Advice needed on Monitor and Other Tat

[Iron Sights]

I recently build a budget gaming pc, however, the old 17'' CRT monitor has finally died , so basically I need a new monitor.

Budget: As cheap as possible , best bang for buck! <£100 ideally

Specs:
2.2ghz Athlon 5000 (didnt unlock )
ASUS M3A78-T (AM2+)
2gb crucial 800mhz ddr2 ram
400w Silverpower SP-400P2C
recently added a 512mb hd5770 (way better than that IGP)

EDIT: its running WinXP 32bit and the only cooler available is the stock athlon

1.) So which monitor should I get, my initial thought would be to avoid full hd 1920x1080 monitors as the gpu only has 512mb vram, which would be a issue. Unless I'm mistaken?

----------------------------

Also while I'm at it I may also try upgrading some other parts:

Option 2.) Upgrading the cpu to an OEM Phenom II 940 £75.35 (not sure if it is Black Edition):

http://www.cclonline.com/product-inf...15&tid=gsearch
(doesnt come with cpu cooler)

--or--

Option 3.) Or getting another 2gb RAM, cos 4gb are better than 2


Q.) -Finally if I did decide to go through with both upgrades, would the PSU cope??

I would greatly appreciate the help, my fellow hexites!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

An upgrade to 4GB of RAM would be a good idea. If you have a 32 bit OS on the PC then you will get around 3.25GB of usable system RAM.

You could try overclocking he X2 5200+ as this would improve performance.

I would probably get an Athlon II X3 450 for around £58:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/238326

This 22" monitor is under £100:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/249226

[Iron Sights]

many thanks CAT, as always

I also wanted to know your reasoning for picking the athlon x3 450 over the phenom? Just curious? Is it the power consumption? Or is the phenom just bad value?

Also, just to confirm would the psu cope with either of the cpu upgrades?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The X3 450 has a lower power consumption and is cheaper too. It also comes with a cooling fan. The X4 940 would be better but unless you can re-use your old fan you will need to get another one. The money saved buying an X3 450 could be put towards an additional 2GB of RAM.

If you are lucky you maybe able to unlock the X3 450 to a quad core although supposedly the X3 445 has a better chance of this happening. Of course none of this is guaranteed.

The PSU should be fine since the HD5770 does not consume much power for a graphics card in its performance category.

[scaryjim]

If you have an aftermarket cooler on your CPU already get the Phenom II, that's a really good CPU at that price. If you only have the stock cooler that came with the Athlon, then think *very* carefully as it will probably struggle to cool a Phenom II and you'd need to get a decent aftermarket cooler as well, which would push the price up (still a good deal though, IMNSHO).

If the choice is more memory or the new processor, get the processor as (again IMNSHO ) going from a 2.2GHz dual core to a 3GHz quad core will make more real world difference than going from 2GB -> 4GB: I've only seen a computer ask for more than 2GB RAM when Chrome is playing silly blighters with it's VM usage! Of course, if you can afford both upgrades then the more the merrier

Definitely avoid 1080p with the 512MB 5770: it wouldn't be completely happy at that res. The real question is do you want widescreen or standard aspect, and do you want VGA or DVI. For less thasn £100 you aren't going to beat the digimate that CAT's already linked to, but you can get cheaper screens at 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900 and 1600x900. Avoid any of the 18.5" / 19" widescreens at 1366x768: I've heard quite a lot of bad things said about them and the only one I've had the displeasure of dealing with was pretty poor...

[Iron Sights]

If you have an aftermarket cooler on your CPU already get the Phenom II, that's a really good CPU at that price. If you only have the stock cooler that came with the Athlon, then think *very* carefully as it will probably struggle to cool a Phenom II and you'd need to get a decent aftermarket cooler as well, which would push the price up (still a good deal though, IMNSHO).

If the choice is more memory or the new processor, get the processor as (again IMNSHO ) going from a 2.2GHz dual core to a 3GHz quad core will make more real world difference than going from 2GB -> 4GB: I've only seen a computer ask for more than 2GB RAM when Chrome is playing silly blighters with it's VM usage! Of course, if you can afford both upgrades then the more the merrier

Definitely avoid 1080p with the 512MB 5770: it wouldn't be completely happy at that res. The real question is do you want widescreen or standard aspect, and do you want VGA or DVI. For less thasn £100 you aren't going to beat the digimate that CAT's already linked to, but you can get cheaper screens at 1280 x 1024, 1440 x 900 and 1600x900. Avoid any of the 18.5" / 19" widescreens at 1366x768: I've heard quite a lot of bad things said about them and the only one I've had the displeasure of dealing with was pretty poor...

I would prefer dvi rather than vga, as for the aspect ratio, I am not to bothered, as long as its the best quality gaming panel I can get in the budget.

However with the preposition of getting the RAM later it would be interesting to see what I could get for £10-20 more on the monitor. And whether its worth it.

EDIT: its running WinXP 32bit and the only cooler available is the stock athlon

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

There is this HANNS.G monitor for around £106:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/201204

[Iron Sights]

There is this HANNS.G monitor for around £106:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/201204

Nice, I'm liking the 3yr warranty

[Iron Sights]

Just to throw a spanner in the works, say if I did get a full hd monitor, how bad would the picture be if I wasnt running it at native res and instead notched it down a tad bit. Cos for around £110 I've seen a benq g2220 or g2222 (both full hd). Or should I stick with the Hanns above?

http://www.oyyy.co.uk/benq-g2222hdl

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158568...edium=products