Hi all,
I'm planning on upgrading my system shortly (1 week-1 month). I'm mostly a console gamer, but I want to play Portal 2, Deus Ex 3 and eventually Guild Wars 2 on my PC.
My current build is 4-5 years old now, consisting of an AMD X2 4200+ CPU on an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe mobo, single Geforce 7300GS graphics card (used to be two in SLI, but one died), and sundries (including 3 SATA hard drives). This will be the first time that I've seriously upgraded a system - so far I've only added HDDs and PCI cards, and once replaced a motherboard I blew.
(The fact that that setup has lasted me until now should suggest that I'm not looking to be cutting-edge )
For my GPU, I'm planning to get something off the first page of the monthly best-for-your-money guide, maybe stretching to the start of the second page. (This probably means I'll also have to upgrade my PSU.)
For my CPU, I'm again planning to use something off the first page of the b4ym guide. I was really annoyed that I'd have to get a new mobo and memory at the same time (I thought the point of PC gaming was that you could upgrade bit-by-bit as you needed to ) but then I saw this bundle, which has a CPU from that range, doesn't have too much memory (I'm still on 32-bit XP so >3GB is wasted), and isn't too expensive.
Is this a decent budget option, or is there something terribly flawed with it?
Also, I'm annoyed that I couldn't just drop on a new CPU, because the socket is out of date; how long is the AM3 socket likely to last?
I'm planning on upgrading my system shortly (1 week-1 month). I'm mostly a console gamer, but I want to play Portal 2, Deus Ex 3 and eventually Guild Wars 2 on my PC.
My current build is 4-5 years old now, consisting of an AMD X2 4200+ CPU on an Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe mobo, single Geforce 7300GS graphics card (used to be two in SLI, but one died), and sundries (including 3 SATA hard drives). This will be the first time that I've seriously upgraded a system - so far I've only added HDDs and PCI cards, and once replaced a motherboard I blew.
(The fact that that setup has lasted me until now should suggest that I'm not looking to be cutting-edge )
For my GPU, I'm planning to get something off the first page of the monthly best-for-your-money guide, maybe stretching to the start of the second page. (This probably means I'll also have to upgrade my PSU.)
For my CPU, I'm again planning to use something off the first page of the b4ym guide. I was really annoyed that I'd have to get a new mobo and memory at the same time (I thought the point of PC gaming was that you could upgrade bit-by-bit as you needed to ) but then I saw this bundle, which has a CPU from that range, doesn't have too much memory (I'm still on 32-bit XP so >3GB is wasted), and isn't too expensive.
Is this a decent budget option, or is there something terribly flawed with it?
Also, I'm annoyed that I couldn't just drop on a new CPU, because the socket is out of date; how long is the AM3 socket likely to last?