Upgrading 1 yr old PC, mainly used for gaming

[tushargupta]

Hi to all,

I have AMD 4400+ proc, Asus M2A-VM mobo, 2x1GB transend 800Mhz ram, XFX 8600GT, 20" LCD. My main use of PC is for gaming. Got this PC in nov 2007. I am planning to upgrade Gfx card to improve gameplay. what shud i do? budget around 10k. dont have another PCIe slot on mobo, so cant add another 8600gt in SLI !!!

shud i wait for some new products to launch ???

[techtronic]

If your PCIe Slot is 2.0, then you can go for either nVIDIA 9XXX Series or ATi 4XXX or 3XXX Series, else you would have to settle down for nVIDIA 8XXX or ATi 2XXX Series

[RMN]

for 10K you can get Palit HD4850.

[Cool Buddy]

You should upgrade your processor as well, your mobo supports AMD athlon X2 processors. go dual core for better performance.

[dvijaydev46]

4850 obviously. I suppose yours is a single core processor. Let it be for the time being. Start saving money so that when you have more cash Phenom II will be released which is rumored to be on par with intel quads so that you may expect nice price cuts from both sides so that you can later decide which processor to buy.

[Ethan_Hunt]

Errrr... Main question before we go all gung ho about the graphic card. Which PSU do you have? Better not leave that out if you have a sub-standard one right now.

[tushargupta]

thanks for all the replies

how do i check whether my PCIe is 2.0 or not? i have a asus m2a-vm mobo. i have glacial 400 watt psu. i have 2 internal sata hdds also. will my psu be able to handle 4850? proc is amd x2 4400+. shud i upgrade my proc also?

pls guide.

[dvijaydev46]

how do i check whether my PCIe is 2.0 or not?

Check your motherboard manual (I don't think it is 2.0)

will my psu be able to handle 4850?

Certainly not

shud i upgrade my proc also?

I would wait till march.

[tushargupta]

thank dev,

i guess will wait till next summers, save some more money and do a complete system overhaul. i have one more doubt. on installing games on 64 bit xp on my system, the games were installed in 'program files x86' folder in c drive. will the applications or games installed in this folder run in 32 bit mode and if so how to make them run in 64 bit mode.

[GeekyBoy]

You can run newer cards, coz PCIE 2.0 is backward compatible with the older PCIE version, although performance might be a bit lower.