Tidgy

looking at upgrading my computer and not realy in touch any more with whats good and not.

prob gonna have about £700 ish to spend, its gonna be used as a gaming machine and then internet etc.

i'll need, motherboard, chip, graphics card, ram, sound card and then flat pannel monitor (looking for at least 19 inch).

using existing hard drive (although might change if it'll slow comp down, still running a 5400rpm drive), mouse, keyboard, case, dvd, cd writer (dont need dvd writing capability at the min and from what i've seen you can pick em up for £30 anyway)

will get new speakers, but not in the budget above.


jsut seen the new nvidia direct x 10 card specs and seem to be very high, although its £400 ish, is it worth having yet? (would extend budget for it if its worth having)

Cheers for the help

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

to be honest wouldnt bother with the 1st gen dx 10 gfx cards just yet as I imagine they could be a little bit buggy. Dont think they are releasing dx10 for anything other than vista anyway.
Graphics wise I suppose it depends on what games you play and that alone will help with the gfx card choice. You can pick up a 19inch tft with an 8ms response from aria they had one on special the other day for just over £100, you will be resolution limited though to below 1600x1200 (think on that monitor it was 1400 x ????)
Get a new hd, new motherboards generally support SATA now and not PATA, and for £40 quid you can get a 80gb that is a 7200rpm and will also have a decent buffer as well.

Processor wise a good cheap bargain is the pentium d 805 dual core. Can be picked up for about £60 and it is only 2.66ghz, however this is a mad overclocker and I run mine on air at 3.6ghz and it has not crashed once. I can run it faster but at 4ghz it can be a bit tempramental!
Factor in about £100 for a decent mobo (Asus // Abit) and I would go for 2gb of memory for about £150 ish depending on make.

So ballpark figures
£130 monitor 19 inch tft
£65 pentium D805 Dual core
£170 2gb memory (best doing 2 x 1gb running dual channel for a bit extra)
£120 for a decent mobo
£50 for a new hd (80gb 7200rpm)
£170 Ati Radeon 1950pro (or xt) 256mb card

The above prices are a bit dearer than what you can get the bits for though, but the above is about £700. Obviosuly you could also reduce the memory to 1gb (2 x 512mb matched pair for dual channel) and this would save a bit of cash.

Lots of places have daily specials, I find the best to be

computer components pc systems, parts & peripherals aria
Micro Direct Ltd - Quality Computer Components
Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK
ebuyer.com - the UK's largest independent online retailer of computers, components, electronics, MP3 Players,cameras, televisions, DVD Players, car audio, software and more...
dabs.com - PC Hardware, Components, Software, Digital Cameras, MP3 Players

I mainly use the first 3 but they are also quite local to me. The machine above I would class as a mid spec machine, but it will be more than capable of handling anything you throw at it as you wont be able to have massive resolutions with the monitor anyway.

Tidgy

thanks for the info, is the graphics a pci ex16?

also is there any weight in changing to nvidia instead? always had them, but not to bothered if changing

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

yes the gfx is a pci x16, the nvidias are good but for the 170 ish price range the x1950 is a good buy, (especially if you get one that you can unlock the extra pipes and you then end up with ATI's top card ) It is generally faster than nvidias mid level products

I have more or less always used nvidia myself apart from a radeon 9800 SE which I modded to a 9800 xt currently I am just using 1 x 6600gt which does me for the games I play on my pc (max resolution of 1280 x 1024) with all effects maxed but low levels of anti aliasing (tend to only play games on the 360 nowadays though)

Tidgy

so if i was to say through an extra £150 at it up to £850, would there be a big jump in performance? or is it the kind of cost area where thers not much difference?

TonyBurns

iTrader: (3)

MB approx 150 quid (975x chipset prob Intel 975xbx or asus)
CPU. Core 2 duo e6600 now about 200 quid new.
GPU.... choice here, either a 7950 512mb gt card or a 7900 gtx, cost about 250-300 quid.
HDD, about 40-50 quid you will need to upgrade.
Memory. 2gb really nowerdays, cheap stuff about 100 quid, decent stuff about 170 quid.
PSU. 70 quid (you will probably need to upgrade this tbh unless you have a 550+ but even then.....)

More like 900 than 700 quid, but the core 2 duo's seriously outperform the intel D chips by a considerable margin and give you a better chance to upgrade with the latest 975x chipsets.

Tony

jaytc2003

iTrader: (1)

I would have suggested the core 2 but it would have gone over budget as you say. The ati 1950 will outperform the 7900gtx if you can unlock the extra pipes and is about £100 cheaper. Getting the latest cards is pointless really unless you are at really high resolutions which a 19 inch will not supply. I find it hard to get anything to bring my 6600gt to its knees!

So Tidgy in answer to your question you would be better getting a core 2 instead of the latest gfx cards.