Escapist, Computer Upgrade Help Needed

[Dyp100]

As I'm sure all of you know, this year is one of the best gaming years since...Probabaly...IDK, you guys tell me, and so therefore I'm planning on getting a computer upgrade. (Mainly for Dragon Age and L4D2, I must admit.)

So, I need help deciding what I should get, and if my CPU or anything else needs upgrading or not.

First things first, I'm not sure what my motherboard is, but I can tell you all my other specs and you tell me what should be compatible or not, and some such.

My current system is:
Windows Vista 64-bit.
4GB RAM
465GB hard drive.
GeForce 9400GT.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ 2.71GHz

I've asked the Escapist since I know there is a lot of PC gamers here who may be able to help and probably know there stuff.

I'm looking to mainly upgrade my GPU, and my budget is about £200, for the time being anyway.

 

[Dyp100]

Sorry for bumping guys, but I really need help on this, and this is the best video game forum I know.

 

[j0z]

Hmmm... well, I think your processor will be fine for now. You could upgrade your gfx card to the nVidia GTX 200 series, but that will definitely set you back some cash. I don't know a good site for buying that stuff and shipping it to britian. (Newegg doesn't ship overseas)
EDIT- The Radeon 5870 is better, but it might be out of your price range (I don't know the dollars-pounds exchange rate), but the 5850 is a step down from the 5870, but is within your budget (I think).

 

[DazZ.]

For UK sites, try Overclockers (slightly pricey on some things) & eBuyer.
Anyone else have UK stores quote me, I'm in the market for a processor.

OT: All you need is a gfx card, in my opinion. I haven't built or upgraded in awhile so I'm slightly (ok, very) out of touch with gfx hardware so can't recommend anything specific.

 

[jamesworkshop]

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173696

A GTX 275 is a nice upgrade and under £200

 

[veloper]

a 5200+ isn't exactly great. Not as crappy as a 9400gt though.

I wouldn't pair that cpu with anything faster than a HD4770 or GF 9800gt.
Cost less than half of his total budget.

 

[geldonyetich]

If you've got a 640-bit system, I'd say you're doing fabulous, that's 10x more bits than the rest of us have.

That said, whenever I want to get a hardware upgrade done, I swing by www.tomshardware.com and check out their benchmarks of the latest CPUs and video cards. Go for a good medium of price versus performance. If you get the most powerful stuff, you'll be the king of the hill... for 5 seconds, then you'll just have wasted your money. Go for the stuff towards the upper spectrum that's also reasonably priced.

Basically, you want to start with the CPU and Video card (the two major computer power determiners as lead to be games) and then work your way down to compatible motherboard and memory.

 

[Dyp100]

a 5200+ isn't exactly great. Not as crappy as a 9400gt though.

I wouldn't pair that cpu with anything faster than a HD4770 or GF 9800gt.
Cost less than half of his total budget.

My friend said I should buy a HD4890, but you think it wouldn't work well with my CPU? (Sorry for my noobish knowledge, I'm still learning about computers.)

And thanks for all the repilies guys.

 

[veloper]

a 5200+ isn't exactly great. Not as crappy as a 9400gt though.

I wouldn't pair that cpu with anything faster than a HD4770 or GF 9800gt.
Cost less than half of his total budget.

My friend said I should buy a HD4890, but you think it wouldn't work well with my CPU? (Sorry for my noobish knowledge, I'm still learning about computers.)

And thanks for all the repilies guys.

What would happen is your CPU would be 100% stressed feeding the drawing calls to the GPU, while the HD4890 idles most of the time, processing what little data it gets with ease.
With a 4770 instead, the 5200+ still cannot keep up, but atleast the 4770 will have some workload.

The performance will remain bottlenecked by the CPU, but it will cost you less money.

 

[Dyp100]

a 5200+ isn't exactly great. Not as crappy as a 9400gt though.

I wouldn't pair that cpu with anything faster than a HD4770 or GF 9800gt.
Cost less than half of his total budget.

My friend said I should buy a HD4890, but you think it wouldn't work well with my CPU? (Sorry for my noobish knowledge, I'm still learning about computers.)

And thanks for all the repilies guys.

What would happen is your CPU would be 100% stressed feeding the drawing calls to the GPU, while the HD4890 idles most of the time, processing what little data it gets with ease.
With a 4770 instead, the 5200+ still cannot keep up, but atleast the 4770 will have some workload.

The performance will remain bottlenecked by the CPU, but it will cost you less money.

Oh right, I might hold offf untill Christmas so I at least have enough money to buy a CPU, any suggestions for which I should get?

(And thank you for all the help.)

 

[veloper]

a 5200+ isn't exactly great. Not as crappy as a 9400gt though.

I wouldn't pair that cpu with anything faster than a HD4770 or GF 9800gt.
Cost less than half of his total budget.

My friend said I should buy a HD4890, but you think it wouldn't work well with my CPU? (Sorry for my noobish knowledge, I'm still learning about computers.)

And thanks for all the repilies guys.

What would happen is your CPU would be 100% stressed feeding the drawing calls to the GPU, while the HD4890 idles most of the time, processing what little data it gets with ease.
With a 4770 instead, the 5200+ still cannot keep up, but atleast the 4770 will have some workload.

The performance will remain bottlenecked by the CPU, but it will cost you less money.

Oh right, I might hold offf untill Christmas so I at least have enough money to buy a CPU, any suggestions for which I should get?

