new graphics card
 

Hi all,

I was real lucky the other day and got given a old pc work, it aint half bad either i'll give you the specs.

It's a HP Pavillion
Windows Vista
Motherboard - asus NARRA3
Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
3Gb DDR2
360Gb HD

Only things is it only has on board graphics, now this is the first PCI-E (2 x PCI-E X1 and 1 x PCI-E X16) comp I've had....I looking for help in which GFX i should get, i'm thinking anything to high end will bottleneck at the athlon 4400, either that or i get a cpu upgrade. I think the best one i can get is a AMD Phenom X4 9600+ which dont seem to be that pricey.

I not too sure about a few things so any opinions would be great, Thanks.

Re: new graphics card
 

if you are gonna change the cpu make sure the bios is upto date and check AMD support list make sure cpu is fully supported

What are you not sure about ? what use are you going to give the machine? how much do you want to spend on a graphics card

Re: new graphics card
 

PCIe16 slot will only be v1.1 compatible, also due to the ddr2/chipset limitations the memory bandwidth will be 2000MT/s instead of 5200MT/s

If you are looking at replacing the cpu/gfx then look at replacing motherboard and ram in the future..

Though the eternal question stands... "Where does one stop" ;)

Re: new graphics card
 

After looking around and for under £100 i could get hd 4850, if i left the system as is then that would'nt be the worst pc in the world, not compared to the 8 year old 2.8 pentium 4 with an fx5200 GFX i'm running at the moment...

Re: new graphics card
 

You could get both a 9800gt (or ati equiv) and a X2 250 (2x3ghz cpu) for roughly that price as well..

Would allow you to run most of the modern games at a modest resolution

Re: new graphics card
 

What's the rating on the power supply. A new graphics card might require a PSU upgrade as well.

Re: new graphics card
 

In other words, a complete new system. :D

Re: new graphics card
 

That sounds like a fair shout, like i said from what i'm used to even solitaire would have improvements :P

i'm alright i managed to pick up a 800w coolermaster about a month ago for £25, that should be good enough

Re: new graphics card
 

Hehe, lucky git. I just paid three times as much for an 850. Yeah, sounds like you've plenty of headroom there.

Re: new graphics card
 

yh i know, as soon as he was like £25 i was like boom!!!! theres the cash!