the games that are available.

If the controller bothers you or the are games which you will want to play whih are not available for the Xbox then a shiny new PC is the way forward!

CPU - Intel E5200 - £55
Mobo - Abit IP43 - £61
RAM - 4GB Corsair DDR2-800 - £50
GPU - 4850 - £113
OS - Vista home premium 64 bit OEM - £72
DVD - £15
HDD - 320GB WD AAKS - £39
Case - Antec 300 - £35
PSU - Corsair 450VX - £46
CPU Cooler - Xigmatek S1283 - £22 - optional but recommended

That should come in around the £500 mark

Change the CPU for an AMD X2 and save £15 and you could save about the same on an AM2 motherboard as well.

[cheesemp]

Its a fair point on the games. I do prefer PC games (I do own about 500 (99% budget) if we go back to command and conquer original DOS release). I guess my biggest worry is the strategy games. The FPS and driving games I like are mostly available on the xbox. Maybe i'll have look around and see what games i'd actually be missing out on. I suppose I'd even be able to catch up on the PC games I've missed when I finally get round to upgrading the PC - its not like i'm bothered playing the latest releases.

[Bhavv]

The build that Webby gave is a good one.

I would personally stretch the CPU up to a minimum of an E7200 for a gaming PC though, ideally an E8400, and splash out on a 650 - 700 watt PSU so you are ready for upgrades in the future.

I continuously upgraded my PC up to its current spec, buying and selling parts as I went up and up.

The 4850 is definately the budget king for graphics right now, though if you arent bothered about the latest games you could try a 4670 instead and stick to an E5200.

[richieuk]

You could probably get away with a 360 AND an upgrade mate I know I would!

So £300 budget for upgrade...

Sell your SLI GFX cards, they sell for quite a bit still in the 'muppet' shops! So you can get £60 easily for them. Also you can get £25 maybe for your ram as DDR is harder to get hold of. Say 80 after haggling so thats a budget of £80, flog the mobo and processor to a noob for a tenner ontop for a final budget of £400 *after the change from the XBOX too*.

I'm assuming your PSU is still upto the job aswell if it can run SLI 7800s. So we wont buy one of those, and I wont worry about the case as you have that, and you have an optical drive already. So...

Sapphire 4670 : £60
2GB Corsair Memory : £30
E5200 : £55
AKASA AK-965 : £12
Asus P5Q Pro : £90
WD 640GB HD : £53
Vista 64 Premium : £70

And that would play orange box and cod4 easy

[cheesemp]

I use to always upgrade my PC but since buying a house and then getting a job an hour away my budget seriously dropped. I've just remortgaged - so I've finally got the money to invest in an upgrade. I've now had a look at the Xbox360 games - it sure is tempting. I guess my real question is - how long would the PC bhavv/webby suggested last me? If its only 6 months its just not worth it (i'll go for a 360 i think), howeveriIf people think it'll last me a year and half I'm damn tempted.

Can anyone guestimate its approximate life time is (bearing in mind how I've coped with my current system)?

[cheesemp]

Posted over the top of you richieuk.

If i'm reusing my current box I could always port my current vista OEM (I think MS allow that now) so I could probably payout on 4850 GPU?

And yes the PSU isn't bad - It supply's 18As on both 12v rails even though its only a 400W. The case isn't too bad either. My only worry would be who to sell the old bits to - I'm far to honest I'm afraid.

[AdamAnubis]

I would say PC, something along the lines of this:
(It's one I chucked together for a mate a while ago)



Just swap the 9600 for a HD4850

Edit: Ok, that screwed up. Will re-upload it

Edit 2: Fixed

[knivesuk]

In my opinion you should do the following:

Same spec as above, but put in a quad core for £120 and 4Gb of RAM for £60. If you do manage to re-use old parts such as your psu and case, then just upgrade the 4850 gpu to a 4870.

The reason I think you should go with the PC option is that if you play FPS games keyboard and mouse cannot be beaten. Also if you do spend £500 on a pc, that should last a year as that will be able to run COD4 on high settings even on your 22" screen. Even after a year you will still be able to play the new games, even if you have to lower your detail settings a bit.

[cheesemp]

I can certainly reuse the DVD drives - ones only a year and a half old. I could even cope with the old HD's - one Sata2 250Gb and a SATA 200Gb. I do photography as well but can always put a 500Gb in later?
There seems to be a debate on dual core vs quad core. Should I be looking for a fast overclockable dual core or a quad core - I want this machine to be quick encoding videos/editing photos as well as game play.

[knivesuk]

Well at the moment (i think) only certain games use dual core, and I think none use quad. This will change though in the future, so might be good to be prepared now.

If you are doing video / picture editing too, then personally I would say quad core.

There is a great website for comparing cpus / gpu etc.... called toms hardware guide. http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/

Maybe this will give you a good idea what you will need.

[Powderhound]

Wait and see if you win the 9800GTX/ GT first.

[Webby]

Ok assuming you keep your case, PSU, HHD and DVDs then over my original build you save ~£130 the upgrade to a quad Q6600 would cost you £75 (on top of the £55 for the E5200).

And you would be good to go, quad is certainly better for video encoding, and it will overclock easily enough to 3GHz I would expect.

Depending on your case (does it have 120mm fans?) I would be tempted to get the Antec 300 still as a an overclocked quad and a 4850 are going to generate quite a bit of heat, saying that your current set up can't be that cool so maybe it won't be an issue.

[cheesemp]

knivesuk - I remember toms hardware - looked up my ATI 9600 before purchasing but its good to know its still going strong.

powderhound - I doubt i'll win it - it was such a rush job!

Regarding my current case i think its an older version of this. Its hasn't got that PSU or the white LED's but its essentially the same - big 12cm fan blows air up the inside of the case.

I've decided an Xbox360 is a bad idea as I brought a PS2 off a colleague at work about 3 months ago and I've already purchased about 100 games (40 from brother, 20 from original owner). I'm afraid if I get a 360 i'll do the same - i can't afford to buy loads of 360 games and then buy a new PC so i'm going to concentrate my budget on PC gaming.

Currently i guess I'm just deciding on a component list to do an upgrade. I've always purchased my PC components almost exclusively from ebuyer in the past. Scan seems to be preferred here (free delivery!). Should i stick with ebuyer or give scan a try?

Also are nforce boards any good or should I go with an intel chipset? I've had an nforce2 and currently got nforce4 and never had any problems with them but i've heard they aren't good over clockers.

[AdamAnubis]

Ebuyer and scan are both great tbh. I'd go for a intel, either P35 or P45 depending on price. As far as i know, there's not much difference in price.

[Webby]

Go with whoever is cheapest but Scan always get the first look at my money even if it is a couple £'s more their service is great and worth paying a little more although they are normally one of the cheapest anyway.

Free delivery definitely helps

The Intel chipsets on the whole are much better than the current crop of nVidia offerings so unless SLi was something you have your heart set on I would stick with Intel.