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Original build works, minus one oops. Thoughts on upgrades?
Nirodragon
Member Posts: 13
I assembled a computer on a rather tight budget ($411.87 at the time, including S&H), and I managed a computer with the following specs (roughly - I'm nowhere near it at the moment, and it's suffering from in-a-box-because-my-owner-moved syndrome).
Oh, before I start, let me say that I built this thing mid-2007, so it still won't be awesome, but I'm aiming for 'better than now' until I can afford to build an entire new system.
Intel Celeron D processor, single-core 3.46GHz (clocks at 3.47GHz thanks to stock cooling and some sort of block on my attempts to overclock it)
2GB DDR2 667MHz SDRAM
500GB SATA 3GB/s hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 7300LE 128MB 64-bit GDDR PCI Express x16 video card
Windows XP SP3 (after downloading/installing the upgrades)
I bet you can see the mistake already.
LE
GeForce 7600LE
Light Edition
Epic Fail.
Anyway, I need to figure out a video card to replace that garbage with. I'd prefer NVIDIA, since that's who I'm familiar with, but almost anything would be better than sitting on a computer that lags on combat in something as old as C&C: Red Alert 2.
If anyone has suggestions for a relatively inexpensive video card, that would be great, as I'm still wandering the world with a pretty harsh budget.
Final notes - it has some other components as well, such as a DVD burner, but those are mostly irrelevant to this. Also, the monitor is a fairly generic widescreen LCD, about 22" if I remember correctly.
Comments
You can pick up a 9500GT for $50 (DDR3 if you can), your computer probably can't make use of anything faster than that anyway - but this is gonna be similar to your 7300LE. Any card below ~$90 has diminishing returns on your investment and really isn't worth it unless you're specifically building an HTPC. You could pick up a faster card around the $100 mark that you'll be able to use in your next upgrade.
If you plan on replacing the mobo/cpu/ram on budget as well you can pick up a Radeon 4850 512mb for $110 (or open box for $90) which are great deals since they pushed the price down to fill in for the out of stock Radeon 4770. The closest Nvidia card in price is the $95 9800GT but the 4850 is as fast as the $130 9800GTX+ so it's well worth the $15 extra for the 4850 (or $5 less if you pick up that open box one on Newegg).
Your mobo might support the Intel dual core E6300 $90 CPU. If it does and you can afford it I would grab an E6300, open box Radeon 4850, and 2GB more RAM for about $200 total.
If you decide to go NVIDIA, remember that its the second digit in the number that's usually most important. Try to get a card with the second digit 7 or higher, like 7800 or 8800. An 7400 or 8400 simply will not do.
EDIT: I should probably give an example. The first digit is the "series", the second the "model" so a 8700 is better than an 8600, but not better than a 7800. Make sense?