(And thank you for all the help.)

I can give only very general advice, without knowing your budget and the cpu market a month from now.
Don't get anything less than atleast a 2,8ghz triple core, but don't pay the premium for anything faster than a core-i7-860 either.

 

[Dyp100]

Personally I think your CPU still has a bit of life left in it. At the moment the 9400 is the massive bottleneck in your system. If you are impatient and want good performance you can grab the ATI HD4890 for less than 150 quid. That'll leave you with money left over to save for a new motherboard and processor.

Alternatively you can just wait it out until the 5850/5870 drop in price when Nvidia finally pull the finger out and release their new cards.

I think I might end up waiting, as I can play L4D2 on high/mid with almost no lag, and only a month left to Christmas, right? It'll take me about 3 monthes to finish my first playthrough of Dragon Age, anyway. xD

You'd think it'd need a new motherboard to get a better CPU?

 

[Laughing Man]

Everyone has commented on what cards you could stick in there but no one has asked two very important things.

1). What case do you have, the higher end 200 series Nvidia cards and the 48 and new 58 cards are not what you would call small. You will need to ensure you have a case that is large enough for both the card and more than likely your hard drives. Since typicall the HD storage racks sit right in the way of where a large GPU would be.

2). What PSU do you have. Some crappy no name PSU just ain't gonna do the job when it comes to powering a higher end graphics card. The 94 series card you have their doesn't even require an additional power source, it gets all it's power from the PCI-e lane. A 200, 48 or 58 will require no less than 2 additional PCI-e adapators to power them fully.

You'd think it'd need a new motherboard to get a better CPU?

You have't said what mobo you're running but from the CPU it's safe to say it is a socket AM2 board so in theory you should be able to go all the way up to a quad core at 3.0ghz before you have to consider looking at a new motherboard.

You have two options really, the AM2 socket has been superceed by both the AM3 socket, it was beatn by the LGA 775 Core 2 Duos and it will be crushed without question by the LGA1156 Core I5s and the LGA1366 Core I7s. Forget forking out for a seriously high end GPU, not only will you have to spend the cash on possibly a new PSU and new case to get the thing running you'll then be attaching it to a CPU and Mobo that is now out of date. Yeah you could upgrade to the best CPU you could get but that will cost £120, so with the new PSU, GPU, CPU and possible case you're looking at £400 maybe £500 easily on a system that will still be running on out dated tech.

Your best bet, if you really want to upgrade, would be a lower to mid range GPU, a 9800 series Nvidia card or 4850 from ATI or save your cash and do a proper upgrade to an AM3 or Core I5 rig along with a high end GPU.

As for sites in the UK

www.overclockers.co.uk

the whole, it's more expensive than everyone else argument is crap, I just upgraded my system to a core i5 rig and of all the suppliers I am about to mention they were the cheapest.

www.scan.co.uk
www.microdirect.co.uk
www.dabs.com
www.ebuyer.com
www.aria.co.uk

 

[Dyp100]

Spoiler

Everyone has commented on what cards you could stick in there but no one has asked two very important things.

1). What case do you have, the higher end 200 series Nvidia cards and the 48 and new 58 cards are not what you would call small. You will need to ensure you have a case that is large enough for both the card and more than likely your hard drives. Since typicall the HD storage racks sit right in the way of where a large GPU would be.

2). What PSU do you have. Some crappy no name PSU just ain't gonna do the job when it comes to powering a higher end graphics card. The 94 series card you have their doesn't even require an additional power source, it gets all it's power from the PCI-e lane. A 200, 48 or 58 will require no less than 2 additional PCI-e adapators to power them fully.

You'd think it'd need a new motherboard to get a better CPU?

You have't said what mobo you're running but from the CPU it's safe to say it is a socket AM2 board so in theory you should be able to go all the way up to a quad core at 3.0ghz before you have to consider looking at a new motherboard.

You have two options really, the AM2 socket has been superceed by both the AM3 socket, it was beatn by the LGA 775 Core 2 Duos and it will be crushed without question by the LGA1156 Core I5s and the LGA1366 Core I7s. Forget forking out for a seriously high end GPU, not only will you have to spend the cash on possibly a new PSU and new case to get the thing running you'll then be attaching it to a CPU and Mobo that is now out of date. Yeah you could upgrade to the best CPU you could get but that will cost £120, so with the new PSU, GPU, CPU and possible case you're looking at £400 maybe £500 easily on a system that will still be running on out dated tech.

Your best bet, if you really want to upgrade, would be a lower to mid range GPU, a 9800 series Nvidia card or 4850 from ATI or save your cash and do a proper upgrade to an AM3 or Core I5 rig along with a high end GPU.

As for sites in the UK

www.overclockers.co.uk

the whole, it's more expensive than everyone else argument is crap, I just upgraded my system to a core i5 rig and of all the suppliers I am about to mention they were the cheapest.

www.scan.co.uk
www.microdirect.co.uk
www.dabs.com
www.ebuyer.com
www.aria.co.uk

So you personally think I should wait untill I have more money [400 or 500 as you said] so I can get a proper upgrade?

Sorry, I don't really know my what my PSU is, and yes, my motherboard is an AM2 to the best of my knowledge.

BTW, thanks for the help, you've been the most helpful on this thread so far, anyone with a Bill Bailey avatar can't go wrong. xD