Best upgrade for aging gamer rig

[ohiou_grad_06]

Another thread I posted in and read got me to thinking about something. I've been thinking of doing some upgrading around Christmas time. Right now I've got the following...

AMD Athlon x2 5200+ Windsor core @ 2.6 ghz stock speed
Gigabyte m57sli-s4 motherboard(socket AM2)
2 gb ddr2
Galaxy 9600gt
650 Watt Ultra LSP power supply with 38 amps on the 12v+ rail
320 gb hard drive


So even though the board is old it can run some of the AM3 chips with a bios update which I've already done.

So I've been thinking about maybe a 720 black edition and 2 gb ddr2 memory, but the other thread got me to thinking that maybe I would be better off going with an ATI 5750 and 2 gb ddr2 instead of getting the 720.

The resolution I'm running is 1680x1050, most of the benchmarks I've seen say the 5750 runs most games well as 1900x1200 so I think it would be more than enough to run things on my 22 inch.

So what do you guys think? What's going to be the best gain for my old gaming rig right now? Thanks.

 

[Proximon]

I think the video card upgrade is probably going to be the best bang for the buck, unless you are mostly a strategy gamer.

Personally, I play a wide range of games... Civ IV, WoW, FPS (mostly solo but some online) so I favor a strong processor more than others might.

 

[mindless728]

i would go for the PII 720, 4GB DDR2(for a total of 6GB), and the ati 5770

the reason for the 4GB DDR2 is if you ever want more of that ram later, expect to pay a price premium for older ram, kind of how DDR prices went through the roof

though gaming wise, you could probably skip the cpu upgrade

 

[capt_taco]

Video card is probably going to help more than the CPU, although upgrading the CPU later would give a little boost as well.

Don't get the 5750 if your system can handle anything else. That's the worst DX11 card on the market. A 58xx series might be overkill for that machine, but it's worth it to spend the extra $20 for a 5770, and your power supply should handle it easily.

Adding some more RAM would be a plus too -- but what OS are you running? If you're on XP, any more than 4GB probably won't do you any good; that's all the 32-bit version will recognize. But that should be plenty for that machine anyway -- an AM3 chip, 4GB RAM and a 5770 will keep it relevant for a couple more years and basically max out what you can do with that motherboard until it's time to buy a new machine.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Vista 64 for OS, sorry about that. That's kinda the plan, save a little money by maxing what I can do on my old mobo.

 

[capt_taco]

oh, well in that case, might as well go for 8GB or so. That ought to be plenty, and I don't really see anything above that adding much to your system given the eventual limits of the other components.

As a side note, this thread got me curious as to exactly what's out there for DDR2 these days, and I've got to day -- god DAMN, is it expensive. Course, so is anything if you want 4GB on one stick.

 

[mindless728]

oh, well in that case, might as well go for 8GB or so. That ought to be plenty, and I don't really see anything above that adding much to your system given the eventual limits of the other components.

As a side note, this thread got me curious as to exactly what's out there for DDR2 these days, and I've got to day -- god DAMN, is it expensive. Course, so is anything if you want 4GB on one stick.

DDR2 getting expensive the way DDR did was my excuse of buying 8GB of ram when i built the system

though odly enough, some of the cheapest 4GB/dimm sets is in the server memory market 12GB(3x4GB) DDR3-1333 ~$370