Upgrade for gaming

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r10tmaker

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#20495 28-Mar-2008 09:48

Ive being playing some games lately (bioshock, COD4, MOHA, World in Conflict) and have been noticing a lot of artifacting during gameplay and have been wondering if its time for an upgrade. I dont have a whole lot of money to spend so need to upgrade the components that will give me the best bang for my buck. Will a simple graphics card upgrade be sufficient or is there more to it?

Quite new to the upgade thing so any help is greatly appreciated..

Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600)
2.00 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Dual Core
466.41 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space
Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-K8NF9 Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
2GB Corsair RAM

garvani

1873 posts

Uber Geek

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#119341 28-Mar-2008 13:26

artifacting you say? sure your graphic cards not shot? Ur system isnt to badly spec'd, the graphics are a little outdated and a 8800gt wouldnt be a bad investment at all which goes for around $320, throwing in another gig of ram would be a good investment too.. Of course i dont know your definition of not having a whole lot of cash means

3nvy

104 posts

Master Geek

#119366 28-Mar-2008 16:34

You could get to 4gb of RAM fairly cheaply. Cheaper than you'd be able to get yourself an 8800GT for. Though of the two, I'd rather have the 8800GT for gaming.

dnb4life

312 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#119369 28-Mar-2008 16:46

i'd say upgrading your card to something like an 8800GT is a much better option than just upgrading ram, upgrading your card should make much more of a difference to improve your gaming perfomance than some extra ram will. though some of those games you've been playing are better played with say 3gbs of ram or 4gbs.

it is a bit pricey upgrading to a 8800GT but in the long run it'll be worth it as any lower card will just get outdated quicker and you'll end up regretting it. tomshardware.com has a good chart that groups the graphics cards together and recommends you update 3 groups up from what you currently own, so that would make your market the nVidia 8800 series. i would also stick with nVidia as their cards seem to be better and more value for money than ATi at the moment.

garvani

1873 posts

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Trusted

#119372 28-Mar-2008 16:52

no point going to 4gb of ram in Xp or any 32bit version of vista as it will only see and use 3.5gb.. Adding more ram isnt going to improve performance in game nearly as much as a new gfx card.. i say put the old one on trade me for a resonable price and buy the 8800gt

r10tmaker

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#119720 30-Mar-2008 18:33

Cheers for the replies.. Come to think of it i have noticed a lot of artifacting but i just assumed i was trying to play the games on to higher settings or that the system just couldn't handle the games. How can i test if my graphics card is running ok? also what do you think of going for the SLI option with 2x 7900GT or is upgrading to the 8800GT the go?

Also i read a bit about CPU power and it bottlenecking the system even with a good graphics card, do i have an adequate CPU or should i maybe look at an upgrade of that as well?

rscole86

4974 posts

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Moderator

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Lifetime subscriber

#119724 30-Mar-2008 19:21

I had a similar PC to you.

7600GT with AMD 3800+ and 2gig of ram.

I upgraded the CPU to a 6000+ and now run 4gig of ram, I have 64bit windows, and I have no problems with running COD4 at full res.

My advice would be to upgrade the CPU first.

Drac

48 posts

Geek

#124704 18-Apr-2008 12:02

Depending on your money situation, upgrading all 3 of the suggestion above would give the best boost, and increase the life of the PC (i.e. cpu, memory and graphics card).

And definitly don't go with 1 step up, because you really won't notice the difference. I usually go with Graphics card as I'll then use it in my next full uprgade.

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Silentfire

23 posts

Geek

#128621 5-May-2008 18:12

Drac is right you would be best to upgrade all 3 of the sugested but if you are going to go to that extent then you would get a new motherboard and then a new powersupply etc

So your best bet would be to upgrade the graphics card and go for a 8800GT cause they have great performance and they are very well price.... so well priced that i brought 2 lol
Yes do the graphic card then when you save up for a full upgrade you will already have a good GPU