PC Upgrading Help

onewecallgod

New member
If you're strapped for cash, there's no reason to forgo a Core 1 Duo. Regardless of which chip in the series you get, you'll easily surpass 3ghz when overclocking with little or no increase in vcore. Games won't make a huge difference either since the Core architecture is already in itself so damn powerful. Buy a $50 CPU and used the money saved to get a better graphics card, like a 9600GT, better cooling and better motherboard. Hell, even the cheapest, non-overclockable motherboards will get you close to 3ghz with pin modding.
 

Jale

Active member
The GeForce 9600 GT arrived to my country and to my surprise, its price is $530 (affordable, it's even cheaper than the 8600).

Core clock: 650 MHz.
Memory clock: 1800 MHz.

It's a 512 MB card. I know it's a mainstream card, but I don't want a high-end card either, because the 9800 costs $1,700.
 
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Zach

New member
Whats the 8800 GTS 512 cost ?
Most people I've talked to feel its a better investment.. All Nvidia did with the 9 series was slap a new number on it anyway.
Hell I'm pretty sure my 512 came clocked out of the box faster than that, too.
 

Zach

New member
There is no other version of the card I'm talking about than the GTS 512.

It's it's own unique product.. The GTS 512 is based on the G92 core, while all the older models with different amounts of ram are based on an older core.
 

Jale

Active member
I have two good news.

1. I found a new job that pays very good (about $360 montly).
2. Core 2 Duo processors and DDR2 memory lowered their prices a lot.
 
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Zach

New member
That's good news man.. wish I made even $300 a month right now :(

Were you able to find a G92 core GTS 512MB yet ? Though if you can afford the 9600 you mentioned earlier than that will do good also, as it is pretty much the same as the GTS 512 as far as I know, just slapped a new number on it
 

Jale

Active member
Yes, I found 9800 GTX and 9600 GT, both 512 MB. The first one is way too expensive, almost the double of expensive as a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, and the other one is affordable.

I just need a 1333 FSB motherboard, a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and a DDR 2 memory (from 1 to 2 GB, I'd probably need 2 GB). The rest are not priority.
 
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Zach

New member
Are you gonna use Vista? If so I'd strongly suggest going with at least 4gb of ram. I don't know how ram prices work for you guys, but here DDR2 is pretty cheap for 4gb or less. Usually you can find it for a good deal between $50 - $80 even for some name brands.
 

Jale

Active member
I'm sticking with XP for now. Also, I made sure the motherboard supports up to 4 GB and Wolfdale processors.
 

Jale

Active member
In the next month I'll be able to get:

  • A 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor (Wolfdale).
  • 2 GB DDR2 800 Kingston memory.

Of course, I'm planning on getting them all, except for the video card and hard drive... for now.
 
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Jale

Active member
Now after more than a month I'm announcing that prices have lowered so much that I'm now able to get:

  • A Core 2 Quad processor (Specifically the Q6600 one): 2.40 GHz and 1066 MT/s FSB.
  • 4 GB of RAM.
  • A GeForce 9600 512 MB PCI-Express card.
I still don't have these items, but I already got the motherboard to place them on.
 
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Zach

New member
Well personally, I don't see much use for a quad core.. No games are really taking advantage of them, much less dual core, so the only use you will have is if you want to run multiple SETI / Folding @ home type programs. If it's a matter of not costing a ton more than a dual core, then I guess it doesn't really matter, you can buy it if you want; just don't fall under the illusion you're going to get full use out of it. You could manually shift programs onto different cores in task manager, which may be useful if you wanna play a game and free up some CPU power, but that's about it.

If you can, try to get the 9600 GT over the 9600
 
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