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drydell · 12-23-2004, 07:56 PM

hallo all,
need a bit of advice on the following - getting HL2 and a 9800 pro for xmas (hoorah!) ...however..... my current set up is this...
P4 2.2
512 pc2100 (1 gig when i've got the £)
fc 5600 (cya)
psu = 200w

now to fit the 9800 pro I need a new power supply (300w+) ...which in turn means i need a new case ( got wierd non-standard HP case with strange small psu) - ok so far - but starting to get a bit expensive for 1 (great) game ..what I can't do is upgrade the CPU (according to HP) so i'm stuck with my 2.2 gigs which by todays standard seems old and slow - so - my question is this...am i going to get a big bottleneck from my cpu not keeping up with the gfx card? I remember reading an article saying that HL2 is very cpu power hungry and the slowest they reviewed was a P4 2.4! (i've only got AGPX4 also) ...so am I going to get any decent benefits from the fastish card with the slow cpu?

lastly...if I decided to jump into the upgrading route a bit further - to get a faster cpu do i just need to upgrade just the motherboard or anything else? - and for someone who looks inside the PC and thinks "ooooh what a lot of wires..." is this going to be a bit of a nightmare...
any thought appreciated..

cheers
Dunk [UK]

12-23-2004, 07:56 PM	#1 (permalink)
drydell is on the 1st circle: Limbo Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 2 Hellbux: 384	hallo all, need a bit of advice on the following - getting HL2 and a 9800 pro for xmas (hoorah!) ...however..... my current set up is this... P4 2.2 512 pc2100 (1 gig when i've got the £) fc 5600 (cya) psu = 200w now to fit the 9800 pro I need a new power supply (300w+) ...which in turn means i need a new case ( got wierd non-standard HP case with strange small psu) - ok so far - but starting to get a bit expensive for 1 (great) game ..what I can't do is upgrade the CPU (according to HP) so i'm stuck with my 2.2 gigs which by todays standard seems old and slow - so - my question is this...am i going to get a big bottleneck from my cpu not keeping up with the gfx card? I remember reading an article saying that HL2 is very cpu power hungry and the slowest they reviewed was a P4 2.4! (i've only got AGPX4 also) ...so am I going to get any decent benefits from the fastish card with the slow cpu? lastly...if I decided to jump into the upgrading route a bit further - to get a faster cpu do i just need to upgrade just the motherboard or anything else? - and for someone who looks inside the PC and thinks "ooooh what a lot of wires..." is this going to be a bit of a nightmare... any thought appreciated.. cheers Dunk [UK]