Help PLEASE upgrading my pc

Hey guys 2 days ago i bought a pc off a friend for £40 and a nintendo wii the specs are

AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual Core Processor 6400+ 3.20 gb

Nvidia Geforce ASUS GTX 275 Graphic card

I dont know what the motherboard is other than ASUS i think it says on the side

2GB memory.

I want to upgrade it best i can without going overboard on money ive found a few things i want to get but im not sure if they will be good enough for gameing on example Battlefield 3 ultra graphics here are the links.

www.ebuyer.com...

www.ebuyer.com...

The graphics card im buying will either be a GTX 560 Ti OC or the AMD 6950 im open to suggestions on this becouse ive got no clue what will be best for it.

Btw my budget is around £200 for graphics card and £150 max for processor/motherboard.

I already have 8gb memory in mind.


Thanks for your help.

That processor is going to be a bottleneck if you upgrade too much, and make sure the board can run pci-e in x16 for full performance.

Im running a 5870 with a q9550 on an asus board and i can't do ultra on BF3, its HARD to do ultra on BF3 with anything under a 6990 apparently. :/

But yeah, the processor will probable slow down your system a bit, and the board might not be able to handle an enormous card. Youll also need a bigger power supply to run a bigger card.

(sorry didnt see the links)

That board is actually a pretty decent board, and the processor is alright as well, you should have no issues really if you want to get a powerful card, make sure to get a power supply (i recommend the Corsair TX-750, thats what i use and its awesome). I recommend an aftermarket heatsink for the processor as well, AMD's run really hot.

I recommend getting an AMD 6950 it would be cheaper than the nVidia equivialent, and run cooler

reply to post by AzureSky


The processor i have or the processor i am going to buy will bottleneck? ive heard the bulldozer models of AMD are insanely good? ive watched a few video's on youtube with the 2 graphic cards i mentioned playin BF3 on ultra settings and its around 50-60fps so now i dont know what to belive lol

Ahhh sry yea the links are what i want to buy if they are good enough, the pc case is really big just wish i knew the name of it and yes the power supply is 850watt i think but it might be 900 im not 100% on that ill check tomorrow im on my laptop atm. I just dont want to spend alot of money on upgrading my pc for it to be for nothing i want it to be a very good gameing pc like i said to run bf3 on Ultra and basicaly any game for the next few years including MOH Warfighters.

Originally posted by LvSLoLo
reply to post by AzureSky

 

The processor i have or the processor i am going to buy will bottleneck? ive heard the bulldozer models of AMD are insanely good? ive watched a few video's on youtube with the 2 graphic cards i mentioned playin BF3 on ultra settings and its around 50-60fps so now i dont know what to belive lol

Sorry, i got confused man XD,
The first PC would be an issue because its an AMD 64x2, an early dual core.

The bulldozers are pretty good for gaming
And yeah a 6950 should run bf3 on ultra (probably not with anti-aliasing and msxx on though),

Okay so you got a case and the PSU, should be good to go then man.

Ill be upgrading in a couple weeks actually,

i5 2500k
A sweet overclocking motherboard(havent decided)
8gb Ram
and a Solid State Drive ,

then when i sell the old computer (going to rebuild it again) im gunna buy a new Radeon 7970 or 7990

Originally posted by AzureSky

Originally posted by LvSLoLo
reply to post by AzureSky

 

The processor i have or the processor i am going to buy will bottleneck? ive heard the bulldozer models of AMD are insanely good? ive watched a few video's on youtube with the 2 graphic cards i mentioned playin BF3 on ultra settings and its around 50-60fps so now i dont know what to belive lol

Sorry, i got confused man XD,
The first PC would be an issue because its an AMD 64x2, an early dual core.

The bulldozers are pretty good for gaming
And yeah a 6950 should run bf3 on ultra (probably not with anti-aliasing and msxx on though),

Just gotta tweak it bro! That board should be fine, its a mid-range asus board, and the chip is pretty good too.

the Anti-aliasing and msxx is exactly what they were useing on the youtube video's lol....hmmm do you think the bulldozer Processor or the AMD Phenom x4 would be a better choice?

Originally posted by AzureSky
Ill be upgrading in a couple weeks actually,

i5 2500k
A sweet overclocking motherboard(havent decided)
8gb Ram
and a Solid State Drive

,

then when i sell the old computer (going to rebuild it again) im gunna buy a new Radeon 7970 or 7990

reply to post by LvSLoLo


I remember owning a Athlon 64-based pc back in 2000. There's no way that's a dual core buddy. That was about 9 years before dual cores even hit the shelves.

reply to post by xXxinfidelxXx


Ill take a screenshot and post it tomorrow if you like? i wrote exactly what it said

Your CPU should be fine I have that one. You can get a pretty sweet graphics card with 1gb ram for about 150. Try newegg. Also upgrade from 2gb to at least 4gb RAM.

reply to post by LvSLoLo


As far as the GTX 275 goes, if you want to do any real gaming, I would suggest upgrading to at least a Radeon 8550 or something on par with that. I use a GTX 295 (Zotac) and it can't even handle 1080p movies, let alone a modern game. I tried playing GRAW on the absolute lowest settings, and it still was barely playable. Left for Dead 2 was out of the question. It ran at 8 fps. Pretty sad eh. If you wanna do any serious gaming, I would go for a better vid card.

reply to post by xXxinfidelxXx


Seriously 8fps for LFD2? i let my gf play that on the pc all the time it never goes below 60fps and thats in action areas...wlf?

Make sure the PSU is powerful enough to connect your graphics card of choice.
You'll also have to consider what motherboard is being used in the event you need to upgrade the PSU. As some motherboards have a limit.

Go to crucial and have them scan your system.

1 it will tell you what type of mobo you have and

2 it will tell you the max amount of ram (memory) it can handle.

reply to post by LvSLoLo


When it comes to projects like yours it is also very important which Operating System you plan to run on it. If you plan to run XP (my personal recommendation, the most stable, very low cpu and ram load at idle), you only really need 2 gigs of ram. I am running an overclocked Pentium D (2.6 bumped up to 3.2, don't try without liquid cooling, you'll melt it) with a Zotac GTX 295, Asus P5KPL-AM EPU, 2Gb Ram, and the only real bottle neck in my system (all things considered), is the vid card. You'd be surprised what you can do with older tech. I highly recommend the Asus P5K and Intel Pentium D (Celeron LGA775) combination, as it will keep you well under $150. I used a Celeron from my last rig, but the mobo only ran me back $75CAD. Damn good deal if you ask me. Performance-wise, it is bulletproof, and it offers a good compromise between performance, stability and price. It is definately more reliable than any other mobo I have bought.(my rig almost never crashes, even under high CPU load, high vidcard load is another story). The Asus mobo is a little short on fan connections, though, so if I were you, I would invest in a cheap 5-8 channel drive-bay fan controller (only about 15 bucks or so up here), and also make sure your power supply is at least 450 watts, as that is what is recommended for the 295, so you can be guaranteed that a higher end card will suck more power out of that PSU.

double post

My no1 aim is to build something that can last atleast 2 years, if something can run BF3 maxed out it can run anything for a good few years i highly doubt any COD games will come close for the next 2-3 years and the only things out there that can compete is crysis 2, MOH Warfighter and c&c generals 2

reply to post by LvSLoLo


That's why I would never recommend the Zotac GTX295 for anything other than a low-end HTPC. The funny thing is, I checked my CPU load while fraps was running, and it was only at about 60%, but I could feel the heat radiating off my case lol. The card was pretty much puffing like the train that couldn't lol.

dp