It's time for a component upgrade on my trusty puter, but I'm looking for some advice from you guys. Now, I've got ideas of my own but here's the question...

Should I upgrade my CPU or Graphics Card? The budget is £100.

The spec of my machine is pretty poor :

Intel Socket 775 Celeron D 2.8Ghz (OC'd to 3.2Ghz)
Nvidia FX5200
1GB RAM
40GB HD

Now, the machine is used for basic word pro/spreadsheet, plus a bit of video editing.

Games are LFS (of course!) mainly and other racing titles. I'd want to run LFS much better than I am at the moment (varies from 6fps to 30fps depending on grid size - no AA, 2xAF, 1024x768).

Ideas......please??

GPU!

Definately graphics card!

Yes, my thoughts exactly, but what with LFS being heavily CPU dependent I've got a feeling the Celeron is holding it back.

Quote :

Should I upgrade my CPU or Graphics Card? The budget is £100.

Check what speed your AGP port is, if it is 2x then that's the fastest card you will get working in it (although the card will do 4x).

tbh, you need more than £100 to make that computer sing (I hate Celerons that much)

Quote from Zero7 :

Yes, my thoughts exactly, but what with LFS being heavily CPU dependent I've got a feeling the Celeron is holding it back.

Yes LFS is very CPU dependant, but your GPU is so slow that you should really get it upgraded first.

EDIT: Becky if the motherboard has Socket 775 it would be a pretty safe to guess it supports AGP 8x or it may even be a PCIe.

Quote from 02arnoldj :

Hello, if i were you,
I would go for a GPU from the N-vidia Range, and get yourself an AMD Athlon.

If you get them on E-bay, you could get an N-Vidia G-Force FX 6200 (like mine) and an Athlon 2600+XP for £100 maybe less.

Then you will notice the difference in Everything, since upgrading to the FX 6200 from the 5200, my Computer runs a lot LOT faster!

James

Probably not a good idea to get a probably slower CPU (and he would have to waste money on a mobo too if he did that). And that 6200 is not very good option either. I would recommend atleast a 6600GT or better (maybe a 7600GT?). I am not really aware what you can get for £100..

Nothing, thats not what geeman said. What he said was Zero7 might actually be downgrading his cpu with a 2600+ and it would mean a whole new (older) motherboard.

You might be able to get a 6600GT for under £100, I'm havnt checked prices lately. If you can stretch to a 7600GT that would be better.

Quote from 02arnoldj :

Well, i managed to get an AMD Athlon XP 2600+ and an N-vidia G-force FX 6200 for £68

And not everyone want's a Super computer just to play live for speed.
Works 100% PErfect with the Components i have.

And whats wrong with the 6200? lol

Cheers
James

I just think that if he bought a faster GPU with about £100 he would gain more performance wise than getting a new mobo, switching to AMD and getting a pretty slow GPU. He would get more bang for the buck as they say in USA.

Quote from 02arnoldj :

And not everyone want's a Super computer just to play live for speed.
Works 100% PErfect with the Components i have.

well the 6200 is REALLY slow and their are much better combos available, plus to do your "super value" deal he needs a new mobo

I would recommend you get a 6600 (AGP of course), and stick with your cpu for the moment

Quote from Becky Rose :

tbh, you need more than £100 to make that computer sing (I hate Celerons that much)

I agree, but budgets must as budgets do! I also wouldn't normally go for a Celeron, but this was a free CPU that at the time seemed crazy to pass on, I just had to buy the mobo.

Quote from geeman1 :

Yes LFS is very CPU dependant, but your GPU is so slow that you should really get it upgraded first.

EDIT: Becky if the motherboard has Socket 775 it would be a pretty safe to guess it supports AGP 8x or it may even be a PCIe.

Yes, you're right geeman, the board does support 8x AGP (no PCIe slot though).

Quote from Jakg :

well the 6200 is REALLY slow and their are much better combos available, plus to do your "super value" deal he needs a new mobo

I would recommend you get a 6600 (AGP of course), and stick with your cpu for the moment

I would need a new mobo and to be honest I don't see myself upgrading that and the CPU and the graphics card for £100. I'm also a little skeptical of buying hardware off ebay which is probably the only way to do that sort of upgrade.

I realise that the Celeron would be limiting the throughput slightly and that I *think* I could upgrade the processor (sitting on a mobo Abit SG-80) to a dual core in the future.

