I have a 2.5 year old Alienware Aurora 7500 with the following specification. Whilst I dont have enough money for a completely new system I am interested in what options I have to upgrade that will have a material impact on my PC performance. I have a budget of about $1000 and use the PC for gaming, mainly MMOPG.
I would just upgrade the video card....these newer 8800series cards are fantastic..That chip is awesome for games still. It may not be a multitasker but for games its still got it
$1000 for a gaming rig these days will buy you quite a bit, including from the ground up. As jackieboy said, you could just upgrade the GPU and still have a nice fast system. Here's a general break down of a $1000 rig:
CPU - $150-250 AMD or Intel, whichever you want.
Mobo - $75-130 This will depend on what you want too.
GPU - $125-300 9600gt to 8800gts or even 3850 to 3870
RAM - $28-$100 2x1 gb's for $28 after MIR's and around $100 for 2x2 gb's
Case - $25-$100 This will all depend on what you like/want.
DVD Burner - $25-35
PSU - $50-$100 Depends on what you put in your system will depend on how much PSU you'll need.
Low side $500 + an OS or anything else.
Medium side $700 or so.
Higher side $1k or so.
You can decide if you want to get a new rig, or just upgrade the GPU, since your only doing mostly MMORPG's, which aren't very graphic heavy.
I would just upgrade the video card....these newer 8800series cards are fantastic..That chip is awesome for games still. It may not be a multitasker but for games its still got it
ditto on the 8800 just make sure that your psu has a 6 pin or similar adapter..
luny hit it on the head. You can build a gaming PC thats solid for less than $1000. You should be able to salvage parts from your old PC to help hold down the cost. This is the direction I would take.
As far as just doing an upgrade, a pair of 8800 GT's may be enough of an upgrade for you to get you buy. You may or may not need to replace your power supply to run these though.
For the $ I'd go with the 9800 gtx or the 3870x2. They are very close in performance and somewhat close in price $300-$400. I think the 3870x2 is better, but it's more $ too, so you can decide what you want. For the performance, I think the 9800 gx2 is too much $.
