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Thinking of upgrading my computer (cheaply)

KezraPlanes

Just some dood
^This.

I want to upgrade my desktop because it's high time I do so, but I wanted to keep it cheap since I don't have too much money right now. So I wanted advice from all you PC owners into what might do the trick for me.

My current PC Specs are:

Motherboard: aBit I-N73V
CPU: Intel Pentinum Core 2 Duo E7200 2.53GHz OC'd @ 3.33GHz
GPU: Sapphire ATi Radeon HD 3850 Ultimate
RAM: 2GB @ 800 MHz DDR2
HDD: 180GB SATA

Well I'm sure I'll upgrade my RAM to 4GB and my HDD to at least 500GB which should roughly cost me 100
 

Adiuvo

Active Member
Don't bother updating the RAM on that. You wouldn't be able to get DDR3 RAM so the stuff you get would be more expensive and you wouldn't be able to reuse it.

Also, how cheap? Budget is pretty important.
 

El Diablo

Member
You can probably get a decent AMD cpu and motherboard for fairly cheap that supports DDR3, then get 2 or 4 gigs of that instead of wasting money on DDR2. That's what I would do personally if I didn't want to save up and spend the money on newer intels.
 

KezraPlanes

Just some dood
Hm, so I would need to change my motherboard aswell. Also, aren't the cheapest Intels better than the cheapeast AMDs? I mean Intels support SSE2,SSE3 and SSSE4.1 instructions, while AMDs never got past SSE2, I believe.

Well, I don't really want to go above 350€ tbh...
 

El Diablo

Member
You can get some nice AMD quad cores for like 100 bucks, I don't think any of the i3s or intels in that range will beat it for that price but I can't say for sure, but what I thought when I was upgrading mine was that the mid-high AMDs were the cost or cheaper of low-mid intels, I could be wrong though. Either way if you upgrade your processor you will most likely need a new motherboard too unless you don't go for too much of an upgrade.
 

KezraPlanes

Just some dood
This is what my frist draft looks like:

ASUS P8H61-M LE - 67,90€
Intel Pentium G620 2.60 GHz, 3mb, sk 1155 - 66,50€
SEAGATE 500GB 7200 rpm 16MB SATA 3 - 36€
KINGSTON 2GB DDR3 1333Mhz x2 - 35€
===================================================
- 205,4€

I'm even worse on the finance department than I expected so I'm going to have to cut on the CPU, and get a better one later.
 

x3sphere

Administrator
Staff member
Enforcer Team
Game Info Editor

KezraPlanes

Just some dood
Not really worth the upgrade for that CPU. The G620 is only slightly better than your E7200:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/pentium-g850-g840-g620_4.html#sect0

Why not just upgrade your graphics card right now? That way you'd see an immediate performance jump in games and you could use the card for your next build.

Because at this point I do not have any games on my Steam list that need a better GPU, so I can postpone getting a new and better CPU and GPU when the money flows a little more. I would call this a minor upgrade preparing myself for a bigger one, because I'll probably get a Quad Core and at least an Radeon HD 5670 @ 1GB DDR5.

Btw how does that GPU rank up?
 

KezraPlanes

Just some dood

KezraPlanes

Just some dood
Nvidia GTX 460

Oh, nVidia. The bane of my existance <.<

Jesus Christ! It's 179€!

How does the GTS450 rank up? It's 109€ and much more plausible given I'm unemployed atm xD
 

FrozenIpaq

Justin B / Supp. Editor
Enforcer Team
Oh, nVidia. The bane of my existance <.<

Jesus Christ! It's 179€!

How does the GTS450 rank up? It's 109€ and much more plausible given I'm unemployed atm xD

The GTS line isn't really a "gaming" line and it's performance is over 20% worse than the 460. Expect Crysis Warhead to be unplayable.(Then I would suggest waiting ;) There's no point in upgrading only a fraction now when in the future you should be able to upgrade much more. I myself have been running the same rig for 2 years now and have only added in one HDD. I would love to upgrade it more but small upgrades are pointless in this day and age with such huge improvements constantly being made and prices constantly being reduced.
 

x3sphere

Administrator
Staff member
Enforcer Team
Game Info Editor
Oh, nVidia. The bane of my existance <.<

Jesus Christ! It's 179€!

How does the GTS450 rank up? It's 109€ and much more plausible given I'm unemployed atm xD

That's a pretty crazy price, GTX 460s can be had for ~$150 here. You can get a Radeon HD6870 for 179€, which is a far better card. A 6850 also tops the GTX460. It should be around 10-20 € less though I haven't checked prices.

33214.png
 

KezraPlanes

Just some dood
That's a pretty crazy price, GTX 460s can be had for ~$150 here. You can get a Radeon HD6870 for 179€, which is a far better card. A 6850 also tops the GTX460. It should be around 10-20 € less though I haven't checked prices.

33214.png

I just stumbled upon a HD6870 1GB GDDR5 for 150€. While still a lot it does seem like it would be a better deal than the GTX, at least according to that benchmark.
 
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