Mission: Upgrade

Ok, at the moment of writing the 8800GT from EVGA is still number one, due to the fact that I won't go higher then 1280x1024 and its power consumption compared to those of some of the newer models.

Yet, I am wondering whether a HD 4850 makes sense, in the configuration I am planning to build (see post # 1).
Also would it be nice, if anyone can tell me whether there is a significant difference in the power consumption between those two cards. The reviews I found only compared the 4850 with a 9800GTX (+).

The 4850 has pretty much the best price/performance ratio, so yeah, definitely a worthy candidate. The power consumption should be about the same afaik.

Originally Posted by interman

The 4850 has pretty much the best price/performance ratio, so yeah, definitely a worthy candidate. The power consumption should be about the same afaik.

Thanks, Interman. I think it will become a Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 then.

Sapphire puts a lot of extras in the box, e.g. a 2 GB usb stick, Cyberlink PowerDVD and 3DMark06 Full. And that for just 154 euro at 4Launch.

Though the cpu and psu should be done first.

I have been looking on the interweb for a while, and the (second-hand) s939 Athlon X2 processors I have found are either for sale by people not willing to send it (while they live at the other side of the country), or are very expensive (e.g. 150 euro for a Athlon X2 4600+ of 2.4Ghz).
So I am taking a mobo upgrade into consideration, and may spend about 200-300 euros (excluding video card, psu and HDD) to make my rig a Core 2 Duo or Phenom X 3 system.
This will make the upgrade a lot more expensive, of course, but it has quite a lot of advantages in this case.
Additionally, I wonder if my current HDD won't be bottlenecking too much. It is a 250 GB Western Digital Caviar, that has been in the system since I bought the pc in sunmmer 2006. Here is a link to a PDF with the specs of the drive: http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2879-001146.pdf The performance info is on page 2.

I would like to know your thoughts on this.

Don't have to worry about a bottlenecking hdd, it's sata so no problems with that, may not be that fast, but I don't think you're such a performance freak.

Oh and seriously take a core 2 duo and dont come near the phenoms at all

Originally Posted by Magus

Oh and seriously take a core 2 duo and dont come near the phenoms at all

Agreed. The Phenom is a waste of Good Money :-)

any AMD product is a waste of money

Let's start with the mobo then. This one looks good: http://www.evga.com/products/pdf/112-CK-NF77-A1.pdf
I have seen it for 70 euro, including the transport fees.

When it comes to the cpu, I think that this one gives me the most bang for the buck.
Komplett.nl - Intel Core? 2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz, Socket LGA775, 6MB, 1333Mhz, BOXED w/fan

The E8400 is alot more bang for the buck, it's clocked at 3ghz and only 10 euro more so Komplett.nl - Intel Core? 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz, Socket LGA775, 6MB, 1333Mhz BOXED w/fan

And for mobo you should take this one:
Komplett.nl - Asus P5K SE/EPU, P35, Socket-775, DDR2, ATX, GbLAN, 1600MHz FSB, PCI-Ex16
Cheap, good, with the EPU it lets you save power costs, an option you will like

Btw it's 69,50 on 4launch.nl, a much better price ;)