Okay well the time has come for a big upgrade i have about $800-$900 i only really play LFS but sometimes other games like (GTA iv, Call of duty 4 and world at war, farcry 2, rainbow 6 vegas etc.) well lets skip the chit chat and start with my current pc specs im only looking to upgrade psu , cpu, ram, and videocard.

CURRENT:
Motherboard- Asus p5k se.
Cpu- Intel core duo E6750 @ 2.66Ghz
Ram- 2Gig of ddr2 800mhz
PSU- Shaw 550watt
Videocard- Nvidia 8500GT
HDD-250gig

UPGRADE IDEA
Motherboard- keep current $0
Cpu- Intel core Quad q8300 @ 2.5ghz $315
Ram- 4gig of ddr2 1066mhz $85
PSU- Shaw 860watt $34 (no idea whats it $34)
Videocard- Asus 9800gtx+ (not the dark knight edition) $279
HDD- Keep current $0

TOTAL $713

Okay well thats my idea im mainly worried about what cpu to get i still have some left over cash i dont want an ATI card i will stick to nvidia so please help me out!!


Well help is much appreciated or any other ideas thanks guys

You don’t need to by a new cpu το play any game decently.

Just buy a new Video card and add 2x 1gb dimms more of DDR2 800 to continue runing in dual channel. (guessing that you allready have 2x1GB dimms)
Spend your money on an ati 4870 or an nvidia GTX260 it’s about on the same money as the card you are willing to buy but they are a lot better.

1066mhz dims don’t make any noticeable difference in every day applications.
Right now your vga card is realy the bottleneck for your current pc config.

Quote from kaynd :

You don’t need to by a new cpu το play any game decently.

Just buy a new Video card and add 2x 1gb dimms more of DDR2 800 to continue runing in dual channel. (guessing that you allready have 2x1GB dimms)
Spend your money on an ati 4870 or an nvidia GTX260 it’s about on the same money as the card you are willing to buy but they are a lot better.

1066mhz dims don’t make any noticeable difference in every day applications.
Right now your vga card is realy the bottleneck for your current pc config.

Thanks mate i might just go get the gtx 260 and overclock my cpu abit, and yeah i have 2x1gig dimms in at the moment might be a bit cheaper this way too!

You will notice pretty much no performance gain by adding 1066 ram.

You will however notice a good chunk of performance by adding another 2GB of ram

Personally i would recommend an ATI Radeon 4850/4870 for the GPU.

As for the Intel Quad Core, if you plan on playing game's such as GTA IV, Far Cry 2 etc you will notice a good difference but it depend's what graphic setting's you want to run at, if you want to run them on the higher setting's then Quad core is the way to go.

Quote from mclarenmatt :

As for the Intel Quad Core, if you plan on playing game's such as GTA IV, Far Cry 2 etc you will notice a good difference but it depend's what graphic setting's you want to run at, if you want to run them on the higher setting's then Quad core is the way to go.

I have sheen both GTA IV and Far Cry 2 run on core2duo PCs with prety mutch all the settings maxxed out. Still only the grafics card (8800GTX) was handicaping the perfornace. ( Lowering just the resolution or AA - AF was enough to run good fps, and these settings have nothing to do with cpu resources)

Anyway these games are capable to use all four cores from a quadcore cpu so there sould be a performance increase. But I am not sure if this is realy a problem for normal gaming use or just for the benchmarks.

Quote from kaynd :

I have sheen both GTA IV and Far Cry 2 run on core2duo PCs with prety mutch all the settings maxxed out. Still only the grafics card (8800GTX) was handicaping the perfornace. ( Lowering just the resolution or AA - AF was enough to run good fps, and these settings have nothing to do with cpu resources)

Anyway these games are capable to use all four cores from a quadcore cpu so there sould be a performance increase. But I am not sure if this is realy a problem for normal gaming use or just for the benchmarks.

