Upgrade advice please (serious noob!!!)

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Morocco_Mole

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I want to upgrade my PC,starting with the processor and motherboard for the time being.
At the moment my system is as follows:

2.40 Gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 Processor
1024 MB Ram
80GB Hard Drive
Nvidia Geforce 6800 AGP Graphics card
Nforce3 motherboard

I'd like some advice on what to get (budget of about R3000) and also what else will need to be upgraded at the same time. Looking long term, I'm going to add more RAM and a Dx10 GFX card (system will mostly be used for gaming), but for now - will my old graphics card work with a new motherboard??
Also, where is the best (cheapest) pace to get pc components in Cape Town?? (I'd prefer a shop so they can help with installation)
As you can tell, I'm pretty clueless about PC's. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks
 
DX10 with R3000 will be out of the question but you can get a DX9 and a good mobo with CPU with R3000
 
DX10 - R5000 (8800GTS)
Mobo - R700
CPU - R1800 (Core 2 Duo E6420)
RAM costs
 
I plan on saving up quite a bit before buying a Dx10 card.
The R3000 is for motherboard and CPU only!
Any suggestions?
 
Morocco_Mole said:
will my old graphics card work with a new motherboard??
Click to expand...

AGP cannot work with PCI-E motherboards so no, your graphics card won't work unless you get a motherboard that can support AGP but AGP is getting old really fast. Best Buy a new motherboard.

Oh and mobo=motherboard
 
Thanks, will have to factor in a new GFX card as well......

I found a DX10 card for R1159
XFX 8500GT 256MB SLI on pcgameworld.co.za

Anyone know if its any good?
 
If I'm gonna get a PCI-E GFX card as well, then I'll probably have to get a cheaper mobo....
 
You'll basically need to buy everything at once, since you have an AGP mobo, DDR1 memory and most probably a socket 939 CPU... nowadays it's PCI-E, DDR2 and socket AM2 (for AMD at least), so if you want to change one thing, you'll need to change everything...

R3000 wont be enough to get anything decent, rather save up a bit more and wait for midrange ATI DX10 cards.

btw, the midrange 8 series cards aren't that great...
 
Last edited:
The only alternative to this is to get a motherboard that supports both agp & pci-e aswell as ddr1 and ddr2. Only thing is you are then limited to only 2 ram slots per type
 
tian. said:
You'll basically need to buy everything at once, since you have an AGP mobo, DDR1 memory and most probably a socket 939 CPU... nowadays it's PCI-E, DDR2 and socket AM2 (for AMD at least), so if you want to change one thing, you'll need to change everything...

R3000 wont be enough to get anything decent, rather save up a bit more and wait for midrange ATI DX10 cards.

btw, the midrange 8 series cards aren't that great...
Click to expand...

I agree.

Spending 3000 now and then having to spend a lot more again later is not worth it.

Save up some more and do it all at once. Get new Mobo, CPU, RAM, gfx...

PS ,the 8500GT is not the greatest, though we have yet to see how it runs DX10 games...
 
PearlJam said:
The only alternative to this is to get a motherboard that supports both agp & pci-e aswell as ddr1 and ddr2. Only thing is you are then limited to only 2 ram slots per type
Click to expand...
and performance-wise those type of mobo's arent great at all...

Morocco_Mole said:
What about the: AMD4600+ Duel Core AM2 cpu?
Click to expand...
It isnt bad... but you still wont have enough :rolleyes:

4600+ X2 = +- R1150, then add bout R800 for a gig of memory, and say R500 for a cheap mobo, and you're already at bout R2500, and you wont get a graphics card at that price that'll outperform your current one for R500 bucks...

save up is all advice i can give
 
tian. said:
You'll basically need to buy everything at once, since you have an AGP mobo, DDR1 memory and most probably a socket 939 CPU... nowadays it's PCI-E, DDR2 and socket AM2 (for AMD at least), so if you want to change one thing, you'll need to change everything...

R3000 wont be enough to get anything decent, rather save up a bit more and wait for midrange ATI DX10 cards.

btw, the midrange 8 series cards aren't that great...
Click to expand...

I agree.

Spending 3000 now and then having to spend a lot more again later is not worth it.

Save up some more and do it all at once. Get new Mobo, CPU, RAM, gfx...

PS ,the 8500GT is not the greatest, though we have yet to see how it runs DX10 games...
 
Ok, thanks for all the advice. I've decided to get the following:
CPU - AMD 4600+ Duel Core AM2 R1130
MOBO - BIOSTAR T-SERIESTFORCE 6100-939/NVIDIA GEFORCE6100 AM2 R749
Memory - 1024 MB DDR2 RAM - R800
GFX - XFX 8500GT 256MB SLI R1,159.00
Total= R3838

I decided to spend a bit more. I know the gfx card insn't the best, but it'll do for now. I still plan to buy a proper DX10 card at the end of the year.
Thanks for the advice!! :)
 
well, If you're waiting anyway, won't the onboard 6100 do you for a coupla months?
 
Best option I can give you for R3350 (Incl VAT, Excl Shipping):

AMD socket AM2 athlon64 x2 Dual core 3600+ (2000GHz) CPU
Asus M2NE-SLi (socket AM2, nVidia nforce 500 chipset, SLI) Motherboard
A-DATA 1GB DDR II-800
XFX 7600GT

Its pretty upgradeable RAM, CPU, Harddrive and Graphics wise and the graphics is a good deal better than your 6800. One would have to continue using your 80GB harddrive at first.

The other option is to save up more for a bigger budget...
 
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