Recently, I've dug out an old machine I bought from Overclockers back in 2008, to see if I can get any use out of it.
It's going to be used in the study as a work machine, but also, we're wondering if it's going to be fast enough for my partner to use so we can do some multiplayer MMO gaming.
It's old, but it was pretty high-spec when it was built. The spec's as follows:
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000 3.10GHz (Socket AM2)
- Asus M3A78 AMD 780G (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
- OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2
- ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express)
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache
- Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD?RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black)
- Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU
I loaded up Guild Wars 2 on it this morning, and whilst roughly playable at medium settings, it gets a bit too slow when a lot is going on. Not far off, though.
What I was wondering was this - could I get a cheap, replacement processor and graphics card? Probably something 2nd-hand that I'd snap up from CEX. Would I be able to significantly improve the performance by doing this? Or is the card/processor I'm currently using pretty much the best that this Mobo/PSU will support?
Last time I looked into this (about 3 years ago) it wasn't worth it, because the upgrade would've cost a fair bit and not yielded enough of an increase. However, now that these parts are quite old, I thought I might be able to do it on the cheap.
EDIT: Looking online, I might be able to pick up a cheap 6770/7770 for under ?30 via eBay, but for CPUs I'm drawing a bit of a blank.
It's going to be used in the study as a work machine, but also, we're wondering if it's going to be fast enough for my partner to use so we can do some multiplayer MMO gaming.
It's old, but it was pretty high-spec when it was built. The spec's as follows:
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000 3.10GHz (Socket AM2)
- Asus M3A78 AMD 780G (Socket AM2+) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard
- OCZ 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2
- ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express)
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB SATA-II 32MB Cache
- Pioneer DVR-216DBK 20x DVD?RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black)
- Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU
I loaded up Guild Wars 2 on it this morning, and whilst roughly playable at medium settings, it gets a bit too slow when a lot is going on. Not far off, though.
What I was wondering was this - could I get a cheap, replacement processor and graphics card? Probably something 2nd-hand that I'd snap up from CEX. Would I be able to significantly improve the performance by doing this? Or is the card/processor I'm currently using pretty much the best that this Mobo/PSU will support?
Last time I looked into this (about 3 years ago) it wasn't worth it, because the upgrade would've cost a fair bit and not yielded enough of an increase. However, now that these parts are quite old, I thought I might be able to do it on the cheap.
EDIT: Looking online, I might be able to pick up a cheap 6770/7770 for under ?30 via eBay, but for CPUs I'm drawing a bit of a blank.
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