Hello, My interest in computer hardware died when I got a mac and I spend most of my time with cars but now I want to upgrade to play UT3 and other new games a good settings. At the moment I have... XP2600+ @2.5 GHz DFI Infinity 512mb BH-5 DDR 120GB Hdd P-ATA 9800pro 128mb 500W power supply It's watercooled with 2 rads (1 BIX + heatercore, RBX, 1250 pump) I'm looking to spend £300 this can go up fairly easy but £300 would be nice. I'm fairly clueless at the moment to what is good, bang 4 buck etc. Thanks
AMD looks the way to go, with the 64 6000+ dual so cheap, throw 2GB of ram at it (will that be enough), what motherboard and gfx? EDIT: Overclocking would be nice EDIT2: ATI HD 2600XT looks good, thoughts? TIA
Intel's new Core2Duo CPUs have better clock-for-clock performance then Athlons do, and also overclock better. A good overclocking system would be a lower end Core2Duo, 2 GB of DDR2-800 and a cheap overclocking board based on the Intel P35 chipset.
Thanks for the reply, can you recommend a board for between £60-£80 for Core2Duo? Can you recommend a GFX card for around £100? Cheers
You want to spend more than £100 a graphics card. Really if you wanna have some proper fun I'd say you should start off by looking at the 320MB 8800GTS's, you might be able to pick one up for the £160 region if you shop around although they mostly start at about £180 without deals. Personally I'm glad I got the 640MB version, but if you're down at £100 right now you're not going to like the prospect of stretching to £240 for just the graphics card. I'd definitely consider an 8800GTS 320 though. Perhaps a second hand one could bring the pricemark a bit closer to your £100 figure.
My budget can change, I want a new mac, bits for my car etc so I'm trying to get the numbers low but they can be shuffled.
XFX 650i Ultra 8600 GTS 256MB If I were you though, just buy a new iMac and run WinXP with bootcamp to play games.
No no no iMac has HD2600 which is basically a POS for running anything super intensive. Grab yourself an Abit IP35-E or Gigabyte DS3 or 650i Ultra perhaps, although the nForce chipsets do run hot and the boards look like ass but they are cheap and run well. I reviewed on a while back. Under £100 though and you're still looking at AMD territory though - possibly a 690G board or nForce 590SLI which are v.cheap but the nF is an OLLLD chipsets now. The 690s are small, cheap and work very well - you're looking at £45. A Core 2 will overclock more - something like a 6550 perhaps? You can quite easily get 3Gs out of them. DDR2-800 is cheap again, and then you have more money to spend on a graphics card. You could get away with: 2G OCZ/Corsair-something for 55ish, 6000+ for 100ish, 690G mobo for 45-50ish and then you're left with 100ish for Gfx. You'll likely see a massive kick up the arse from a new £35 160GB SATA hard drive too bearing in mind that some modern mobos (especially Intel chipsets) DONT support booting from an IDE hard drive.
? i didn't know that. good thing it didn't happen for me. I'm still saving money to buy a new drive along witha few other things.
UT3 isnt exactly intensive my 1950 pro can run at 40-50 frames on med settings on the demo personally to the OP i would to go with a e2180 abit p35 e ddr2 800 and an 8800gts (or gt if you wait until nov15th) (thrown together very quickly should cost around £350 and leaves you with room for a quad later ) dependant on your old stuff you can recycle a lot of it but personally i would look to get a new psu for this gear
I priced up the following for just over 400pounds (keyboard doesn't have a pound sign) Intel E6550 Motherboard in the 50-70 range 8800 GTS 2GB 5300/5400 ram, does this need to be 6000? and a 250Gb hdd Thoughts? What would the speed of the AMD setup be compare to what I have posted above (assuming I used a 8800GTS) Cheers! EDIT: I think I will keep my watercooling and get a new block. It's amazing how much the market has developed in the 2+ years I have been away from it, I used to be uber geek now I'm uber n00b!
A 6550... AMD 6400? For a 1333MHz CPU you will need at least DDR2-667 memory for 1:1 and if you intend on overclocking you'll need at least DDR2-800 50-70 Mobo - 650i Ultra or basic Intel P35 board. Check both EVGA 650i Ultra and Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3R review on here Yak - Yea, medium settings on a 1950 pro mate - that's arguably one of the best value boards of previous gen and it's still faster than a HD2600 afaik. I'm assuming Murdoc wants some investment potential rather than go med-low and low in 6-12 months.
DDR2 800 it is then, I wish for it to last a bit longer then 6-12 months, my Athlon has lasted me a fair bit. Cheers bindi, will check out the reviews.
I have the bug again and I'm looking at a Q6600 what motherboard would you advise bindi? Does the same apply as for the c2d?
More P35 than 650i to be honest, more recent chipset. Your overclocking will be more limited as well but you're only starting from a 1,066MHz (266) FSB.
yeah totally agree but personally if he could stretch to £400 - £450 it would make things a lot easier but since he initially said £300 i was trying to keep as close as possible i think that an e4400 (or 2140) £45 on a cheap p35 £65 and some value ddr800 £30 and an 8800gt(s) £178 or 2900pro £162 (will be able to buy a second later for xfire) would put him in an excellent position to throw a quad in whenever he fancied. total ~£320 inc shipping (now if only intel could license SLI -- and on something a little more realistic than skulltrail)
I'm looking at about #450 now with a Q6600, 8800gts, 2gb ram, will need a new PSU, hdd and block for the W/c. Anyone know the best 1/2" block for 775? Cheers
