hardware advice

hi..

i finally decided to get a dell 2407 lcd monitor butt, my current system as follows may not handle it.

amd athlon 2.4
512 ram
geforce 3 ti 500

hmm i dunno, the monitor is coming tommorow so i cant know if it will work or not until then. its worked ok for most games with setting turned down*

i dont think it will handle the new monitor though so want some recommendations. nothing expensive please * i just wanna upgrade what i currently have.

its a nforce 2 motherboard, with agp so i think the old style graphic cards will work.

anyone know of a good card? radeon maybe or something

cheers in advance

about £100 hmm its like $200 but its really the same. things cost more in the uk.

i was lucky enough to get a pair of 1gig corsair 800 xms2 ram sticks from a cousin in america so i have the ram for my system. just need a graphic card

hi, if i were to give you a budget of £400-500 could you perhaps choose the parts i would need?

i have the monitor, ram, dvd(old system), floppy drive(old system)

just need a cpu
case
power thing
motherboard
graphics

You bet pal, as a matter of fact it's kind of a forum hobby around here to do just that. People love to see how good of a rig they can put together at minimal cost.

Yeah they were both AGP cards.

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2964&p=1
Here is a review detailing some features of the 650i and comparing it to the 680i.

I had started to put together a build for you using an AMD X2 6000+, would you prefer to go with Intel, or are you of no preference?

My advice at your price point is to go with the AMD, which is going to be slightly faster at stock speeds at the lower end of prices, unless you plan on overclocking.

The Intel Core 2 duo line is much better at overclocking if you feel comfortable doing that.

Getting an x2 3600 and an am2 board would be a much better deal than spending money on an agp card. You already have the ram...which is good. You would also need a PSU though, unless you already have an efficient one. Then you can get a graphics card when you get the money...the processor and pci-e upgrade should be your main priority.

It's getting late over here, if you have any questions just post them here and I will answer them in the morning(or someone else will beat me to it)

Good luck

I was kind of in the same situation as you were in. Basically exact same specs as your current desktop but I had a Geforce 4 Ti 4600. I ended up just trashing it and building a new system in November. I was going to hold out until about now but since my computer was breaking down it just wasnt worth it for me to fix.

Now I've noticed some pretty big price drops since then. The Core 2 Duo E6320-6420 now have 4M of Cache and under $200 and the E6600 now at $235 is a killer deal. Video cards are also coming down little by little along with everything else. I only wished I could of waited until now.

But the Dell 24 if freaken sweet and I dunno if your current system will do it justice.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/show [...] subcat=103
There is this one, which is £18 less than the other, but you will lose over 100 watts of power.

I used this wattage calculaor this morning http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine
and it says that your system will pull about 300 watts. Keep in mind that the last thing you want is to use 100% of your power supply's rated watts, or even close, as this will dramatically shorten the life of your PSU.

Good luck
let me know what you decide

i also have lots of different wires, some came with psu and some came with the case.

is there a guide that helps build a computer with pictures?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814133193
Here is your basic 320mb 8800gts. No overclock, stock cooler, everything just plain vanilla, but extremely inexpensive with the outstanding performance you would expect from a geforce 8 series.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130038
This is an overclocked version, with the core clock set at GTX speed. (core clock 576 mhz, a GTX is 575 mhz) It's a bit more expensive, but you get a pretty good bump in speed for that cost.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130040
This is the highest overclocked version of the GTS , although the difference between this and the slightly less overclocked one is only 12mhz, which is hardly noticeable, although you would pay $30 more for it.

All of these are from newegg, you'll have to shop around for a UK vendor.

is this a good cpu also? its the cheapest core 2 duo i can find butt...

is it a poor choice cuz its cheapest? i have heard a lot of good things about th4e core 2 line from forums all over the internet. but is it ok if i get the slowest one?

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/126904

Yeah the superclocked eVga 8800 gts 320 is fine(that's the one I would go with out of all the 320's).

The processor you have selected will be quite a bit slower than the 6000+ unless you overclock it.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipse [...] i=2933&p=3
The 6320 will be a little bit faster than the 6300 shown on this chart.

With a pretty moderate overclock you could bring the 6320 to the top of the chart shown.

If you have decided to go with Intel(I did), then I urge you to overclock your processor. The core 2 duo line is a breeze to overclock, frequently you do not even have to adjust the voltage or replace the stock cooler to get a respectable overclock from it. There is a wealth of knowledge online, even right here on this site on tips and tricks for overclocking.

The board you picked supports SLI, so you can spend quite a bit less for a very nice board. The 650i not only has x16 pci express, it has 2 x16 pci express slots.

thanks,

ok i just ordered my parts

e6420, there was an offer and it was just £10 more
320 gig sataii 16m seagate hard drive
asus 650i , the one i linked
evga superclocked

all these components will fit into antec 900 case? will i need anything else for building it

thanks for all the help