Upgrade help on 12 y/o gaming PC with GTX 280, $200-300 budget

Cloov

Prominent
Jul 31, 2017
8
0
510
Hi everyone,

I'm looking for upgrade advice - I've filled in the recommended questions from the posting guide, keeping it short and simple.


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Current machine:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad LGA775 Q6600 GO SLACR 2.40GHz Retail
Motherboard: Abit IP35 Pro XE
RAM: Corsair XMS2 4GB PC2-6400C5 DDR2 Dual Channel Kit, and Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5 1066MHz Dual Channel
PSU: Corsair TX 650W ATX SLi Compliant Power Supply (CMPSU-650TXUK)
GPU: Gainward GeForce GTX 280 1024MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (XNE/TX280+T305-P651)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 250GB SATA-II 16MB Cache - OEM (WD2500AAKS), and an extra Western Digital 1TB

The case is an Antec case of some description, Midi sized, I think.

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Upgrade budget
Ideally I want to suggest an affordable upgrade now, and then a second upgrade for next month perhaps. So $100-200 this month, $100-200 again the next month, or something like that.

OS: not required
Purchase date: over the coming fortnight (August 2017)
Location: United Kingdom
SLI or Crossfire: No
Parts Preferences: Intel, NVidia
Overclocking: No
Monitor resolution: 1920x1080
System Usage: Gaming (almost entirely)

Why upgrading
The machine is approx. 12 years old, and we want to TRY and make this machine capable of present-day games.

Target games:

League of Legends, Rocket League, maybe PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds

I know the PC will play D3 and LoL, and probably Rocket League on lower settings. I guess the aim is being able to play the above comfortably, and to be able to play some newer games on reduced graphical settings.


Thanks!
 
Solution
You need atleast these upgrades to make that machine capable of current games...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor (£68.38 @ PC World Business)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-B250M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£64.62 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws 4 series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£59.30 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1050 2GB DUAL Video Card (£100.12 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£49.49 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £341.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and...
You need atleast these upgrades to make that machine capable of current games...

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core Processor (£68.38 @ PC World Business)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-B250M-DS3H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£64.62 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws 4 series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£59.30 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1050 2GB DUAL Video Card (£100.12 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 450W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply (£49.49 @ Ebuyer)
Total: £341.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-07-31 18:27 BST+0100
 
Solution

Cloov

Prominent
Jul 31, 2017
8
0
510
Thanks, that looks good!

I built the machine 12 years ago and recently built myself a new machine, so I have my own idea of what I could do to ugprade, but I'd rather get further opinions :)
 

somesh101

Honorable
Jul 16, 2015
289
1
10,815
i wil list the problems first.
it's 12 year old machine
for current games you don't have capable cpu, gpu and monitor.

when you are going to upgrade a cpu motherboard and ram are mandotry in such cases.
in nutshell you are looking at entire pc upgrade.

you will be better off saving aqbout $ 500 and purchase the items at once.

with current market
about $120 ryzen 3
$200 GPU
100$ motherboard
$ 50 PSU
$ 50 ram
$ 50 case or you can mod your old case even then you will spend this much.
$ 30 keyboard/mouse
and then monitor (this is what most build won't include).

May be you can try to put a 1050 4gb in thier and see if it works for you.
and buu other parts later.
NOTE you will need a dvi to dvi or to Vga cable

 

somesh101

Honorable
Jul 16, 2015
289
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i know that.
even then you are will be getting that gpu. so problem in trying this out.
and if you can oc that cpu to 3.0 it may be give you playable fps
 


The IPC of that chip is dated slow. Wont make much difference even when OCed.
 

Cloov

Prominent
Jul 31, 2017
8
0
510
This is all great information.

When most of you refer to 'current titles', is there a consensus on what that means? I know I was the first to use the term, but since it's quite vague - I'll give three examples from a spectrum, just off the top of my head - which would you say is closest to this term?

a) Being able to run Rise of the Tomb Raider at 60fps on medium settings
b) Being able to run Doom 2016 at 60fps on ANY settings (i.e. the lowest, if necessary)
c) Being able to run a 2014 FPS at 60fps on medium settings

Running current games perhaps isn't accurate as a requirement for now. The person receiving this machine has shown interested in playing PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, and I know that could be tough, but they won't be fussy about graphical detail level either, so we're at the mercy of its graphical scalability, and I'm sure I can look further into this for specific benchmarking results before spending £100 and realising there's just no way to play it without spending £400.

I used to play Diablo 3 and League of Legends on this machine, and there are some games from this era (5-8 years old) that will probably suffice, and so an upgrade designed to make things like Rocket League comfortable enough to play, is possibly enough.

Having said that, it's great to hear so many responses specific to this old build - I'm not criticising.
 

King_V

Illustrious
Ambassador
A modern video card should help.

If you can find one used, cheap, a Q9550 or Q9650 CPU would also give a performance boost... IF your motherboard supports those processors.

Also, if supported, one of the QX9xxx processors, as they are easier to overclock. In any case, a CPU upgrade is not going to give you more than a modest performance increase.


However, it's an archaic, dead-end platform. The video card can make a difference, but, ultimately, the CPU (and general platform) will become the bottleneck. It'll never be able to do much better than, at best, a very budget system of today. It is not worth putting money into, EXCEPT for a better video card, because at least the video card can be moved to a new system.
 
If you go with the upgrade listed above, it should play most games upto now(2017) with 1080p medium settings. In some cpu heavy games like BF1 and GTA5 you might have to scale the settings a bit. And yes, the titles you have listed are also covered in there. Basically the upgrade will boost your basic platform to current gen. And if you have working HDDs and case, its as good as a new pc.
 

somesh101

Honorable
Jul 16, 2015
289
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look at the king V comment
the reson i suggested you to try a 1050 ti.
it won't demsnad you another 400bucks. It is going to do it's work, mostly it wil be bottlenecked by cpu.
 

somesh101

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Jul 16, 2015
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and by modern titles we mean games released in 2016 and later.
 

Cloov

Prominent
Jul 31, 2017
8
0
510
Again, thanks for the suggestions.

Since we would like quick results, and since I've considered the possibility of better GPU into current machine (£100-200), then move GPU to brand new (budget) build in a year or two's time, getting a new GPU even though it's somewhat bottlenecked by the current machine. If current-caliber RAM were compatible in this old machine, and could also be moved to a new machine, might that be an option?

I'm not set on this, I've still to take a look at all the replies again - there's a LOT more than I expected!
 

somesh101

Honorable
Jul 16, 2015
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if you are going for new build in year or two. you can go for 700 series may be an old card would do the trick for you.
 

Cloov

Prominent
Jul 31, 2017
8
0
510
I don't think for a second that the above option (of buying a new GPU alone, for the time being) is a shortcut, or even going to be hugely effective - I knew that before I came to the forum. I got exactly the information I was hoping for - a good couple of warnings about bottlenecks, which I imagine will be significant - along with suggestions for almost whole-machine upgrades. So that's great.