Forum Settings
       
Reply To Thread

New PC / upgradingFollow

#1 Feb 23 2008 at 3:35 PM Rating: Decent
Hello everyone, I come to you because I have seen the great advice you give to people in the Tech Supp forums, and now I come with a problem of my own.

See its not a problem per se, but a technical question.

Processor: Intel Pentium D 805 2.66Ghz (Also, CPU-Z says apparently it has two cores, wich I am not sure if is true or not... not very good at this).
Mainboard: Asterope2.
Memory: DDR2, 1024mb x 1 - 266MHz(this one MUST be replaced, no matter what you recommend, its partially fried and messing up my computer, a lot).
OS: Windows XP Professional.
Vid Card: ATI Radeon Xpress 200 Series 256mb (I know its bad, real bad, I know this one must be replaced at all costs too, specially since most of the time Im gaming).

Now the question is, should I upgrade my current PC, or just get a new one? What would be better/cheaper.

I have about a $800-900 budget to go.

If building a new PC is the best option, mouse/keyboard/screen I already have, so I will need specific info on all the stuff I will need, Motherboard, Processor, RAM, Video card, graphics card, sound card, hard drive, case, etc.

Thanks a lot in advance.
#2 Feb 24 2008 at 2:48 PM Rating: Good
***
2,638 posts
I would just upgrade the RAM and vid card, for about 100-200$ you can get some nice unexpensive upgrades that will make your comp run your favorite MMOs (and some recent games) for another couple of years.

RAM up to 2 GB and Vid Card get a decent PCI-E card for about 100$ (since your board seems to support PCI-E)
#3 Feb 25 2008 at 6:09 PM Rating: Decent
Thats the thing, I dont want to "play my favorite MMO's".

I want to have a really good PC, able to play at least say, Bioshock, Crysis, even if not at max settings, but pretty close.

I will also probably start with programming and video rendering next year, so having a PC ready to hold all that already would be amazing.

Thanks for the help though.
#4 Feb 26 2008 at 3:40 PM Rating: Decent
Lunatic
******
30,086 posts
Now the question is, should I upgrade my current PC, or just get a new one? What would be better/cheaper.

It's close. Your mother board is HP proprietary borderline junk, but you could get by on most games by upgrading the video card to an 8800GT and 2gb of new ram. Your processor's probably more than adequate for most games, your video card isn't.

A new video card and new ram will run you $300ish, it's likely that you might need a new power supply to power a real video card depending on what your PC shipped with, so figure $350 ballpark to upgrade from where you are.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146569

Ram, $40

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130319

Video Card, $250ish

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153052

PSU, $60 ish

The video card may not fit into your case, depending on how much room there is. Without knowing the model of your box, it's impossible to say.

Regardless, you'd be able to run pretty much any current game at max settings, for maybe the next couple of years.

Building a new machine would require you to get a new case, motherboard, possibly HD and CD/DVD drives etc, and would run you a couple of hundred more.

$900 is a lot today to build a machine. You could build a killer gaming machine for that if you wanted to spend that kind of cash. My personal opinion of what makes playing games the most fun goes like this:

Graphics Card
Monitor
Operating system
Ram
CPU

Most people have ****** monitors. That's where I'd put my money, if I was upgrading.








____________________________
Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

#5 Feb 27 2008 at 6:12 PM Rating: Decent
Alright, that was really informative!

Thats exactly what I wanted, thanks a lot, I'll look into doing that, a friend has another friend (who has another friend who has another... Smiley: snore) that somehow (Dont ask me, nobody knows but him ) gets real cheap pieces of hardware. Smiley: dubious

Then I guess the real question is, what case should I get (Because mine IS pretty small, and rather ugly now that I realize), and where the hell to spend the remaining moolah on? Smiley: nod
Reply To Thread

Colors Smileys Quote OriginalQuote Checked Help

 

Recent Visitors: 29 All times are in CST
Anonymous Guests (29)