I've been struggling with an upgrade decision and was hoping that someone more up to date on the current hardware goodies could advise me.
Here's my setup:
AMD 64 3500+
MIS K8N Neo Platinum (Nforce3-250) AGP
2GB RAM
Gigabyte Geforce 6800GT (256MB) AGP
Dell 2001WFP (20" widescreen)
Vista Home Premium
It's used for a fair amount of run-of-the-mill computing (word processing, web browsing, etc.), and the only game I play now is World of Warcraft.
I recently added the windscreen monitor, which looks phenomenal. My wife and I play WoW fairly regularly, and have been rather disappointed with the FPS now that my monitor is significantly larger along with the increasing demands of the new WoW expansion. The performance has also suffered from the Vista "upgrade" from XP. While it's quite playable in 5 man instances, 10 man raiding and above is nearly a slide show.
My disappointment is compounded by the fact that my wife's computer plays WoW with solid FPS with clearly better image quality. She has nearly the same setup, but she's got a PCE ATI X1850GTO.
So, the computer envy can last no longer =)
I'm working with about a $400 budget and am considering these two options:
If possible, I'd like to reuse as many component s as I already have. So, I'd like to hold on the memory sticks (2GB), and HD, etc.
I'm partial to ATI at the moment. I'm not quite sure about an overall comparison, but my wife's ATI card clearly has better image quality with a much less buggy Vista driver (for WoW at least, I haven't noticed anything else).
Option 1 - replace current mobo with a PCI Express one, buy a good processor, but buy a bargain VGA card that would get good performance in WoW, but also leave it open to upgrade in the future.
a) Mobo / Processor with Intel Core 2 Duo (E6600) (suggestions here on good combo?)
b) I'm willing to sacrifice performance for $$ savings by using my old memory sticks if they still work here.
c) Radeon X1950 Pro or…?
Option 2 - Buy an AGP video card, and save the bigger upgrade for another time.
a)Radeon X1???? AGP?
Option 3 - anything else! I've got an open mind =)
Oh, and uninstalling Vista for XP is not an option.
Thanks for the advice!!!
…..sorry if this shows up as a repost, the spam filter keeps on killing my message =(
Here's my setup:
AMD 64 3500+
MIS K8N Neo Platinum (Nforce3-250) AGP
2GB RAM
Gigabyte Geforce 6800GT (256MB) AGP
Dell 2001WFP (20" widescreen)
Vista Home Premium
It's used for a fair amount of run-of-the-mill computing (word processing, web browsing, etc.), and the only game I play now is World of Warcraft.
I recently added the windscreen monitor, which looks phenomenal. My wife and I play WoW fairly regularly, and have been rather disappointed with the FPS now that my monitor is significantly larger along with the increasing demands of the new WoW expansion. The performance has also suffered from the Vista "upgrade" from XP. While it's quite playable in 5 man instances, 10 man raiding and above is nearly a slide show.
My disappointment is compounded by the fact that my wife's computer plays WoW with solid FPS with clearly better image quality. She has nearly the same setup, but she's got a PCE ATI X1850GTO.
So, the computer envy can last no longer =)
I'm working with about a $400 budget and am considering these two options:
If possible, I'd like to reuse as many component s as I already have. So, I'd like to hold on the memory sticks (2GB), and HD, etc.
I'm partial to ATI at the moment. I'm not quite sure about an overall comparison, but my wife's ATI card clearly has better image quality with a much less buggy Vista driver (for WoW at least, I haven't noticed anything else).
Option 1 - replace current mobo with a PCI Express one, buy a good processor, but buy a bargain VGA card that would get good performance in WoW, but also leave it open to upgrade in the future.
a) Mobo / Processor with Intel Core 2 Duo (E6600) (suggestions here on good combo?)
b) I'm willing to sacrifice performance for $$ savings by using my old memory sticks if they still work here.
c) Radeon X1950 Pro or…?
Option 2 - Buy an AGP video card, and save the bigger upgrade for another time.
a)Radeon X1???? AGP?
Option 3 - anything else! I've got an open mind =)
Oh, and uninstalling Vista for XP is not an option.
Thanks for the advice!!!
…..sorry if this shows up as a repost, the spam filter keeps on killing my message =(