Upgrade Old Computer

I want to upgrade my old computer til I get my new one because I will be still using this one right much. I will tell you what I have and if I can get the parts to do it or not or if I have to spend 400 to but a new prebuilt low end computer. I have a http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5N32E_SLI_Plus/ with a Core 2 Duo E6600 @ 2.4ghz with a nvidia 8800gt. My question should I just get a quad processor and a better video card with a serial ata 3.0 harddrive since it supports it or just buy a cheap 300-500 new computer.

I do see that that board supports SLI, as to whether or not you want to take advantage of that is up to you.

Not a terrible CPU, but it is a bit dated.

I'd probably just get a SSD, and see about maybe SLI'ing and unless you're doing somethind CPU heavy it should be good.

and if you spend the $ on the video card/cards now, you can just upgrade the board/cpu/ram in like a year or so.

but hey that's just me.

Personally, I would save and build a new rig. With DDR3 memory, you're better off starting from the ground up, or you can stick with your current combo and perhaps get a SSD to boost some performance (I wouldn't bother upgrading RAM). Is there a reason to upgrade? I'm still running a Q6600 on a similar board from ASUS which I built around 2006-2007 and still running fine. Only added RAM and SSD since and still able to run what I want and play what I want.

Honestly it depends on what you are wanting to do. a SSD is nice, but it wouldn't be my first choice to increase performance. With a $400 budget I would look into upgrading GPU(GPUs) or possibly a better CPU with 1 decent GPU. Honestly you could probally OC that CPU and get another year or two out of it.

I just finished updating a friends computer that has a E8400 3.0Ghz Core2Duo with a decent OC to 3.7Ghz a 530W PSU and a GTX450 for less than $300 including $50 for Ram. It scored a 8000+ on medium settings on FFXIV Benchmark and around 4300+ on max. That's on stock cooling and we are still @ idel around 35c.

Most games are (Have) moving away from CPU intensive to GPU intensive, it might be the best pure performance boost to just OC the CPU and get a few decent $100-$150 SLI cards and get a few more good years out of it. If you are really wanting a CPU upgrade look on craigs list and see what you can score on there. I bought a Q6600 a few weeks ago for 25 bucks lol. Never know what you can find on there.



In short, I wouldn't trash it just yet. With that budget you could still play w/e you want with a few minor adjustments.

was kind of stating the obvious, it's one of those things I do...

When do you get your new one, and what are you looking to use each of them for? SSD could still be considered luxury right now, and typical desktop use only sees benefit gained in boot-up speed and shaving a few sec off loading times in games.

Well I was kinda going to have 2 computers to play wow. This computer barely and loads very slowely and when it does load i get sometimes .2-5 fps then it averages out to like 30-50 fps. Im on windows xp and from what i was told is limited to 3 gig ram. I currently have 2 gig. On the new computer im doing windows 7 64bit so I was thinking about puting it on this computer also.Looking to get new computer either in late may or wait til june to see how the new intel processors are.

I'd go for the SSD, hard drives are a big bottleneck in most systems. You can also use it in your next system if you want.

32bit Windows is limited to 3.25GB of ram.

honestly it doesn't sound like RAM is your issue, but I'm not familiar with how that game operates, nor a big FPS nerd...

I would say it almost entirely has something to do with your settings for your display though.

You could put 7x64 on that system though, and you would probably see a performance increase on it. I would just weigh in on possibly dual booting if you have the room on the hard drive (install 7 after XP if you're doing a clean wipe) as there is some older software that doesn't work on 7. I'd just check your collection is all.

If the game is video card heavy would doing another 8800gt and doing it in sli help out or would it bottleneck me due to the processor. I was thinking if the cpu is ok just do the faster harddrive.

(googles spec)

game says that card is the recommended card... and the cpu is more than enough, really depends on your resolution/other settings.

I'd say the CPU is fine, upgrade the graphics card, maybe do SLI, but I've never done SLI so I don't know the price/performance vs the cost of just getting a better card. You may be able to find a 2nd of the same card for rather cheap as it's older, or just buy 2 mid-range cards, or a single medium/high range card and be better off.

I'd probably go with dropping about $140ish on a new card, see how it handles, maybe sling that. If nothing else you can reuse the card later.

But we may need a GPU nerd in here to be certain.

I don't see a server side game benefiting from a faster hard drive too much, the GPU would probably be the better buy.

