A build that is ok for gaming

[happymatei]

hello
my first time posting here


i currently have a p4 2.8 ghz, asus p5ld2-x, 1 gb ddr 2 667 mhz, 6600 gt
i want to play games like crysis, assassins creed 1-2, dmc 4 and so on, with good graphics and speed
i don't want to rule everything on ultra high quality and ultra resolution
i am looking for a build in the range of 150-200$ ( in my country the components are more expensive then what u guys can get them for so what u pay 200 i pay 230-250 or so )
i was thinking that i could keep the motherboard and ram ( add another 1-2 gb to it )
i don't know how to overclock so no discussion about that kind of things pls
it has been 3 years since i last took a magazine to read about what is new and now i am just blown away
can anyone help me?

 

[o1die]

If you want some responses, post a link to your vender.

 

[hunter315]

What resolution do you play at? A GPU upgrade will help you significantly, but the old p4 isnt going to help you out with modern games, its an older weaker processor. What country are you in? Upgrading to 3 or 4GB of ram will help you out significantly.

I would say probably a 4670, 4GB of ram, and if you have an LGA 775 socket processor maybe upgrade that to a more modern one but the GPU and RAM upgrades will be the easiest ones and will allow you to play at higher detail settings without getting horrible FPS.

 

[happymatei]

the site is in romanian
http://www.emag.ro/componente_pc
dunno how much help is that
the amount i can spend is 800 RON
1 dollar is around 2.9 RONs
its much hustle...
it is better if u guys tell me what is there in that 15-200$ range and i find it here

 

[happymatei]

What resolution do you play at? A GPU upgrade will help you significantly, but the old p4 isnt going to help you out with modern games, its an older weaker processor. What country are you in? Upgrading to 3 or 4GB of ram will help you out significantly.

I would say probably a 4670, 4GB of ram, and if you have an LGA 775 socket processor maybe upgrade that to a more modern one but the GPU and RAM upgrades will be the easiest ones and will allow you to play at higher detail settings without getting horrible FPS.

i have a big monitor so i always play with 1024*768
ok, so u are saying that i could play these games even with that processor?

 

[hunter315]

http://www.emag.ro/placi_video/placa-video-his-ati-radeon-hd4650-512mb-ddr2-128bit-full-hd-pci-e--pH465FS512P
http://www.emag.ro/memorii/kit-dual-channel-kingston-2-x-2gb-ddr2-667mhz--pKVR667D2N5K24G
Those two would provide you a significant upgrade in your gaming performance.

You can play them on that processor but it will lag in certain sections, can you download and run CPU-Z and post the exact model of your motherboard so that we can see what processors it will support.

 

[happymatei]

http://asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=4BnSkzC8IpKQ6OlZ&content=specifications
cpu support list
thank you for helping me

are 512 enough for the memory of the Graphic card?
also, do i have pci express 2.0?

 

[hunter315]

An E6500 would be a significant upgrade over the older pentium 4 you have
http://www.emag.ro/procesoare/procesor-intel-174-pentium-174-dual-core-e6500-293-ghz-socket-775-box--pBX80571E6500
its one of the highest options that ASUS lists as supported by your board.

512MB is plenty of graphics memory for even 1680x1050, and you have a PCI-E slot, PCI-E 2.0 is completely backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.0 so you wont have an issue.

 

[happymatei]

is it any good? i heard they don't work in parallel
so with these specs that u've told me, could i play lets say...crysis or whatever game is new with moderate to high graphics?

thx a lot
is it any way i can repay the favor?

 

[happymatei]

is there a problem if the RAM companies are different? as long as they are all 677 mhz

 

[hunter315]

I would actually suggest swapping out your memory for that 2 stick kit since your motherboard only appears to have 2 ram slots. 2 identical sticks will perform slightly better than 2 different ones.

At 1024x768 the 4670 should allow you atleast medium settings in crysis.

What did you hear doesnt work in parrallel?

 

[happymatei]

I would actually suggest swapping out your memory for that 2 stick kit since your motherboard only appears to have 2 ram slots. 2 identical sticks will perform slightly better than 2 different ones.

At 1024x768 the 4670 should allow you atleast medium settings in crysis.

What did you hear doesnt work in parrallel?

i may say something stupid, but some dude who works in this line of business told me that dual cores function like this ( one cpu works till 100% then the other one starts helping ) and core 2s will work in parallel

 

[happymatei]

An E6500 would be a significant upgrade over the older pentium 4 you have
http://www.emag.ro/procesoare/procesor-intel-174-pentium-174-dual-core-e6500-293-ghz-socket-775-box--pBX80571E6500
its one of the highest options that ASUS lists as supported by your board.

512MB is plenty of graphics memory for even 1680x1050, and you have a PCI-E slot, PCI-E 2.0 is completely backwards compatible with PCI-E 1.0 so you wont have an issue.

6500 is not listed in supported
is there a catch?
it says it supports 6300, 6400, 6600


also, is this an ok deal? 100$ for that 6300 proc
http://www.emag.ro/procesoare/procesor-intel-174-pentium-174-dual-core-e6300-28-ghz-socket-775-box--pBX80571E6300

 

[hunter315]

Nope. Most games these days are atleast dual threaded so they run one on each core of the CPU. If you are running a single threaded application it will only run on one of the cores, but if you are running multiple single threaded applications it will split them between the two cores, so rather than running a single core at 100% for 30 seconds, it will end up running both cores at 100% for 15 seconds which saves time. The distribution of tasks to the multiple cores is handled by your operating system, vista and 7 are significantly better at optimizing for multiple cores than XP was but XP will still split the load reasonably well giving you a performance boost from the dual core.

edit: yeah the E6300 will be a significant upgrade for you as well.

 

[happymatei]

Nope. Most games these days are atleast dual threaded so they run one on each core of the CPU. If you are running a single threaded application it will only run on one of the cores, but if you are running multiple single threaded applications it will split them between the two cores, so rather than running a single core at 100% for 30 seconds, it will end up running both cores at 100% for 15 seconds which saves time. The distribution of tasks to the multiple cores is handled by your operating system, vista and 7 are significantly better at optimizing for multiple cores than XP was but XP will still split the load reasonably well giving you a performance boost from the dual core.

edit: yeah the E6300 will be a significant upgrade for you as well.

understood