Hi i am thinking of upgrading my computer a bit as i cant run games like half life 2 smoothly any where above mid video settings, this is my current computer spec Athlon 64 3000+ 754 pin 1999mhz geforce 5700LE 128 mb 512 mb DDR 400mhz of cheap Novatech RAM 20 gig maxtor hard drive 5,400rpm Novatech PSU 450w I am not sure what to change to get the best gains, the CPU is fine the video card isn’t great but i thought as i only got about £150-£200 to spend, I should get these parts. Mushkin 1GB DDR HP3200 High Performance Dual Channel Kit Western Digital Caviar HD and a better PSU would these give me good increase in performance or should i spend the money else where.
I also am running windows ME, should i upgrade this, a mate of mine can give me a windows 2000 disk for £20. would this help run games like half life 2 better.
You don't buy the disk for software, you buy the license for it. So it has to be a legal license which he has not used and an original disk. Don't pay £20 for a pirate copy, make sure you get a legal license. To the upgrade question, you will get better gaming performance from getting a new video card, rather than other components. It really is the bottleneck in your system that needs upgrading. However, the next thing to change would be your hard drive, a 5400rpm maxtor really isn't ideal.
my mate had 2000 on his PC but he has just changed to win XP pro so it should be ok to use, so i should spend the money on a video card and HD, what do you think about this card, is it much better than the one i allready got. Novatech GeForce 6600GT 256MB http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-6625GT
YES YES YES Windows ME is the worst Microsoft OS to date. Windows 2000 will give you better performance and better security. I agree with Addis: Your hard disk has a slow RPM speed, and this will hamper your read/write speeds. Your hard drive probably only supports UDMA/33/66, and if you have a new motherboard that supports UDMA/133, then you will not be getting the most out of it Example UDMA/33 = 33MHz external transfer speeds. As you can imagine, a hard disk with a UDMA/133 interface (133MHz) is going to give you a big performance boost
I'm unsure of Novatech's quality regarding power supplies, and while it may be 500W, that's a pretty broad description as there's no set way (outside of math--and that's been manipulated) of defining power supply's output. Upgrading this to a quality unit from Antec, Enermax, or Fortron (among others) will be beneficial. As far as increasing performance, your best bet would be the video card. Yeah, a faster hard drive is in order, but if you're gaming, that 5700LE is killing you. You've got a crippled 5700, which is bad, considering the GeForce FX cards weren't nVidia's best series for the most part.
I had perfectly decent when I first go HL2 with one exception. I had 512MB's or ram also. I had a nVidia 6800 vid card, a 3000+ skt 939 processor, a 7200 80 gig drive, all servicable. But the 512Mb simply made High settings unplayable. Treat yourself to a gig man, you won't regret it. The corsair value series is, well, cheap, but it's good stuff. I got it for a friend and he maxes Call Of Duty 2 without a hitch with it. As for the video card go with an X800GT or X800GTO and make sure you get the 256Mb versions, they're cheap but perform a good bit better, especially in HL2. Harddrives are really cheap these days so an 80gig 7200rpm drive with an 8Mb cache won't cost you much, maybe 40 quid. Go with Seagate or Western Digital if you can help it.
thanks for the help. i have jst got a new 80gb WD HD and windows 2000, plus i will get 1 gb of ram and a new video card.
