Upgrade

[MAS]

First off all, hello. I haven't posted for a very long time.

My current PC is about four years old now. It's an AMD XP 3200+ with a GeForce 7800GT. For a while it's been handling newer games ok, but it's now getting to the stage where an upgrade is long overdue.

Unfortunately, I'm no longer a student and work demands mean that I simply don't have as much time to play games as I'd like, so I want to keep the upgrade as cheap as possible.

I think I can probably give the system a fairly major overhaul by changing the CPU, mobo, memory and graphics card. I want to be able to play current games, and future games (such as Assassin's Creed 2 and CoD: MW2) with reasonable graphics settings - not top end, but with at least some of the eye candy turned on.

So I'm thinking about the following. Anyone have any views/tips on how I can achieve a low cost upgrade with the maximum bang? Not interested in overclocking, etc, sadly my days of tinkering are long gone.

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-M61PME-S2P nForce 430 DDR2

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2.60GHz

RAM: Kingston HyperX 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel

Graphics card: No idea. 9800GT? Any suggestions? I dont know much about ATI cards but they seem to be the favoured choice at the moment.

I think I can do that lot for about £200, although I'd be keen to buy most of it second hand (as I assume this is now basically second generation stuff, hopefully some nice Hexus members will be flogging it off in the coming weeks). Think aiming to do it for under £150 is too ambitious?

Thanks for your help

[nightkhaos]

The question I would ask, how future proof do you want it?

i7 equipment, althrough expensive, will be better for new games as it handles multiple threads well.

For graphics card ATi are pretty good, and cheap, mainly because of the anticipated 5800 (DX11) cards coming out later this year.

My advice, save another £200, and wait for the 5800 cards.

[MAS]

Thanks very much. I keep hearing about i7. Sorry if I'm being lazy, but how much difference will it make? I'm only just getting round to upgrading to dual core (because it seems that games now are actually starting to use/require it).

My only concern is that I can play games for the next two years on medium-ish settings. I know the feeling of waiting for the next big leap in technology, but that's a persistent problem. With my old PC I could have waited a bit longer for dual core/DX10 cards and in the end it lasted for 4 years, so I was pretty happy with that.

The other issue is cost - if I wait for i7, assuming it comes out soon, wont it then be expensive? And by the time prices start to drop, it could be a while.... keen to upgrade in the next month or so. Plus in the past I've always gone with AMD because they're cheaper.

Tbh looking around I'm quite tempted to just upgrade my graphics card now to an ATI 4850/4830 and then worry about the rest of it later. Most of the games I'm playing at the moment, the limit is my graphics card rather than the CPU I think.

[MAS]

Sorry I also meant to say if by 'save another £200' you meant wait and then spend £400 - that's not what I want to do. It's not a money issue - its that I have an extremely busy job which means that I get, at most, about 2-3 hours a week to play games. I dont see the point in spending more than £200 for a very limited hobby. If the option was spend more than £200 or give up gaming, I'm sorry to say that I'd probably have to retire my PC....

But thanks for the suggestion in any event.