If he want's to run them on High though with distance etc all really high then Quad Core is a must unless he can overclock his CPU to it's limit, even then his FPS may jump around

If he's not worried about having everything high then a fast dual core will do fine

ok well i can overclock my cpu to 3.2ghz , i would prefer to run everything pretty high my current res is 1440x900 its just whether spending the extra $315 on the quad core is gonna make a difference but then if i get the quad core i can only afford the 9800gtx+ but if i stay with my current cpu i can get the gtx 260 so now the question would be gtx 260 with my current cpu or the quad with the 9800gtx+ thanks for all the help so far guys i would really like to play gta iv on high though , as the only 2 games i play most are gta iv and lfs

Quote from vl_turbo :

ok well i can overclock my cpu to 3.2ghz , i would prefer to run everything pretty high my current res is 1440x900 its just whether spending the extra $315 on the quad core is gonna make a difference but then if i get the quad core i can only afford the 9800gtx+ but if i stay with my current cpu i can get the gtx 260 so now the question would be gtx 260 with my current cpu or the quad with the 9800gtx+ thanks for all the help so far guys i would really like to play gta iv on high though , as the only 2 games i play most are gta iv and lfs

If you want to play GTA IV on high your graphics card has to have 1GB of memory.

You can "hack" it through the command line to run full settings with a 512mb card but i wouldn't recommend it.

I recommend something along these lines:

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (Very good overclocker) (About $209)

Asus Radeon 4870 1GB DDR5 (About $266)

I would go for a better make PSU too imho, someone like OCZ, FSP or Corsair will do

yeah im gonna buy a 650w psu its just the cpu and video card that i could deside with i've been thinking about the asus gtx 260 and just overclocking my cpu to 3.4ghz i suppose not everything on gta iv would have to be maxxed out but at least high res and medium to high settings really looking for the best performer

Quote from vl_turbo :

yeah im gonna buy a 650w psu its just the cpu and video card that i could deside with i've been thinking about the asus gtx 260 and just overclocking my cpu to 3.4ghz i suppose not everything on gta iv would have to be maxxed out but at least high res and medium to high settings really looking for the best performer

Only thing with buying a GTX 260 and overclocking your CPU is that the CPU will still bottleneck your system a bit

It totally depends what your after!

ok then i can always upgrade my cpu if i really need too i have about 300-400 dollars spare a fortnight so i can always upgrade it if needed i know nvidia cards and dont know much about ati ones so thats why i would prefer the gtx 260 thanks for your help and btw was the prices in them sites in GBP or EUROS?

ATi doesnt make POS cards anymore. For the same price, ATi seems to offer better performances than Nvidia. I'm sold to Nvidia but for my next desktop computer I will definely go with ATi.

Sorry for going offtopic here, but would the difference of a more expensive PSU just mean a longer life of the PSU? Or is there more to it?
There is so much variation between the prices of the PSU's of the same amount of watt, and i don't really get why.
I'm thinking about upgrading too, therefore i'm just asking to be sure.

Quote from Stiggie :

Sorry for going offtopic here, but would the difference of a more expensive PSU just mean a longer life of the PSU? Or is there more to it?
There is so much variation between the prices of the PSU's of the same amount of watt, and i don't really get why.
I'm thinking about upgrading too, therefore i'm just asking to be sure.

Basically a cheapy branded 600watt cant actually reach 600watt half the time and they tend to go bang pretty quickly taking out all your other components

Where as a good branded one can reach the power stated and are much more stable, even if they go pop after a few years they wont take out your whole computer

Quote from mclarenmatt :

Where as a good branded one can reach the power stated and are much more stable, even if they go pop after a few years they wont take out your whole computer

Speaking of things going pop, I had a 305 watt generic PSU for 4 years, and it died during a surge the other day. Nothing was damaged

Anyway, I'd wait on upgrading if I were you, but I'm not the one with disposable income so don't gotta listen to me . Should maybe wait and do an overhaul; phenom II, ddr3, gtx 295...

Just an update guys i overclocked my cpu to 3.4ghz and today i added 2 gig more of ram a asus 9800gtx+ overclocked dark knight edition and a 600w coolermaster psu i wanna thank everyone who replied who gave me there help i am very thankful well thanks again guys cya!