Arrrrghhh. Sockets are so confusing. I thought I was socket 775, but there are all these G45 Q45 chipsets...
My 5870 handles BC2 perfectly well at 1920x1080 with everything maxed, HBO on and x4 AA. Your 6870 performs about the same so you should be fine What I'd do, assuming your running a dell machine, is to replace the case, PSU and heatsink. Then in a couple of months do a CPU, motherboard and RAM upgrade followed by a GPU upgrade
MSI G41M-P28 Intel G41 775 Motherboard £32 Corsair CX500w £45 XFX 6870 £131 £219 Only getting the board for the overclocking. Not sure if it's worth it...
Hmm. I just can't live with the crappy graphics card anymore. I get 4 FPS in BFBC2 I could overclock the my CPU with a new mobo. Should be able to keep me going. Although my cpu cooler doesn't look that great...
Get a corsair CX or TX 500-600w. They make good PSU's at reasonable prices. Also, you are aware you can edit your posts, rather than just posting 1 sentence at a time 10 minutes apart? Forum Etiquette goes a long way around here. Personally, if i was you i would save up and when you have the money then upgrade the CPU/board/RAM at the same time to a Intel i5 (sandy bridge). The GPU could be upgraded any time really.
I'd keep the current motherboard. A Q8200 will be good enough for now, and there's not much point sinking money into an obsolete socket when the newer CPUs are so much better... It would be more sensible to buy a good graphics card then get the latest and greatest CPU/motherboard/RAM when there's really a need to upgrade. You could try looking for second hand deals though, some good socket 775 gear can go very cheaply.
Dell OMO17G motherboard Ati radeon 3450 Dell Q8200 @ 2.33ghz Liteon 350w 500GB hard drive. (Don't know how fast) Blu-Ray drive Studio 540 case. (Can fit a 5970 ) A cheap cpu fan. (Possibly intel stock fan)
Okay. As I probably won't be upgrading my CPU until ivy bridge comes out. I'm thinking i buy a 560ti so i can be a little more future proof. Still not sure on a psu though.
https://secure.scan.co.uk/aspnet/Shop/SavedBasket/Show.aspx?id=b2daecf83b824caf89e1ccf33e45f1b2 (6870) or https://secure.scan.co.uk/aspnet/Shop/SavedBasket/Show.aspx?id=aa84cb7ff7aa44beb7004347c90960d7 (560TI) Those are the things I'd be looking at as it was the path I took from my first Dell (a long long time ago).
Ok upgrade your PSU first. Then (or at the same time) get the GPU. After that you can save up again for an upgrade to the board/CPU/RAM. I presume that the motherboard is ATX compliant, although you can never tell with Dell, they have a habit of using non-standard boards that stop you upgrading in the future.
Yeah... I really wish I had built my pc myself. But I wasn't interested in PC gaming back then. It cost £1000 too. Anyway, I can buy a 560 Ti with a cheaper PSU such as http://www.scan.co.uk/products/500w...0-plus-sli-crossfire-eps-12v-quiet-fan-atx-v2 Or a 6870 with a better power supply. I'm trying to keep the total under £220 Oh and a while back I saw someone had upgraded their Dell (same model as mine) to a 5970 so I presume everything should work out fine. At the end of the day though, this is going to be a huge upgrade for me. And I'll probably end up happy whatever way I go. Unless I manage to break everything
Personally in my builds the first thing I do is go for the best PSU and case I can afford. Everything else is second to that as without quality parts for those first 2 items you'll run into problems later on...
It is a very highly regarded PSU, so it should last you many years How many case fans does that case have? There's next to no info about it online.
Awh crap. If I got a 6870 twin frozr would that help? Apparently they run very cool. I mean to upgrade my case at some point but I've had my eye on a Phantom for ages, but sadly it's out of my price range.
Well, if the card runs cool, it just means the cooler is better at transferring the heat, so it'll be just as bad really...