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Advice on upgrade?

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Hi all,
I've been trying to figure out what I can do for a cheap (~$100) upgrade to get a couple more good years out of my system. My current build is:
Intel D915PCY mobo
p4 560 @ 3.6 ghz
3 gb DDR2-533 ram
8800 GTS 320mb
windows 7 32-bit
gaming (mostly FPS games, currently borderlands) @ 1080p

Asking around on some threads & doing some tests, it seems like there isn't any advantage to getting a new graphics card due to my bad cpu bottleneck. Is this a good option for an upgrade? -
AMD Athlon ii x3 440 @ $63 (using Bing cashback program)
MSI 790XT-G45 mobo @ $61 (open box from newegg)

My hope would be to sell the 915 board + p4 cpu for ~$40 or $50 on ebay and bring the total cost of the upgrade to ~$90

Any thoughts? I'm hoping that an upgrade like that would allow for a few more years out of my system, perhaps with a graphics card upgrade in another year or so. How big a deal is it to stick with my older DDR2-533 memory rather than upgrading to DDR3 or even DDR2-800?

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Homebuilt system Expert

The motherboard you listed uses DDR2. You cannot put DDR3 memory into it... so it's a moot point.
-DDr2 and DDR3 physically are different. Thats why most motherboards use one or or the other... they wont work interchangably.
You wont notice much difference between DDR2 533 and 800... so just keep with what you have.

as far as the CPU/mobo... tahts a decent upgrade.... however, as noted above, you wont be able to upgrade to ddr3 with it. I'd say go for it.. and you'll be ok for a year. Then do a new build in a year

lowriderflow said:
The motherboard you listed uses DDR2. You cannot put DDR3 memory into it... so it's a moot point.
-DDr2 and DDR3 physically are different. Thats why most motherboards use one or or the other... they wont work interchangably.
You wont notice much difference between DDR2 533 and 800... so just keep with what you have.

as far as the CPU/mobo... tahts a decent upgrade.... however, as noted above, you wont be able to upgrade to ddr3 with it. I'd say go for it.. and you'll be ok for a year. Then do a new build in a year


But is it worth another $100 or so to grab a DDR3 board & upgrade my RAM? I don't have much sense of how much RAM speeds affect performance in games.
Homebuilt system Expert

For your purposes... I'd say no. Sure it's better, but it sounds like you're doing this on a tight budget. Realistically, DDR3 or DDR2 isnt going to make a difference in this computer.

If you had something like an i5, then you really want to be using DDR3.
But for an athlon II x3, it wont make any difference.

I think you had it right the first time... go with the CPU/Motherboard ugprade alone.
8800gts is still pretty solid. maybe a year from now try to sell the computer as a whole and buiuld a new one.
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