The hard coded limit is actually 4gb, due to 32bit system limits with 32 bit combinations of 1's and 0's for memory addressing 2^32 = 4,294,967,296. BUT... the XP limit is shared with other devices too. So your graphics card's memory takes how ever much memory it has(512, 1g ect) from that limit. There may also be some other quirks with memory addressing that could take more in certain situations but I'm less familiar with those. 64 bit OS do not have this issue so 64 bit xp pro is an option but it's also got plenty of other issues like lack of SP3... Anyhow, that might be another argument against using SLI with your old system. That and honestly I've never been impressed with the gains considering how much you spend. I think I've heard that you get roughly 30% more raw power out of spending X2 for two cards. It also makes heat and airflow more of an issue, particularly if one card's fan is blocked by the other card. Just getting one good card has been the recommendations for most non-extreme gaming rigs I've seen.

Why would a dedicated GPU/VRAM be pulling memory from the system RAM?

could just have PAE enabled drivers and such, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

Hmm, I may learn something today.

What am I answering? I didnt backread >_>

SLI or just a single?

OP has current card/board info in OP.

He wants to know if it's worth upgrading, or just get a new PC. I personally think either way he'd need a good video card, he may as well just order a newer one, and if it isn't up to snuff for his needs, he'll have to get a PC with a newer CPU anyway, but nothing in his price range will have a decent GPU so yeah.

SLI is barely ever worth it due to the way SLI scaling works. His hardware is so outdated that just grabbing a new PC would be best

Highly depends on the game. Currently SLI and Crossfire is the only way to get the max performance. I really doubt that WoW will benifit much from it though.

I'm gonna agree with proth for the most part. His GPU is so old it is bare minimum/under minimum spec for most games and adding a second one will barely be worth it.

Edit: I'm not against SLI,in fact I'm usually all for it. But in OP situation its just not worth it.

Ya I wasn't really serious about SLI'ing the current card, was just debating on either 1 new one, or 2, since the board does support it.

I think price wise, he'd be better off on just 1, and see how that goes.

I don't really see replacing the computer as a better option than upgrading the GPU at this point, as he can always use the card in a new build down the road if he doesn't get junk.

Definitely start with 1 (even if only semi) up to date video card. The problem from reading the OP is price.

Also @OP your board is likely SATA2,which is 3Gbps (I couldnt see exact version on specs page) but I doubt a legacy board is SATA3 6Gbps.

In the end its all down to what you do/want to do on your pc that will define parts recommendations from people. Could you could elaborate on that a bit more if possible?

i think you should buy an SSD, install win7 64bit
and a solid graphics card (upgrade)

prob spend 300$ if you shop right and use both in your new pc when you get that.

also can try to OC your cpu if it's unlocked. also make sure you have enough wattage to run whatever graphics card you want.

an 8800gt is just really olde you are much better off upgrading that imho.


edit- ddr2 ram, don't even bother upgrading that ***is expensive as *** compared to ddr3, better off waiting for new build.

A SSD would be one of the last upgrades I would recommend. Although they do give a nice boost, he has other issues before a SSD would be viable.

Put 2 of these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130744
If you have the PSU to support it.

Overclock your CPU(if you can)

You're @ $210 roughly.
Do a Ram upgrade( about 50 bucks for 4G of DDR2)

So now you got about $260 in it. Your CPU can be overclocked. Looks like 3.4~3.6Ghz on air. That's more than enough to hold you over till you build a new rig.

I have played WoW on and off over several years, as I do with many MMOs, including FFXI (I get burnt out on content quickly).

Pretty much undermining what the above have said here... It generally seems to be overlooked, but the best place to point you in the right direction for upgrading is actually the game's requirements. FFXI's recommended requirements are that you have 256MB RAM. In comparison, WoW needs 2GB, and recommends 4GB. You've already consumed your RAM on the game alone. Source.

However, as pointed out above, DDR2 RAM is pretty expensive for what it is, against DDR3. You're limited to 8GB by your board, so 4GB would be a good target (4x 1GB), but it's likely to consume 1/3 of your budget.

I can tell you from experience, with Windows 7 64, 4GB RAM, WoW running, if I were to open 4-5 pages in Chrome, things started to grind to a halt. You can of course increase your page file, but it's still using the same channel to read/write as the game and everything else.

On a budget, I've since upgraded to 8GB and it genuinely makes the world of difference. Recently, and now not on a budget, I've bought an Intel Series 5 160GB SSD as my boot drive. Again, whilst I would recommend getting one, I too would and have saved it as the last piece to upgrade.

you can always set your page file to another hdd that your OS isn't on

and recommended RAM size for a program =/= to what it uses, they pretty much take into account what else is running (to an extent, I mean they don't think you'll be running photoshop while playing a game).

I could go into how much memory a program is allowed to use without hacking the kernel, but I'll avoid that.