Yet another AoC wannabe please help-me-upgrade thread

Please help me upgrade this rig. Budget is $750.

Existing rig:

Motherboard
Asus A8N SLI Deluxe

CPU
AMD FX-55

Graphics Card
ATI FireGL V7100 256MB PCI Express

PSU
Seasonic S12-600

Memory
OCZ Platinum Edition PC-3200 Revision 2 (2gb)

Hard Drives
Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM 74gb x2

Monitor
NEC 20WMGX2

The purpose for the upgrade is to setup as sweet an AoC rig as I can muster given the budget and existing components. When I built this rig 3.5 years ago I wanted to "future-proof" as much as possible, intending to eventually go SLI. The ATI has perfromed well, handling eq2 at 30-58 fps pretty reliably (although it runs hot and loud at times) and my regular desktop stuff w/o a glitch. But I've heard AoC is more demanding. Even though the mobo, cpu, and psu are relatively old tech, I think they can power the upgrade well enough.

I was thinking of swapping the ATI out for a pair of EVGA 8800 GTS. That would be ~$400.

I was thinking of swapping the 4x 512mb ocz's for 4x 1gb ocz's. That would be ~$150. (I spent > $550 for that 2gb 3.5 years ago, oye.)

Finally I was thinking of Windows Vista. That would be ~$100.

So I could do the upgrade for $660. What do you think?

Two 8800GTS's are unnecessary. If you must SLI, go for 2 9600GT's or 2 8800GT's. I'd just recommend that you get a single 8800GTS.

I wouldn't invest in 4GB of PC3200 RAM unless you get a good deal on used stuff. 2GB isn't bad.

Don't buy Vista for no reason. If you've got an XP license, use it.

With these changes, you'd have lots of money left in your budget to consider replacing the CPU and motherboard, then spend ~$85 on 2x2GB of DDR2-800 RAM.

I certainly would not even consider pumping any money into an S939 system anymore. For $750 you can build yourself a nice new system which is what I would do.

I would say that a graphics card upgrade is all that you really need at this point. Processors don't really have a huge influence on the frame rate. But, as Toaster said, getting a new system can easily be done for $750. I don't feel you should do that yet though.

karmasoft said:

Please help me upgrade this rig. Budget is $750.
I was thinking of swapping the ATI out for a pair of EVGA 8800 GTS. That would be ~$400

I was thinking of swapping the 4x 512mb ocz's for 4x 1gb ocz's. That would be ~$150. (I spent > $550 for that 2gb 3.5 years ago, oye.)

Finally I was thinking of Windows Vista. That would be ~$100.

So I could do the upgrade for $660. What do you think?

Click to expand...

You COULD go with a whole new system:
DFI LanParty P35 - $140
Intel E7200 2.53ghz Wolfdale - $135
4GB G.Skill PC8000 DDR2 - $90

This is the barebones I just put together. Now, I also had to order harddrives and a Powersupply, but you already have those.

For my budget, I went with a GeForce 9600GT 512mb.

However, for your budget, you could get away with a
BFG 8800GTX 768mb for $380
XFX 8800GTS (G92) 512mb for $250
evga 8800GT 1gb for $250
BFG 8800GT 512mb for $180 (or 2 for $360)

That would work.

Or...

You might just consider a plain video card upgrade. For less than $400 you could upgrade your video card to a high end one, and it would give you a huge bump. If you decided to go all out, you could still use that video card later on. It just depends on how much you want to spend. I think your mobo+cpu should still be fairly sufficient. The only question arrises if your motherboard could take full advantage of bandwith of the video card (PCIe vs PCIe 2.0).

lamboman said:

I would say that a graphics card upgrade is all that you really need at this point. Processors don't really have a huge influence on the frame rate. But, as Toaster said, getting a new system can easily be done for $750. I don't feel you should do that yet though.

Click to expand...

I would respectfully have to disagree here. You don't need a top of the line CPU but you certainly need something far better than what the OP's got if he wants to get good mileage out of a 2x 8800GTS SLI setup. He's got a single core cpu that's 4 years old. Sad to say but a $60 E2180 will wipe the floor with it. Overclock both and the E2180 ends up being 50% faster than it just on single threaded applications. Age of Conan takes advantage of dual core (quad not so much) so really it's more like 3x the processing power available compared to what he's got OP needs to think about a balanced upgrade here to get the most mileage, just chucking some heavyweight GPUs at his setup + some overpriced RAM ain't the best way to improve his gaming experience on his budget.

Thanks a lot for the helpful comments. You've got me seriously re-considering what to do with my $750. I guess I should check my stubborn-ness for hanging onto existing stuff at the curb.

Do you think the PSU (Seasonic S12-600) and the Hard Drives (WD Raptor 74gb @ 10k rpm) could be re-used in order to create a modern day budget gaming rig?

Yes, you could reuse your power supply and 74GB Raptors.

$120 - Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R
$132 - Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 (free shipping)
$85 - G.Skill 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800 dual channel kit (free shipping)
$240 - EVGA 8800GTS ($30 mail-in rebate)
$100 - Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP1 OEM (free shipping)
=====
$677 - Subtotal (not including shipping, taxes, or rebates)

With the resolution of the monitor you have, the 8800GTS would be the best option for you. Again, you don't need an SLI or a CrossFire setup.

The only other recommendation I have to make (on top of the above setup) is to get a secondary HDD of at least 250GB for additional storage.