What should I upgrade?

[andr3w]

I have a custom computer, Intel 3.2 GHZ CPU, nvidia geforce 7800 Gs video card, 2 gigs or apacer ram, 200 gig hard drive, and a Asus P4P800SE socket 478 motherboard.

I have come to realize that my computer is not fast in gaming. I need to update something, and I'm thinking CPU. Can you guys help me to decide what to update, and what to update to?

[bodycount]

This is my view but i would get a amd cpu for gaming,u probly cant up date your cpu (i dont realy know much about pentium cuz amd always been better for gaming) amd cpu"s are very cheap at the moment good bang for your buck, they probly dont make that 478 socket and when u upgrade, u make sure u get at least twice the power, or its a waste of money, to spend a lot of money just to get a minimal improvement, and saving that little extra to upgade will pay off in the long run cuz if u buy a nice graphic card the cpu will choke,and if u buy cpu and graphic card your memory might choke, these are all things i had to spend money on to learn hope it helps u to make a great gaming pc. (and maybe just get your self a cheap sound card like a normal soundblaster sound card it might take the load off your cpu a little bit)

[bodycount]

Hi for the upgrading i have a 3500+ amd venice core over clocked to 2.38 ghz cpu 939 socket an8 sli nforce 4 mother board, 10000 rpm hard drive 3 gigs of corsiar pc 3200 matched memory,and a 7800 gtx 256 pci,only 1 card,x-fi extreame music sound card ,and to tell u the truth it is getting out daterd and it was all new last year, u couldent get any better, and now its nearly out daterd.I would wait 1 or 2 mounths for the direct x10 graphic cards and get the 940 socket mother board a nice 10000 rpm western digital hard drive,2 gigs of some nice memory,some fast memory for gaming like those (ballistic memory look good),and what eva is the best proformance cpu for your liking,hope this helps u :thumbupalso defragmenting the hard drive can improve proformance slighty so when your playing a game your hard drive dosent have to search all over the fragmenterd files to get the information the game needs,and have you tried antispyware, spybot 1.4 that is an exalent program that is free and is nearly the best but download it from the home of spybot so u dont get more spys and trojans lol they can slow u down,also another free anti spyware is called ad-aware sle, but again i stress only get these programs from there home page.a good anti virus is kaspersky u can get a 30 day free trial, or there is another free trial witch is good its called nod 32 is a good free trial anti virus software.And also mayb reformat your hard drive cuz when you take viruses or spys out of your hard drive it is like pulling weeds from the garden they leave holes sorta,

[GT@Ultra]

hello i have a 3.2 ghz p4 , 2Gb corsair ram , msi pfisr neo-2 865PE mobo sata 7200 hdd,s,and xi-fi fatality,sounds almost same config accept i have 7800GS Gainward
(GT Chip,512 mb)

And every possible game runs acceptable here an minimum of 30/40 fps

I must say the xi-fi soundcard really helped getting my fps more stable!

Maybe u should tweak the hell out your config

can always be faster but,cpu should be fast enough
ram enough but dont know the quality or timings
u have the normal 7800GS? or gainward version

[GT@Ultra]

a 3.2 p4 wont choke the fastest agp cards on socket 478 it could be a combination of things like tuning a car

Your PC is fine for the moment and should play most games acceptably at sensible resolutions. Make sure you are not choking the GPU with unecessary Anti-Aiasing/Anistropic filtering levels, also make sure you nvidia card is set to 'Quality' mode and you dont have 'Transparency Anti-Aliasing' turned on as this will drain your GPU too.

Overclocking is an excellent option, but you need to make sure you have sufficient cooling and a decent knowledge of your computer limits before diving in and changing any other settings. For a quick GPU overclock, install the 'coolbits' (google it!) modification to your nvidia driver and run the 'automatic overclock' option.

Might also be worthwhile tuning your windows settings and keeping it clean with regular maintenance.

Try http://www.tweakguides.com for some excellent hints for gaming rigs.

[64705]

I'd stay as you are for a bit. There's not much you can upgrade on that computer. You have the best AGP graphics card available. A major upgrade would involve basically getting a new PC (i.e. upgrading motherboard, cpu, RAM, gfx card), and moving to AMD Dual Core or Intel Core 2. This is obviously quite expensive to do I'm afraid.

Try overclocking your CPU and Gfx card, that should give you some extra performance. Your PC is still good for gaming, so if I were you I'd stick with it for the time being. But its your choice

[Geert3455]

I register just to reply to this post :P

I actually almost have the same system, and i really dont think it needs upgrading yet i run everything smooth and i do play the latest games.

Its better to wait untill some big hardware upgrades come out and then upgrade everything

Cheers!

[tony2153]

I think that you need a hdd with 600 gb B)

[Gazz]

I agree with GT@Ultra, getting a x-fi card will stabilyze your system and will leave you with additional cpu and mobopower since your onboard soundcard isn't using those valuable supplies anymore