What to upgrade? or just rebuild

[akim1220]

I am looking to improve my computer by replacing old parts with new. My computer specs are:

AMD Athalon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5200+ 2.70GHz
ASUSTek M2A-VM motherboard
2 GB of DDR2 Ram
NVidia GeForce 8800 GT

Would you recommend getting more ram and maybe a better graphics card or will it be better for me to just get a new system?

 

[BikerEcho]

i think that depends on who you are asking and what you are doing on your computer.

i will defently build a new one.
are youngaming on it or just sufing the web?

i like that you have one of the good athalons and one of the good old nvidia cards.
but, it is still old hardware.

what OS are you running?
i dont know what ram you have ether. 2 gig is now of days the lowest capacity you should have.
so that might be good anoth for you, but still i dont know how fast that ram is. if it is also slow ram then you have yet another problem.

 

[akim1220]

Thanks for your comments echo.

I will be mainly using the computer for gaming and watching movies/tv shows.

I am currently running windows xp. How would I find out what type of RAM I have? Can I find it somewhere on the computer or just look at the RAM itself?

 

[BikerEcho]

no problem ^^

there is a programe called cpu-z.
CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting
the download link is to the right. i had troble finding it.
the page inside cpu-z you are looking for is following:

the green area tells how much ram you have and what type of ram it is.
the blue tels you if you are running single,dual or trible channel. single is bad. dual and trible is kinda more like.... this is better for this and that is better for that. more less the same performance expet triple channel motherboard can hold 24 gigabyte and dual can hold 16 gigabyte.
the red area is the speed. you are looking at the frequancy. it is the speed in mhz. you have to multiply it with 2. so if you have 256 it would be memory running at 512. thats because it is ddr. (double data rate)
the next one. the 3:4... i dont know what that is. but it is not impotent. but the next 4 is. the clocks is the latency. the lower the better.

 

[akim1220]

Here is what the program gives me:

Type: DDR2
Size: 2048 MBytes
Channel #: Dual
DRAM Frequency: 385.7 MHz
FSBRAM: CPU/7
CAS# Latency (CL): 5.0 clocks
RAS# to CAS# Delay (tRCD): 5 clocks
Ras# Precharge (tRP): 5 clocks
Cycle Time (tRAS): 18 clocks
Bank Cycle Time (tRC): 23 clocks
Command Rate (CR): 2T

 

[Cabbs]

What games do you play? Are you having problems playing them right now?

 

[akim1220]

Mainly playing WoW right now. Only problem I have is when I get to an area that is heavily populated or in a 25 man raid my fps will drop from averaging 50-70 to 10-30. I would like to maintain that 50-70 fps no matter what type of environment I am in. I would also like to keep the spell detail on the higher side, they are currently lowered to increase performance.

Besides gaming I mainly use my comp to watch tv show's/movies and transfer files to and from an external HD. It would be nice for this to be a little faster as well.

 

[Cabbs]

How much are you willing to spend? If you just upgrade your GPU you'd get a noticeable increase from something along the lines of a GTX 460.

AXLE GeForce GTX 460 1 GB (Ace Edition) Review - Page 21/32 | techPowerUp

This gives you an idea of what you can expect from a GTX 460, but the test computer is quite the powerhouse. I'm not sure how much your CPU would bottleneck a GTX 460.

 

[BikerEcho]

i would go for a quad core if i where you. semes like you are not playing any real games. (dont like WoW ^^)
WoW does not requre much and i think you area also gonna get more fps with i batter cpu.
but mostly all the other use for your computer will be faster. also transfer files. but your hdd's are gonna bottleneck so dont expect to much faster transfer rate.

if you are gonna buy a new graphic card and you are considering the 460. then also consider the 560.
460 is from last genaration fermi gpu's from nvidia. 560 is from the brand new.
the prise defference should not be much.... but the performance is.
but be awere (as cabbs say) the cpu might bottleneck in some games.

 

[akim1220]

Thanks for the suggestions. I guess what I am looking for is a recommendation, what would you do type of scenario - is it worth upgrading RAM, GPU, etc. or better off building a new comp? If I were to build a new comp I would be looking to spend about 500-600. All I would need the hardware and I would probably use the same case I have now (unless case has an effect on performance (cooling?)).