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| | (Post a comment) » The $500 Gaming PC Upgrade: Call of Duty 4, Crysis, Unreal Tournament 3 Performance ExploredWhile cynics believe otherwise, it doesn't cost a fortune to build a solid PC for gaming. In fact, we believe $500 is all you need to upgrade an existing PC. In this article, we spec out a $500 upgrade and compare its performance to that of a high-end Core 2 Extreme gaming rig. How close do they perform to one another? You may be surprised by the results! |  Previous news article | Back to main news | Next news article  |
| 35 User Comment(s) • 16 root comment(s) |
  Ph33rsPhun (7)   Jul 13, 2008 - 09:33 pm
| I think this article hurt more than it helped.
Situation: old system dies, quick scan of this trusted website and finds this article ~ two weeks before the Spring Build Article came out :(
Followed directions, didn't have enough time to do research outside of this article. Built system. Onboard ATI graphics doesn't like 8800GT nvidia driver, they don't work well together. Every boot up the system asks me to update the driver so Catalyst can take over, turn catalyst off, delete catalyst, onboard chip useless now.
Okay fine, wanted SLI someday anyway, buy old 570 motherboard, beats the pants off AMD chipset with nvidia video card... no more driver conflicts. The other solution would have been to buy an ATI video card, but that costs more than the motherboard. I'll rebuild the gigabyte into a network e-mail web search machine, but it's no gamer without a card and it doesn't like nvidia cards, that SHOULD have been mentioned in the article somewhere. I mention this for future articles to consider such things.» Login to reply to this |
 Mahram (113) Nov 30, 2007 - 10:16 am
| Top notch, as usual, Sandman. Great info.
I've been looking to upgrade for awhile now, but the tech really outpaced me once I stopped visiting the hardware sites daily like I used to a few years ago. Now all this new stuff is out and I had no idea where to begin... until this lovely article, that is.
Thanks for the great work.» Login to reply to this |
 Denithor (1) Nov 07, 2007 - 11:55 am
| » Use a current priced C2D rig!
e4500: $130
2 x 1GB Kingston or Corsair DDR2-667: $50
Abit IP35-E: $90
8800GT @ $250
Total: $520
Or even cheaper, substitute in an e2180 and your total drops to $480.
Even at stock either of these would rip the 4000+ system a new one in everything (not just gaming) and would also be much closer to the e6850 performance in games. Can't understand why you guys would include the old e4300 (EOL) in this comparison. Maybe that's all you had available?» Login to reply to this |
Anonymous (-) Nov 05, 2007 - 02:52 pm
| | just get a cheap intel cpu and overclock that biatch to 3+ghz. » Login to reply to this |
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