I am looking to upgrade my computer to be a more suitable gaming machine.?

Question

Currently I have a system consisting of an Athlon 64 3000+ processor, with 1gb RAM and a Radeon 9600 series graphics card.

For a budget of around £1000, what processor, motherboard, ram and gfx card combo would you recommend upgrading to, that would make gaming much more fun to play, without having to lower all the graphical settings, resolution, and use scripts to remove certain things in order to ensure the smooth running of it?

I just recently got a 19" LCD monitor for my birthday and have got a decent Logitech headset, Razer Copperhead mouse. I'm also the main pc user so buying a new system wouldn't be of much use. If I decide to buy a new system, the internet connection wouldn't be sufficient to use the old one as a server anyway.

Buying only the required hardware for an upgrade would mean that I'd save money on the dvd-rw drives and the outer case etc.

From reviews that I've read, Intel do seem to have come ahead of AMD in terms of processors, and I was considering a 8800 ultra, but still need to look around I think.

Answer 1

For the most part, I agree with the first poster.

I'd say get a Core2 Duo 4300 or Athlon X2 4800+ CPU, 2GB of RAM and the GeForce 8800GTS 320mb.

As far as the graphics card being your bottleneck, that's true *IF* you've got a decent processor. But if you've got an outdated 1.8 Ghz Celeron then you wouldn't see any difference between a $200 Radeon X1950XT and a Geforce 8800GTX costing twice as much, because your CPU couldn't keep up with either one!

While it's far, far more common for people to encounter GPU bottlenecks than CPU, the reverse can occur, if your processor is really slow.

But buying a new, you don't have to worry about that- any current generation processor equivalent to a 3800+ or better is fast enough that you won't be won't be CPU-bound..

(Midrange CPU + High-end video card) beats (High-end CPU + midrange video card)

Budget for the 8800GTS and 2GB of RAM first, then get the fastest CPU you can afford with the remaining $$$.

Answer 2

For that much money I would suggest building a new system. If you really don't want to do that I would suggest upgrading your system to something based on an AMD X2 (yes I no Intel Core 2 Duo stuff is faster but it's not as much perf/$ for gaming). Also buy a 8800 series Nvidia graphics card and about 2 GB memory. Remember for gaming the graphics card will be the bottleneck, spend your money there rather than CPU.

Answer 3

- Intel Core 2 Duo 2.7 Ghz and above (must have)
- Nividia GeForce Graphics Card (choose a good one with discrete memory) - so that it doesn't eat up your memory
- OS: Windows XP Pro SP2 (better for games, not Vista!!!)
- at least 1 GB Ram - 2 GB (optimal)
- 17" or 19" LCD monitor
- a gamer mouse (try FX 7)

Answer 4

i could purely purchase or build a clean computing gadget, that Celeron processor is going to kill you while it contains gaming (no longer upgradeable) and the memory is a gradual, it you initiate up from scratch you could actually supply your self over 4times the processing capacity and you won't be able to easily pass up plenty bigger interior the quantity of memory on your computing gadget yet you will additionally develop the linked fee of the memory to boot. I wont even pass into the video card ideas.

Answer 5

Consider this set up:
http://arstechnica.com/guides/buyer/guide-200706.ars/3
Since you already have a monitor, you could improve on the set up w/ an E6750 processor and a Geforce 8800GTX graphics card and still stay within budget limit.