Upgrade advice

B

BrummieSi

Geek Trainee
My missus has pre ordered me a copy of Vista Ultimate for my birthday so i thought it may be time for an upgrade.

My current spec is:

P4 3.2 Prescott (478)
Asus P4P800-E deluxe motherboard
WD Raptor 74Gb Hard drive
Maxtor 250Gb SATA Hard drive
Sony 18x writer
2Gb Corsair value select DDR400 memory
Gainward Bliss 512mb 7800GS AGP graphics card
Antec Sonata II case

My upgrade budget is £400 and i will be keeping my case, Sony writer and both hard drives as i can see no benefit to upgrading these. I have priced up 2 options in my budget and can now not decide which will be the best.

Option 1

Intel E6300 cpu
Asrock ConRoeXFire-eSATA2 motherboard
Corsair Twinx XMS2-6400 1GB Kit
Asus 7600GT 256mb pcie graphics card

Option 2

AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800 Retail AM2
ASUS M2N-E SLi nF500 Socket AM2 motherboard
Corsair Twinx XMS2-6400 1GB Kit
2 x nVidia GeForce 7600GT 256MB PCI-E (running in SLi mode)

I mainly play games on my pc such as FEAR, Farcry, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty etc.

Any advise would be appreciated
 
Hi and welcome to HWF :)

Option 1 is the best and the CPU will outperform an X2 3800+. I highly reccommend 2GB of ram for vista, from my experience i can tell you that Vista uses around 35-45% memory on first boot, this is with 1GB so 2GB is a must, especially if your going to be playing F.E.A.R.

What PSU are you going to be using for your new system?
 
I am using a 460W Antec psu that came with the case.

If i do go with the AMD option with the 2 7600GT graphics cards i will probably upgrade this to a Hiper 580W modular unit as i can get one at a very good price.
 
I have the Hiper Type R 580w, its deffenitly a good PSU :). Looks around for a 7900GT or GS, if you can find them for cheaper than 2 7600GT's, then get the 7900GS as it will outperform those 2 cards.

Dont forget about the ram, your Windows Vista experience wont be good for gaming at all if your going to just have 1gb of ram.
 
Okay a little bit of rejigging to up the memory to 2Gb but keep the price affordable.

MBG-M57SLI-S4
GigaByte M57SLI-S4, AM2, DDR2, SATA2, GBLan, 8Snd, ATX

CPA-AD38WI-B
AMD Athlon64 3800 Socket AM2 Dual Core Processor - Retail

MEO-2048G64K
OCZ Gold XTC 2048Mb (2x1024Mb) PC2-6400 DDR2 (5-5-5-15)

GC-XN76GT256
256Mb GeForce 7600GT PCI-Express16 DVI VGA Card (2 of these running as SLi)

PST-W0099RB
Thermaltake W0099RB 250W 5.25 Inch Bay PCI-E PSU

Will this make a good gaming set up and will it be an improvement on my existing set up considering i will be running Vista??

Also i can get a Generic 256mb 7950GT for the same price as the 2 7600GT's. Will this one card be better than having the 2 cards running in SLi when playing games.
 
With 2GB of ram, i your gaming experience should be good :), i have had a search on google and it seems like one 7950GT would be better than 2 x 7600GT, also with SLi, you dont get 2x the performance all the time.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top