Upgrading my PC

What's your budget? Before we can properly recommend you anything, we need to know how much you're willing to spend to upgrade your pc. Otherwise, the information might be worthless if the parts are out of your price range.

 

@hongkongboy
Is it a PCI-E slot and not a regular PCI slot? Cause if it's not a PCI-E slot the card won't work. You need a PCI-E x16 slot to be specific.

@dim8sum
If he had to update his mobo he should just update his other hardware but since he doesn't cause he says he has the right slot it doesn't matter. But his CPU will still be a bottle neck to the cards full potential even if he overclocks. Best option is to get a mobo that supports quads which can be pretty cheap, about 130, and 2 gigs or ram from newegg costs as less as 100 bucks and a future proof q6600 cpu only costs 230. It's a pretty decent gaming system for an extra 450 bucks or so on top of his 8800gt. Unless there's an AMD chip that offers the same performance as the q6600 for the same price... I wouldn't count on it though.

@Crystal84
By nobody are you talking about gamers that are playing multi threaded games? Crysis is designed for quad core CPU's along with other games that are out now. And are you speaking for the huge day to day multi taskers like me that more often than not has a whole bunch of applications running at the same time?

I wonder why dual core cpu's were invented...? Hmmmm....

 

You make a good point there, pepsi. However, Crystal is partially correct. 95% of the population does not need a quad core processor. The quad is designed for processor heavy applications such as 3d rendering, compilation of large programs and serious gamers. The dual core processor was designed with the common user in mind. People who play light games, spend most of their time on the net or downloading music from itunes or whatever. It is true that a quad core will last the test of time better than the dual but the fact of the matter is, people will not opt to buy something more expensive when they don't feel the need for it. And I would agree with them. Not everybody needs a quad core processor.

Most if not all graphics cards run PCI-E x 16 configurations. I've yet to see anything that takes advantage of the x 1 or the x4 slots. Everything you need is either PCI-E x16 or a standard PCI interface. Well...AGP too but nobody cares about AGP anymore.

Again, back to my first point. We NEED to know what the OP is willing to spend before we can make any suggestions on what to get. What's the point of wasting so much time and effort listing part after part when, at the end of the day, the OP is not willing to spend that much money?

 

invented for:

1) work related uses, such as CAD
2) rich people
3) kids of rich people
4) hardcore no life gamers that want to squeeze an extra 5fps...

seriously... a quad core doesn't help you much... most benchmarks say 10% extra performance over a dual core of the same clock... and that's benchmarks... not real time... so u'll really get like 5fps... 10fps at most... and that's also if ur CPU is actually bottlenecking... because honestly, at this point ur HDD is bottlenecking ur system...

i concede the fact that some games do utilize multiple cores... and Crysis is a great example and i'm sure u'll benefit, but there's only like 5-10 games that will actually provide anything significant...

It's great that you have a quad core... congrats... but its not necessary... its frankly overkill till we have better video cards... cuz unless ur running quad 8800gtx's ur probably not running Crysis at max graphics regardless of 4, 8, 25, 9000 cores on ur cpu...

 

are some of the people offering suggestions female? not trying to be sexist, but quite impressed if it is. cuz i only know of one girl who knows anything about computers and that's because she's an engineering student.

but back to the op......i probably wouldn't suggest u to buy a dx10 card now considering dx10.1 will be comming and dx10 cards won't fully support it.

if you are tight on money, just buy used parts like a used 7950GT or 7900GT and another 1GB stick of ram. I suggest u actually see if you can borrow some ram from friends and make ur system 2 gb and see if that improves the game speed. Some games require more than 1 gb of ram. It might not always be ur video card.
________
No2 vaporizer review

 

lmao i agree single core is enough for a normal pc user to do work n sruf the net lol

 

when you suggested he buy a q6600, my point was its not that simple.

