Advice/oppinions needed on upgrade

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Alright dudes, need a bit of advice regarding an upgrade. My system atm, is as follows
athlonxp 3200 @ 2.3ghz
1gb Geil @ 210mhz
6800gt @ ultra
Asus Nforce 2 mobo
160gb seagate barracuda pata

I play a lot of games such as BF2, dod:s etc and lately my systems really been annoying me with performance, some times several second pauses in BF2. Ive done all the usual system maintenence, and its still not up to scratch in most new games.

Im thinking of Getting a San Diego 4000+ and keeping my AGP 6800gt, as i think its my processor thats causing the probs, and maybe getting another GB of geil ram?

Anyway what would you guys reccomend for a budget of around £500? Obviously to increase general & gaming performance.

Thanks a lot in Advance
 
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MB-088-AS Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS) 1
£61.95 £61.95
CP-134-AM AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3800BVBOX) (CP-134-AM) 1
£179.95 £179.95
GX-048-PC PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC) 1
£234.95 £234.95
Subtotal £476.85
VAT £83.45
Total £560.30

A little over.. but should be good :p
 
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cheers dude for the quick reply, ill look into this option, anyone else got any ideas?

Oh and would i achieve better performance with that setup (eg upgrading gfx too) than just buying a more expensive cpu?
 
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Associate
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Kinda depends on what games you play and what else you use your pc for. If you mainly play fps games which BF2 does suggest, you should be aware that modern shooters are GPU, not CPU limited.

What that means is you'll benefit more from a Gfx upgrade than a CPU one. (Unless your CPU is a Pentium ii or something else just as pants, which yours isn't).
 
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righty ho, thanks for that, havent been too up-to-date of lately, would a single core 3700+ and a X1900 XT be a better bet then (for the money)?

for example:

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS)

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-060-PC)

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)

Subtotal £507.85
VAT £88.88
Total £596.73
 
Last edited:
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Cannaton said:
righty ho, thanks for that, havent been too up-to-date of lately, would a single core 3700+ and a X1900 XT be a better bet then (for the money)?

for example:

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS)

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1900 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-060-PC)

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)

Subtotal £507.85
VAT £88.88
Total £596.73

Well that certainly is a kick-ass rig and no mistake! ;) Does your monitor support resolutions that would do that setup justice?
 
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well 1280x1024 so should be a-okay, will 1gb o' ram deffinetly suffice though for say the next 6-12 months? I might get an extra gig tbh.

How bouts this, or would it be better just getting the x1900xt?

Asus A8N-E nForce4 Ultra (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-088-AS)

AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego 90nm (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3700BNBOX) (CP-121-AM)

GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Value Dual Channel Kit CAS2.5 (GE1GB3200BHDC) (MY-005-GL)

PowerColor ATI Radeon X1800 XT 512MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-048-PC)

Subtotal £487.80
VAT £85.37
Total £573.17
 
Last edited:
Associate
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I'd stick with what you had listed and then go for some nice 1GB sticks later when you can afford to throw a bit more cash at the rig.
 
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