Advice on PC upgrading

[Byr0m]

OK, so I want to upgrade my rig, because, basically...its crap and I want a better rig to run some of the newer games that are already out/when they come out (Starcraft 2) but I can't afford a really expensive load of parts. Any ideas?

Spec:
XP Home Edition Service Pack 3
Intel Pentium 4 - 3.40GHz (2 CPUs)
2GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8600 - 512MB

 

[migo]

I'd guess from those specs that you have an AGP slot for a graphics card. My understanding is the 8X00 series is as good as it gets for AGP cards, with higher end Radeons being buggy. You're looking at almost a complete overhaul - new GPU, new CPU and new motherboard. You can keep your RAM, but you'll need to buy more to handle Windows 7 gaming.

As is, you've got a top spec Windows XP gaming rig, and you'd probably be spending at least $400 to upgrade, and you may or may not get a system that's significantly better than what you have right now.

I'd say hold off as long as you can, and in particular wait for RAM prices to come down. Alternatively you could sink some money into an SSD, which will improve your performance somewhat, and is something you'll be able to take with you to a more complete system upgrade.

Jacking up the RAM wouldn't hurt either, and you could always go on craigslist, buy old systems with RAM included, keep the RAM, and sell off the remaining parts individually to get yourself something like 4GB total RAM for a very minimal cost (aside from a time investment).

 

[Klepa]

I'm pretty confident that 8600 is a PCI-E card, so you can just buy any new one.
8600 was never a big time gaming GPU, so you should do well to replace it. 2GB of ram isn't really enough by today's standards, I'd say a total of 4gb should do you fine.
When it comes to ram, more isn't always more, so I wouldn't recommend getting much more than 4gb, unless you've got a good reason.

Starcraft 2 will most likely run pretty fine on your current PC already, Blizzard's never been much for high-end ingame graphics.

edit: noticed that you've got a 32bit XP. Having more than 3gb of ram won't cause you any problems, but the surplus will go to waste on a 32bit OS. You'll want a 64bit OS to make use of any more than 3gb of ram.

 

[drizztmainsword]

Depending how much money you have to spend on this, I would recommend a complete overhaul of your system, but to various levels. The Core 2 chips are very cheap now and are considerably more powerful than Pentiums. If you want your computer to be seriously beastly, start looking at the i5 and i7 chips. AMD also makes very good processors that are pretty cheap. The Phenom 2s are quite good.

In any case, you're going to *need* a new graphics card. I'm not an expert on ATI cards, but their 5XXX series is REALLY nice. Lots of power and generally good prices. If you want to go NVidia, get a 9800 or better (270, 280). I wouldn't recommend a Geforce 400 series card. They are completely outperformed by the newer ATI cards and they cost a lot less.


You're also going to need new RAM, as you're going to be jumping a few hardware generations. Most of the good tech runs on DDR3 RAM, and you've probably got DDR.


Good luck!

 

[Byr0m]

My budget depends I guess but I wasn't expecting anything REALLY over £200 (I'm not loaded), from what it sounds like, for the prices we're talking, I'd be better buying a new computer. Yeah or No?

 

[Byr0m]

Ok thanks a lot everyone