£250 extra to spend on pc - what to buy dilemma

[cj2mrhat]

I wont explain the circumstances (because its boring), but basically I have max £250 more to spend on my new pc. I built this in the past two weeks and the spec as it currently stands is :

athlon 64 3000 (venice 939) running @ 2.2ghz
1gb dual channel kit of corsair value ram @ 203mhzx2 and 2.5-3-3-7 timings
epox nforce 4 ultra board
connect3d ati x800xl @ stock
200gb samsung spinpoint sata 2 hd.

Pretty good I thought as well! - I was wrong.

Since one of the reasons I splashed out on the pc was to play the latest games like F.E.A.R smoothly at a decent detail level I was dismayed to find it ran worse than our family pc which has an xp3200, 1gb of the same ram and a 6800gt! Problems include: Stuttering when entering a new area of the map (even apparent with all textures set on minimum!) - low framerates (30-45fps avg), and crackly sound.

The stuttering I put down partly to not having enough ram (I've read that 2gb is needed for high detail textures) but also due to the fact that I only have one hard drive and the paging file is set on it (its the system disk and the disk which Fear is installed on obviously) which I'm pretty sure doesnt help at all. The low frame rates are simply down to the ati card - nvidia cards just seem to run F.E.A.R far better - tbh I'm kicking myself for not having bought a 6800gt. Lastly im pretty sure the crackly sound is down to my rather classic soundblaster live gamer 5.1 soundcard.

My dilemma is - do I rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish the money on a 7800gt gfx card (£235 for an standard oem w/o postage @overclockers.co.uk) OR is it wiser to sell my x800xl on ebay and buy a 6800gt, an audigy 2 soundcard, a small sata drive for my paging file and another 2x512 corsair dual channel kit (1gb kits are too expensive really and I'm sure the difference wouldnt be huge).

your opinions are highly appreciated!

[unreal]

Well I may go for a new processor, look hard enough and you can get the X2 3800 and overclock it to 4200 speeds I think... if not then still, you can look around lol

Also many of the new games these days are asking for more ram, greedy lil gits, so maybe 512/1gb more will do nice. I wouldn't upgrade your graphics card though

[Stephen B]

get an X2, sell the current cpu and mem and get 2 gig ram

[Scarlet Infidel]

an X2 will not improve his gaming performance, unless im mistaken and F.E.A.R is multithreaded.

Not keen on overclocking any higher? Thats the cheapest way to give a little extra boost.

[unreal]

Well he can get an X2 or a single core faster CPU, whichever he prefers. And as said, sell your current CPU (I might take it off your hands) for some more RAM

[Scarlet Infidel]

Surely a new single core cpu will be a lot of money for a little bit more cache and 9% (assuming 4000+) faster fsb. Id personally invest in decent cooling if you dont have any and overclock further (if it can safely). Sorry unreal if im ruining your plans to get a cheap 3000+.

Id go for more ram too as suggested.

[cj2mrhat]

I've bought an 6800ultra and am selling my x800xl. Its here if anyones interested: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...MESE%3AIT&rd=1.

An X2 is too much money now - and in regard to overclocking I've tried o/cing my cpu above 2.3ghz (267fbs to be exact!) but it doesnt boot - I get an overclock error from the bios. Since running the cpu @ 2.3ghz means I have to run the ram at 180fsb (ddr266) I prefer to have it at 2.2ghz and the ram slightly overclocked at 204fbs (ddr333) - its corsair value select so I prefer not to run it any faster. I have another thread on hexus discussing the problem: http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=54905.

With the ram upgrade I can only afford another 2x512meg rather than selling my current kit and getting 2x1024. Does anyone have a 4x512 setup and is it worth upgrading to it?

[cj2mrhat]

Well I've just done a bit more tweaking and having the memory at 2T standard timings and upping the board voltage to 1.7v I've booted into windows fine @ 280x8 = 2.52ghz . Thing is - the memory is running at 186fsb - thats DDR372. I know 2.5ghz at DDR372 is far quicker than 2.2ghz @ DDR400 but I'd prefer to get it up to at least DDR380 speeds - I'll try upping the fsb a bit more an see how it goes.

EDIT: got the cpu to boot @ 2.7ghz DDR400 but it wouldnt load windows - Im currently running it at 285x9 = 2.56ghz. cpu vcore 1.475v, motherboard voltage 1.7v, memory @ 266 divider running at 190mhz (DDR380) 1T timing 2.5-3-3-7. Scratch the cpu upgrade! (I'll run prime95 later).