If he got a q6600, he would need a new mobo, at that rate, since he needs a new power supply and gfx card, he may as well just buy a completely new system

at the end of the day, he only wanted to upgrade his video card, his 4200X2 should be enough for what he intends to play which is pes2008 and tf2

btw nothing is ever future proof, the penryn based intels are just about to come out which would make the q6600 an overpriced "old" tech

for me, just hit the "sweet spot", no need to go future proofing, just spend the money well and re-upgrade every few years, rather than trying to build a system to last 5-10 years by spending loads of money

none of the games current take any advantage of dx10.1, so its not something you should worry about really. but if you are the upcoming Radeon HD 3800 series will support dx10.1

 

wow dim8sum looks like a pr0

are u a real IT technician in real life?

 

^lol no, i just happen to have built a few of my own comps and i just keep up with the times

 

i want to build a pc too but dont have the guts n condifence lol
keep thinking im gonna break or fry my processor like forgeting to put thermal paste on it lol

do u know any guide on the net thats tutorial u how to build a pc lol

omg that sounds lame

 

ive broken many comps in my time

give me a shout if you need help okies keke

 

all the heat sinks that come with processors these days come with the paste pre applied to the heat sink, so you dont have to worry too much

worse thing is when youve put it all together and it doesnt start up.... but given a bit of patience and time, youll get it working

haha sure we will send yo all our old PCs for you to break

 

hahaha sure things..

in fact ages ago me and my friend actually thought of re-building one ourselves so we got like an old
comp that worked okies i guess and we took it apart first which was SO MUCH fun just ripping things
out and then we left it...days/weeks/months past and that heap of metal just sat on the floor
and decided to throw it in the bin hahaha

moral of the day.....ripping comp apart so much fun...putting it back together..never happened

 

^lol yeh ive ripped apart many things then realised i couldnt put them back together

 

i probably soon start building a pc when im older, when i finish uni or got a decent job , atm i got no job so tight on money dont wanna risk it lol

well last year in college teacher did show us how to put the processor sound card ram cd drive n hardrive on the motherboard we had to do it ourself later n i got DISCINTION aka A* (it was a old pc)

but when i open MINE pc it look completly different lol the wires all over da place n cd drive is just blocking me from reaching the ram lol so in order to replace the ram i think i need to take my cd drive out first not sure if its a cd drive probably hhd lol or probably the front usb/card reader

i dunno lol.......

 

lol you can easily tell which is the optical drive because 1. its a lot bigger then the hard drive and 2. you can pretty much tell which is the cd/dvd drive cause you know exactly where the tray comes out at the front of the pc

generally the optical drives are above the hard drives

 

@Aoes

1. A q6600 costs as much as an e6600, so which one would you buy? It's only 200 and some change, you don't need to be rich to buy it.

2. Huge multi taskers like me benefit from the extra cores cause I can allocate certain tasks to certain cores to reduce lag.

3. I don't consider myself a hard core gamer cause I'm only playing one game right now and it's been awhile since I've started it up again. But if I'm going to buy an expensive graphics card I want it to run at it's full potential otherwise it's just a waste of money. In order to run at it's full potential I need a fast CPU. One of the fastest dual core cpu's cost as much as one of the fastest quad cores so why not get a quad core for the same price?

4. Sometimes kids of rich people earn their money by doing hard work like helping out in the family businesses once in a while. Ever give up your weekends to carry 100+ pound floor sanders up a 3 story building? Work from 7 in the morning till 6-7 at night hand sanding, machine sanding, and re-polishing hardwood floors then carry everything back down again? Ever pull up and entire house full of hard wood floors than lay out new wood and nail em back down? It's alot more work than your back is probably used to.



@dim8sum

In the pc and pc gaming industry when one say future proof it's only around 2 years. How long did the e6600 last? And people are still using it now. The q6600 is the equivalent of a e6600 in the quad series and it's the same price as an e6600 with twice the performance. Why not?

And how much are the penryn's going to cost? Unless it's going to retail at the same price as a q6600 it's not even a logical comparison.

Like I said, if he needed to update his mobo he should just get a pci-e compatable one cause pci-e cards cost less than agp cards of the same series and agp cards are becoming less and less availible so it's smarter to update to a pci-e system when he has the chance. But since he has a pci-e slot it doesn't matter.