How about this - Novatech 6600GT for £89 or the 7600GS for £111?

go for the 7600GS

I vote for 7600GS too.

you can easily see what is holding you back. drop your resolution to 640x480 with no antialiasing etc, does your frame rate increase? If yes, your vid card is limiting you. a celeron 2.8 should be plenty to play lfs at a good frame rate, a better graphics card will let you run at a higher res with antialiasing etc turned on, so will look much prettier.

Quote from Zero7 :

I would need a new mobo and to be honest I don't see myself upgrading that and the CPU and the graphics card for £100. I'm also a little skeptical of buying hardware off ebay which is probably the only way to do that sort of upgrade.

I realise that the Celeron would be limiting the throughput slightly and that I *think* I could upgrade the processor (sitting on a mobo Abit SG-80) to a dual core in the future.

How about this - Novatech 6600GT for £89 or the 7600GS for £111?

i was merely pointing ou that as good as Athlons are in your case it wasnt the best idea - and if your getting a graphics card get the 7600GS

ok, currently the 7300 retails for a little over £50 and is plenty quick enough. Regarding the CPU, I'm not sure on intel upgrade routes but tbh I doubt it is holding LFS back as my Sempron 2800+ manages just fine and with your OC that takes your CPU to a speed that beats mine.

Quote from Jakg :

i was merely pointing ou that as good as Athlons are in your case it wasnt the best idea - and if your getting a graphics card get the 7600GS

Thanks Jakg, and yeah I figured as much

I didn't think about the 7600 range as I thought they'd be out of my price range. So thanks geeman and pb32000 for suggesting that.

For your Computer the best upgrade is to buy a new GFX Kard!
The best card you can get for AGP and for about 100 Pounds is the ATi Radeon
X850XT! You will have @ 1248x1024 6AA/16AA about 85FPS with 5Cars on the track!

Here the link!
http://www.hardwareschotte.de/ ... VISIONPALIT+Radeon+X850XT

I brought a 6600GT a few months ago for my system. I'm happy with it, runs most games on pretty high settings, and I only paid around £70 new for it.

I am left wanting a little more though in very recent games. Does LFS a treat though.

Quote from Zero7 :

Should I upgrade my CPU or Graphics Card? The budget is £100.

Intel Socket 775 Celeron D 2.8Ghz (OC'd to 3.2Ghz)
Nvidia FX5200
1GB RAM
40GB HD

It will be fairest for your computer GeForce 6600GT.

Quote from Rtsbasic :

I brought a 6600GT a few months ago for my system. I'm happy with it, runs most games on pretty high settings, and I only paid around £70 new for it.

I am left wanting a little more though in very recent games. Does LFS a treat though.

LFS still looks too jaggy / flickery for my tastes with my 6600gt. if I turn the AA up higher the fps drops too much.

Quote from Franek_PL :

It will be fairest for your computer GeForce 6600GT.

Yeah, this is what I'm toying with and I see what you're saying, but I feel that a 7000 series card will last longer than a 6000 one. As I tend to do component upgrades every few years instead of buying a new machine outright (my case is probably over 6 years old!), I figure that the gfx card will outlast the cpu.

I'll do a bit more digging around on the 7600 card that a few of you have mentioned.

Thanks for all the feedback - great stuff!!

remember that unfortunately DX10 is coming out, and some games wont run on non-DX10 cards, and there are know DX10 cards out yet, and when they are they will be under the name off 8xxx

good point, I'll keep that in mind.

This then raises the question, will the 6600GT card keep going for a year or two running LFS before an upgrade to a DX10 card? I suspect the answer is yes, but only the devs know if there will be a major graphics overhaul which would ideally need a better card.

well i used to run with a 6600GT (i had two, but i could never get SLi (running two together to get almost twice the power) quite happily, youll get good FPS, and you can add some aa and af, athough with vista comes DX10, so...

Hi there Zero 7.

I had a 2.8 celeron prosessor on my old computer and a Radeon 9250 graphics card, 700RAM....My framerate was in the same league as you, and i bought the 6600 GT. I had NO increase in framerate at all. So my experience is that LFS HATE Celerons.

Scroll down to the bottom of this thread where I tell about my problem, and read the posts that follows. Hope it helps. http://www.lfsforum.net/showthread.php?t=3079&page=2