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View Full Version : What upgrades?


theonetruewill
07-06-2007, 11:09 PM
OK, my mate has a fairly old PC and plays BF2142 for most of the day:rolleyes:, hence his gfx card hasn't needed to be super (bear in mind he is amazed at the new performance since he formerly had an X550)
he currently has;

Foxconn Motherboard - I will find the exact model, but it is fairly low end
AMD Athlon64 3000+ (S939) @stock, he refuses to oc:shadedshu........:p
2x512MB DDR (I will find out the speeds!)
Inno3d 7600GT (my former one - oc's like hell itself is urging it on) EDIT: sorry, it's pci-e
250GB Hitachi 7K250
350Watt CoolerMaster
Stock HSF for the CPU
WinXP Pro

He has got about £80-100 to spend and asked me for advice. I asked him the usual questions and it came down to some points I;ds like to discuss.
Now I'm a fan of dual-core so I suggested a 3800+ X2 (£50~) but to be honest he doesn't use multithreaded applications and doesn't multitask on his computer that much. For me that all chnaged once I was able to multitask, but of course everyone's different. So the other choice was the 4000+ single core. He plays games and regular college work mostly on the machine. However he does play Supreme Commander and it lags quite a bit. No this isn;t all to do with the gfx card as it ran with far less lag on my system. Due to this I recommmend the dual-core again as this drastically improves performance in this game. It is one of his favourites but of course he doesn't think it's worth spending a lot more on a much higher spec gfx card etc to keep it running fast.

I also recommeded another 2x512MB of RAM. I reckon this will help (especially with BF2142 and SupCom), but what do you guys think?

What would you do with that sort of cash for upgrades? Saving up takes too long for him:rolleyes: so something now and not the usual "wait a month or two" option please. Single Core or dual-core? More RAM? New Motherboard? Or just a waste of the cash?

theonetruewill
07-08-2007, 07:46 PM
anyone?

PVTCaboose1337
07-08-2007, 07:51 PM
I think the only viable upgrade options are the CPU to a dual core or the ram. Ram is cheap, and the dual cores are as well... I bet you could upgrade both.

Ben Clarke
07-08-2007, 07:51 PM
CPU and RAM I would say, if possible.

KennyT772
07-08-2007, 07:53 PM
dualcore and more ram are musts.

pt
07-08-2007, 08:35 PM
more ram, and pheraps a dual core

lordlatte
07-08-2007, 09:13 PM
I'm going to assume that the 7600 is pci-e, and so we know that is fine compared to the ram and cpu, and in a manner of speaking, is futureproof. DDR and 939 are dying though, so you'll want to get those soon, the prices fall to a point, but I suspect both are done dropping, and neither will have new products coming out for them. If he wants to keep the system as long as he can, he may want to buy the best cpu he can right now, before they become more scarce. DDR should be easier to find for a few years still, and you'll just need another 2x512. As much as games will want 2 gigs of ram, the dual core is better all around. You said he doesn't multi-task, but chances are, thats just because he's never been able to. Just make sure it's clocked higher than the 3000+ so he gets a boost in single-threaded games

cdawall
07-08-2007, 09:17 PM
do the 4000+ and boost the amount of ram (oc the vid card thru bios he will never know)

Darknova
07-08-2007, 09:41 PM
Both Dual-core and RAM, I just upgraded to 2Gb of RAM and later this week my new X2 4200 will be arriving :D