GNRFTL Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 I am looking to ugrade my system to try and extend it's life by a year or two. Currently I have 2800+ AMD Sempron @ 2GHZ 768MB DDR RAM PC2700 184 pin (was originally 256MB, bought a 512MB stick) Random normal HD ATI Radeon 9550 I was thinking about buying a 1GB stick of DDR ram and replacing my 256MB stick with it. So that would double my RAM amount to 1.5 GB. This was the kind of thing I had in mind. When combined with delivery it should be around £40 and the 19 reviews are all 5 stars so it seems like it would be a good purchase. I was also thinking about getting a new graphics card. I was thinking of this as it seems a very good card and should improve my performance quite a lot. I am worried thought that the effects of buying the two mentioned items would be limited because of my lacklustre CPU. Am I correct? If so how do I tell exactly what type of CPU I need and whether an upgrade would be effective. Or would it be better to build a new system from scratch? Thanks for any help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kayuni Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 If you were to buy the graphics card, the CPU would very much be your system bottleneck. However, more RAM is never a bad thing. If the Sempron is older (Socket A or Socket 754) then there's no real point in upgrading your current CPU, as Socket A and Socket 754 are long-dead and the most performance you can squeeze out of them (A 3300+, or a 3400+, respectively.) offer no large performance gains over a 2800+. Give me a rough figure of what you'd want to spend on a new PC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GNRFTL Posted July 15, 2007 Author Share Posted July 15, 2007 I haven't put much thought into getting an entirely new system, I was kind of hoping I could just upgrade this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kayuni Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 I haven't put much thought into getting an entirely new system, I was kind of hoping I could just upgrade this one. If all you want to do is upgrade, you ought to buy the RAM and an X1650 or similar. The X1650 is something like $80 USD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fozzy Fozborne Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 What socket is it? It's most likely socket 939 or 754. If it's 939, then definitely consider an upgrade to an Athlon 3500+ or maybe a dual core 3800X2 (if you can find one). If it's 754 or socket A, you should definitely get a new system. A 2800 Sempron will easily bottleneck an X1950Pro. Your best bet would be to build a new PC from scratch. It's very easy and can be done for around $500 with upper-midrange parts (dual core Athlon, 7600GT, 2 GB DDR2-800 RAM, etc). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kayuni Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 What socket is it? It's most likely socket 939 or 754. If it's 939, then definitely consider an upgrade to an Athlon 3500+ or maybe a dual core 3800X2 (if you can find one). If it's 754 or socket A, you should definitely get a new system. A 2800 Sempron will easily bottleneck an X1950Pro. Your best bet would be to build a new PC from scratch. It's very easy and can be done for around $500 with upper-midrange parts (dual core Athlon, 7600GT, 2 GB DDR2-800 RAM, etc). I'm almost positive it's a Socket A or 754, as the 2 GHz 2800+ is a Socket A, IIRC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GNRFTL Posted July 15, 2007 Author Share Posted July 15, 2007 Is the X1650 even that big an upgrade from a ATI Radeon 9550? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kayuni Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 Yes. In terms of 3DMark scores, a Pentium 4 @ 3.2 GHz and a 9550 scored 525 in 3DMark. A Pentium 4 @ 2.8 GHz with an X1650 scored a 2407. So, yes, it's much better for current games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GNRFTL Posted July 15, 2007 Author Share Posted July 15, 2007 Wow that's quite a big difference. I looked at some online benchmarks and I saw that at 1280*1024 4AA 8AAF it was something like 40-50 fps in Half Life 2 which is more than enough for me. Whcih one in particular should I go for? There's quite a big number of X1650's about. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kayuni Posted July 15, 2007 Share Posted July 15, 2007 Wow that's quite a big difference. I looked at some online benchmarks and I saw that at 1280*1024 4AA 8AAF it was something like 40-50 fps in Half Life 2 which is more than enough for me. Whcih one in particular should I go for? There's quite a big number of X1650's about. I've not had much experience with the X1000 series of ATi cards, but, from my experiences, all the builders of ATi cards do a relatively good job. For the most part, you should be fine going with the cheapest one - Just watch that it has the same amount of memory. Quite often a card that costs $10-20 more will simply come with a "free" game or two, or have an extra dongle that you wouldn't need anyhow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GNRFTL Posted July 15, 2007 Author Share Posted July 15, 2007 I was meaning more about whether I should go for the Pro or the XT etc. But the cheapest sounds good to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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