Upgrading

[177ine177ine]

Hey guys, just looking for some advice. My current system:

Amd 3500+
Geforce 6600gt
Two gigs of RAM
74 Gig Raptor
320 Gig Seagate
120 Gig WD
Asus a8n-sli motherboard

I'm basically looking for not a fresh system but just a small upgrade to this one. I was thinking just the graphics card to help me play some games like Red Alert 3 and such. My budget is no more than 300-500 dollars max as I don't want to break the bank. I was torn b/w the ATI 4850 and 9800GT, both of which I can buy for 199 and 159 respectively. Keep in mind I am in Canada. My biggest question is how much will that CPU bottleneck my system and is there something cheap I could put in to replace the 3500+ as it is only a 939 socket and I'm not sure what would work with this.

Thanks in Advance
177ine

Edit: I have a 620 watt OCZ gamexstream power supply that should be able to handle any graphics card I decide to use. Thanks

 

[Zecow]

Depends on the resolution you are going for. But with the new cards like 4850 on that CPU theres some bottleneck. The thing is.. if you plan to get a new card now and hope to save up for a board/cpu upgrade, by that time a newer card might come out. IMO - I'd just wait and save up so that I can just upgrade in 1 go. CPU, Board, and GPU.

 

[Proximon]

At one time I had a similar system. I upgraded to a 7900GT, and when that went I got an 8800GT, which worked great but the CPU was clearly bottlenecking AoC.

So, my impression is that you would see significant improvements by upgrading your card. You would probably not see much difference between the 9800GT and the 4850, until you upgraded your CPU.

Grab the 4850, as long as you have a good power supply, and then as you can piece together a crossfire system with an Intel CPU.

You can get a P43 board, E8400, and 4Gb of decent RAM for well under $400 Canadian.... actually, here:

ASUS P43 MB
4Gb G. Skill 800Mhz RAM
E8400
EVGA 9800GT

That comes to $500 before tax or shipping, but also before rebates... and if you look around you might get better deals.

 

[colonelblake]

ya, i had a similar system to yours.....your pretty much maxxed out.....i say f*** it.........get a sweet dual core amd mobo and a chip........and youll see 400x the results, easy

 

[swifty_morgan]

To be honest, if you want to upgrade that system go for the 9800gt. You'll see a really big jump in performance over your old card. Save the rest of your money until you can afford a major upgrade. My internet machine used to be my gaming machine. It has an oc'ed 4800 dual core, 4gig of ocz platinum, an a8nsli 32 deluxe mobo and a gts 640 card in it. I did , for a short time run a spare 4870 in it and it seemed to be matched well, but it didn't play one of my favorite online games ( spearhead ) so I put the 640 back in. Driver issue I assume and ATI hasn't made a driver that runs it yet........ may never ... ?????

The 939's performance is extremely dated and can't keep up with the demands of newer software anymore. Each new game that comes out seems to make it more so apparent. Even a lower end core2 duo runs better...... Hope this helps, good luck

 

[Peaks]

I agree that you should opt for a temp option while you save up fpr a full upgrade.

How about getting a sweet dual core and considering the price of say 8800's you could go SLI for a while seeing as tho your mobo supports it. Should be able to do that on 2gb of RAM, but get a better CPU

 

[177ine177ine]

Thanks for the replies guys. Here's what I've come up with for a potential upgrade.

ASUS S.775 INT P43/ICH10 3PCI/ 1PCIE X16,4D.DDR2-1066MHZ 1333 /1066FSB,SATA RAID0 GBLAN ATX $109


EVGA N975 GEFORCE 9800GT 512MB DDR3 PCI-E2.0 D+D+HD HDTV-7 ROHS NO HYBRID RETAIL $159.99

OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400 4GB (2 x 2GB) Vista Upgrade $63.50


INTEL BOX CORE 2 DUO E8400 3.00G 6M 1333 I64 S775 $199.99

Giving me a total of $532.48.

Thanks to Proximon for helping me out and thanks to all you guys. My last few questions would be this:

A. Seeing as the CPU is my most expensive part is there anyway I could get something less or is this pretty much the best value for money I'm looking at?
B. Would you see sense in buying a 9800GT for now to hold me out, and then later upgrading with the mobo, ram, and cpu say in January or late December?
C. I know changing mobo's would mean most likely a complete reinstall of windows but would that be the same with the video card or would my system be happy as is?

Thanks for all the help guys. Just for reference, I'll most likely be buying from www.infonec.com since they are my local supplier and I've done business many times before with them.

Thanks in Advance
177ine

 

[Proximon]

Start with the video card. If it doesn't seem like enough, upgrade your other parts.

Just uninstall your video drivers. Shut down. Install the new card. Boot up and install the newest drivers.