Upgrade or Buy New?

[WyattSoft]

Got some money to spend and decided to spend some of it in the computer department to improve gaming quality.

I currently have a HP a6402.uk Desktop, which the specifications are:

1.8GHz Pentium Dual Core E2160
2GB DDR2 PC2-6400 800MHz RAM (2x1GB)
250GB SATA Hard Drive
LightScribe SATA Drive
NVIDIA 9500GT 1GB
Windows Vista Home Premium 32bit


Now, if I was upgrading I would:

- Get a new hard drive: http://www.dabs.com/products/western...32mb-592M.html

- Upgrade to Windows 7 Professional 64bit: http://www.software4students.co.uk/M...n-details.aspx

- And maybe upgrade to 4GB RAM: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/142399

Now with some other small stuff to buy, that will work out at £160.44 (£92.45 without the RAM).

On another forum however, It was suggested that I upgrade the CPU instead of the RAM.

But I was wondering whether I should upgrade or just get a new PC altogether...


What do you guys (and girls) think?

[Geek-9pm]

Hard choice. 
But prices are coming down on new PCs.
You get more for your money if you buy a whole new PC.
Because now you have two PCs.

[Crosshair]

Just a heads up - your first two links don't work.
Roughly how much are you looking to spend?  What games do you play?

For better gaming, upgrade the graphics card.  The 9500GT is a low performance card.
However, with a prebuilt machine, it's likely you would need a new power supply as the standard ones are almost always just barely adequate and low quality.
Also, a bigger card may not fit in your case.
A faster processor would make a difference in some games and general usage, but you may have cooling problems with the case depending what you change to.  Also, socket 775 is a bit of a dead end upgrade path.
More RAM may make the OS feel a bit smoother and snappier, but with the price of memory now (£34 for 2GB, x2 = £68)  I don't personally think it's worth it.
A new HDD would obviously give you more space and may be a little faster, which you would notice with a decrease in boot times, programs would load a bit quicker etc.  But I would say unless you need the space it's not worth it unless your current drive is very slow.

[WyattSoft]

Sorry about the links, the forum where I copied the post from had shortened the link, and as I don't seem to be able to edit my post above, here are the links:

http://www.dabs.com/products/western-digital-640-gb-caviar-black-sata-300-32mb-592M.html

http://www.software4students.co.uk/Microsoft_Windows_7_Professional_64_bit_Upgrade_Edition-details.aspx

Those two are definite, as I would like Windows 7 and I'm running out of space on my current drive.


Looks like getting a new PC is the way to go.
Now I need to choose whether to go with a pre-build or build my own...

[t_blake07]

If you don't decide to buy/build a new PC, you sould make sure your current motherboard and/or any other hardware is compatible with a 64 bit OS. (You may have already done this, just putting that in there) As crosshair mentioned, the 775 socket it on its way out the door, but, there are still some very good CPU's that you could upgrade to, depending on your budget.

Now i'm in the same situation you are right now, and with my motherboard, it's still feasible to go the upgrade path rather than buy/build a whole new PC. It really all boils down to your budget and what you're going to be doing with the PC.

For instance: My mom wants me to upgrade her PC so my younger brother can play the games he wants on it. I can get all of the following for under $330 USD. (These aren't the new top of the line technology's, but they're far better than what she currently has, and after shopping around, all that is still cheaper than buying a similar pre-built system.)

2GB PNY DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) RAM
Intel E6500 2.93GHz Dual core CPU
GeForce 220 512MB Video card
160GB WD Caviar HDD
550W Rosewill Power supply

[WyattSoft]

I assume the motherboard is 64bit compatible, as the 7 Upgrade Advisor listed all my motherboard components (e.g. Network, sound, etc) as compatible.

And from the HP site:

* Socket: 775
* Supports the following processors:

• Core 2 Duo E7xxx (Wolfdale-M) (65W)
• Core 2 Duo E4x00 (Conroe core) (65W)
• Pentium E2xxx series (Conroe core) (65W)
• Celeron Dual Core E1xx0 series (Conroe core) (65W)
• Celeron 4xx series (Conroe core) (35W)

[t_blake07]

Socket 775 also supports the E8*** series CPU's. A little more pricey, but you get what you pay for.

Well it looks like the decision is all your now. If you've ran the Advisor tool and chose the 64bit version of W7, then you should be all set. Have you decided yet whether to build, buy, or upgrade?