DarkSable said:
Ouch...
What games is he going to be playing with it? Neither the 220 nor the Athlon II dual core will be running anything close to modern games, and having DDR2 ram doesn't help any either.
He's probably not going to be a graphics hog, but the 220 isn't even going to launch many games; go ahead and get the 550ti, and no worry about a quad core CPU. (It's needed for, say, battlefield 3 mutiplayer, or far cry 3... if he's playing mostly older games and doesn't mind low settings on newer stuff, that's the best way to go.)
I've played just about everything that's been released since I built the computer, all the Assassin Creed games, it wasn't happy playing 3, but barely lagged a few times, and very short, all the Fallouts, NFS series, haven't played Battlefield 3, or Far Cry, but this thing hasn't disappointed me, but again, it depends on what your used to using, give this to a kid in Africa, and he'd be amazed, take your computer to Bill gates and he'd laugh lol, the only thing I don't turn up is Res, that runs at 1024x768, then again, I just hooked up a 1080 tv instead of using my old dinosaur monitor, and now I turn it up more, though I haven't played much with the tv on here...
Bromeh said:
If i had that computer, i would completly build a new one. Why ? Motherboard is old, processor is old, graphic card is old, ram is old. The older the things are, the higher are the chances that it can break. But really, if you want to keep it, go for a graphics card. With that dual core, the graphic card is a little too powerful. Take a cheaper one because you won't feel any difference between a GTS 450 and that 550Ti since the processor will be bottlenecking. But remeber that everything is old and the new games coming out will be heavier and heavier on the system. Better start from scratch.
- The Brownie
The 550 TI is actually $5 cheaper on Newegg.com lol, and that's without a $30 rebate on the 550, which unfortunately ends before any of us will have the money...
Bromeh said:
If i had that computer, i would completly build a new one. Why ? Motherboard is old, processor is old, graphic card is old, ram is old. The older the things are, the higher are the chances that it can break. But really, if you want to keep it, go for a graphics card. With that dual core, the graphic card is a little too powerful. Take a cheaper one because you won't feel any difference between a GTS 450 and that 550Ti since the processor will be bottlenecking. But remeber that everything is old and the new games coming out will be heavier and heavier on the system. Better start from scratch.
- The Brownie
I'm going to, but they can't afford to, and it works better than you'd probably think, but then again, you're probably used to a computer more like what I'm building, whereas I'm used to stock computers, I don't know anyone else who has built a computer, so I haven't really experienced a performance computer... If they had the money, they'd probably build him one too, well, tell me a budget, and have me research and build his, but they can't...