Ok, so I'm trying to plan my next batch of upgrades for my machine. I'm wondering, if I have about 300-400 dollars to spend late this year (December) what would be the next pieces to change out in my system. I'm not looking to make a machine that will make the hardcore gamer jealous, I just want it to be respectable and play any new games. Most of the time I use it for general computing, but occasionally I'll see a game I'm interested in and I don't want to have to sweat whether or not my machine will handle it. What I have right now, I built myself from scratch, so I'm pretty comfortable swapping stuff out. I'd rather not do any overclocking. My existing system includes: AMD Athlon 64 X2 600+ @ 3.1 GHz 8GB GSkill Pi Black edition RAM DDR2-800 Gigabyte MA790X-UD4P Motherboard Visiontek ATI Radeon HD 4670 w/1GB DDR3 Memory Rocketfish 750-watt SLI/Crossfire Ready Power Supply Samsung 20" LCD @ 1600x900 Thermaltake SopranoRS case Thermaltake V1 CPU Cooler LG BD-ROM 2 Seagate 500GB 7200RPM hard drives: one as the main drive, and one for paging/backup Vista Enterprise 64-bit edition The processor is the limiting factor in my Vista experience score at a 5.5, and the only thing under a 5.9 other than that is the 3D graphics at a 5.7. With 300-400 bucks to spend in December, what's the next step? Keep in mind that for whatever reason, I'd like to stick with ATI/AMD hardware for now. My thinking is that I should go to a Phenom and upgrade to DDR2 1066, but I was wondering what someone smarter than me thinks. I'd really like to upgrade the graphics system, but want to do whatever will boost performance the most. Thanks in advance.
Whats I say is Dump the PSU- Get a corsair 750 $120 Go for a 4850, 4870, or 4890 for a new video card any card listed will be a huge improvement. About the ram, the 200mhz won't matter. whats happening right now is a bottleneck, your computers strong point is the ram. the cpu and video card can't keep up with it. Also you will never use 8 gb of ram, 4 is plenty. I say go with a good quad core Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 940 Deneb 3.0GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 125W Quad-Core Black Edition Processor - Processors - Desktops or if you support am3 Newegg.com - AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz 4 x 512KB L2 Cache 6MB L3 Cache Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor - Processors - Desktops Power supply Newegg.com - CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply - Power Supplies Video card Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD 4870 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards if you are true to $400, the order of importance should be CPU-Video-PSU Good luck any questions please ask.
