Hi Guys. i have a PC that needs a new Motherboard and processor so i thought that i may as well chip in a new graphics card and use it for gaming. can i have some advice please as to what to get. i have £100 to burn or $200 and with that i need to buy processor, motherboard and graphics card. i would prefer to have a much better/expensive processor compared to the other 2 things but, but of course it has to add upto £100 so any advice would be much appreciated, thanks guys
i dont think you can get all 3 of the items you want on your budget. a good video card such as the 8800 or 9800 will set you back anywhere from 150-250 last i checked. a good cpu will set you back around 150 and a mobo about 100 minimum.
hmm thats a shame but how about this: amd dual core 2.7ghz ------>£50 supported mobo ------------>£30 512mb video card ---------->£25 PROCESSOR http://scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=632504 MOBO http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Productinfo.aspx?ProductID=14250 VIDEO CARD http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(16647)ATi-Radeon-X1550-512MB-PCIE-DVI-TV-Out-Oem.aspx what do you guys think?
also have a look at this for better video cards: http://www.microdirect.co.uk/productlister.aspx?n=2,12,57&n=4147 which one is the cheapest that will get the job done?
A proper gaming PC's logical determinant parts (CPU, RAM, Mobo, GPU) will not come as cheap as £100 - the typical gaming PC sets these between £180 and £750. Additionally, I would say to avoid using MicroDirect - cheap as they are, their customer service is very poor.
i see. i put together those 3 items for you guys to see and give me the nod on, but im going to have to completely re-make it seeing as im gonna need new ram (the first mobo supported ddr1, i may aswell get one with ddr2 now) and this will change everything. can you give me some sort of opinions? im not asking you to spoon feed me but im just sooo confused. im not a hardcore gamer at all but i might as well put a few extra bob into it seeing as im already upgrading. and like before i'd prefer to have a better cpu compared to other components. i *might* be able to increase my budget to 150 or so. thakns guys.
£150 makes it a bit more doable, if you can stretch to that. The X2 5200+ is actually a pretty good CPU, the X1550 graphics card is poor for gaming though, and where's your RAM? Additionally, to be safe I'd suggest replacing the PSU. Here's what I'd recommend doing: CPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=632059 Mobo: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=770367 GPU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=771583 RAM: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=232553 PSU: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=468726 Do not underestimate the importance of a reliable PSU - cheap PSUs are usually what cause fires like these. If the above list is out of your reach then perhaps go with the following CPU and motherboard: http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=494604 http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=442372
Thanks for the suggestion mate. however i was pretty keen on having a bigger cpu. i think i know what im doing, i just read a compatibility guide that i googled, and i now know that everything must be compatible with the motherboard. and so with that in mind i'll do some browsing later this week and ill post my results thanks for the help mate.
A CPU upgrade is reasonable, but if your PC's main purpose is gaming, as long as you've got a dual core CPU, you're sorted, it's the graphics card that needs attention. I wouldn't settle for anything less than an 8600GT if you want a half-decent gaming experience.
yeah i see what you mean, do you think you could walk me through how the tiers work for the graphics cards. im a bit confused cos right now i have the impression that the gforce 7000 series is better than the 8000 and then you have all the nonsense with the ati cards becoming better from like the 9000 series to the x1000 series. is their like a sort of simple hierarchy? im also assuming that different manufacturers can incorporate the gforce and the ati radion into their cards or something like that. and what about the mb-age on the card... does that not matter? because it seems that some 256mb cards are more expensive than 512mb cards...!?! and game minimum requirements dont even ask for the 256/512 number thingy. its all very confusing. so any help appreciated again hehe regards, Mubs
Essentially the first number of the card's generation marks its generation, Series 8 cards are newer than Series 7 cards even if they aren't better. The next numbers mark the level of them, so for example an 8800 is better than an 8600. For the same number, a new generation card will always be better - for example, an 8600GT is better than a 7600GT. However, it will not be better than a 7800GT. As for the extra memory, typically 256MB is enough for a normal card, and 512MB enough for a high end one. Top end professional GPUs might want 1GB, but this only goes for nvidia due to the way their cards work. ATI cards do not need more than 512MB at present. The reason why you might see 512MB cards be cheaper than 256MB ones in the midrange sector like the 8600GT is that when the cards have more memory it's usually lower performance stuff - e.g. 512MB DDR2 or 512MB GDDR3, clearly the latter is better, and indeed any high performance graphics card should be using GDDR3 (some ATI cards use GDDR4, but ignore that, they cost at least £90)
i see! thanks for that, it really cleared things up! so the first nummber is generation, second number is level, the higher the level the better but when the level is the same the highest generation number wins ok, i also heard that 512 is only needed if you have bigger monitors is this true? what's the sort of threshold? ill probably start at 17 and may never go over 19 (unless they become cheap) what do you reckon? cheers
256MB would be fine up until 1280x1024 or 1440x900 for almost all games. It's 20" monitors and beyond that use higher resolutions, and therefore would want more video memory.
20 or over, specifically - that isn't a limit set in stone, but it dictates the sort of graphics cards you should be looking at - know of course that there is far more to Graphics cards than just how much memory they have.
right ok thanks for that. ye thats right, i always assumed that the greater the memory the better, but that isnt so...
