Possible pc upgrade question

Ok hardware guru's below i have some of the spec's from a pc i built in '07 and wondered what i should upgrade? I had to tweak down my video/ultra mode settings some time ago and would like to crank my settings up however when i do i get alot of lag. So other than reading the guides on ultra mode is there anything u could recommend. Thanks in advance.

INTEL, Core™ 2 Duo E6600 Dual-Core, 2.4GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 4MB L2 Cache, 65nm, 65W, EM64T EIST VT XD, Retail


ASUS, P5N32-E SLI, LGA775, nForce 680i SLI, 1333MHz FSB, DDR2-800 8GB /4, PCIe x16 SLI /3, SATA 3Gb/s RAID 5 /6, HDA, GbLAN /2, FW /2, ATX, Retail

CORSAIR, 4GB (4 x 1GB) XMS2 Xtreme PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz CL4 (4-4-4-12) SDRAM 240-pin DIMM, Non-ECC, w/ Heat Spreader

NVidia 240

Nvidia 240 is a low end video card. I would be looking at a 560 or higher from nvidia or 6850 or higher from ATI.

I used a E6600 for quite awhile but its been mostly unused except for a week when I was running some memory tests with zone loading times with CoH of all things. Compared to an Intel SB 2500K the load times seemed really long (about 2x as long) and I did see lag on trials. Which I see very little of with the 2500K. Any lag I see is server side.

As to what you need to do, well you probably need to decide on a budget so you can prioritize your goals.

What I see is, you need a higher end video card and a faster better processor. I don't know what kind of PSU you have so you may need to upgrade that as well.

Speaking purely from the info so far, I would upgrade the MB, memory and CPU first.

*However, you didn't really give us much info here and PSU can matter alot since most of the newer video cards are rather power hungry

Great start thanks...here are more of my spec's:

COOLERMASTER, CM Stacker 830 (RC-830) Silver Tower Case, EATX, No PSU, Aluminum

OCZ, ProXStream 1000W Power Supply, 24-pin ATX12V EPS12V, Quad +12V, Multi-GPU Ready, Dual CPU Support

Budget wise im looking at two options that i would like suggestions for

1. Low budget $500 = buy this or that?
2. High budget $1000 = buy these in this order?

Upgrading the card would seem to the best option but if it will only bring in a small return because my cpu is on the slow end then mabe upgrading the motherboard/chip would seem the way to go?

Also could i upgrade the cpu and use my existing board or is that not a wise investment.

Thanks again

Great power supply that you should be able to upgrade the video card with. If you mostly play COX, then a better card will make lots of difference, as this game is more dependent on gpu processing.

Other games, a processor might be needed to noticeably improve performance, but I'd start out with a new vid card. Get the best you can fit in the case/afford, and go from there. If it doesn't improve enough for you, you can always use it in a different build later when you decide to spend the cash for a full blown upgrade.

4 GB ram is about min for Windows 7, if thats the OS your using? More ram will help loading times and maybe worth it, but you might be stuck with the new ram if you move to a new different MB system.

Case and PSU are fine.

I do have a question about your drives, PATA (80 pin cable) or SATA or a mix of the two? Reason to ask is more and more modern motherboards are losing support for the old PATA drives and even if they do support them, they only have one PATA connector.

Socket 775 is essentially dead and buried. While NewEgg still has loads of CPUs, a $210 dual core E8500 has the same performance as the $125 dual core i3-2100, Socket 1155 CPU while the same $210 will get you the quad core i5-2500.

Now you could go real cheap and get the 2nd gen Core 2 based Pentium E6500 with is around 10-15% faster than your current CPU for $80. I really hesitate suggesting any of the more expensive models because that CPU socket is such a dead end.

The obvious alternative is the upgrade the "guts", motherboard/memory/CPU, to one based around DDR3 memory and Socket 1155.

DDR3-1600 memory is now around $10 a GB, installed in pairs like your current motherboard.

A nice P67 based ATX motherboard that can do either nVidia SLi or AMD Crossfire (suggesting this simply because your current MB supports SLi) can be found in the $150-200 range. If you only ever plan to use one video card then you can shave off a few bucks.

Now I've already listed the i3-2100 and the i5-2500 but if you have a hankering for overclocking the CPU, you will need the i5-2500K for $225. Socket 1155 is extremely locked down against previous overclocking methods and you need to get the premium K series CPU to do any serious overclocking. The dual core i3-2100 is roughly 50% faster than your dual core E6600 in CPU benchmarks.

That means you could easily upgrade the guts to a quad core with 8GB of DDR3 in a new Socket 1155, P67 based motherboard for around $500. Of course 8GB doesn't help if you are still using a 32-bit OS, a OEM copy of Win 7 Home, 64-bit costs $100.

As for video cards, your GT 240 was already low middle end when it came out. At the very least I would recommend a 1GB GTX 460 (not SE version, yuck). They are around $170-220 before rebates. It's about 2.5-2.7x faster than the GT 240 according to TechPowerUP across a wide variety of games. The next step about that, IMO, is the GTX 560 Ti. It's price starts around $240 before rebates and is roughly 25-30% faster than the 1GB GTX 460.

That's a few of my thoughts on upgrading your current rig.

Okay my advice is essentially the same as Xmas and Newchemicals.

Gut your current system save for hard drives (if they're SATA), optical (though sata opticals are relatively cheap), and get yourself an i5 2500K, P67/Z68 board, 8GB of DDR3, and a 560 Ti (make SURE you get the Ti variant, the regular 560 is to the Ti what the 460 SE was to the GTX 460).

CPU

Motherboard

Memory

Video Card

If you don't need new optical drive, hard drives, or a 64-bit OS, this'll run you about $620 plus shipping.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

The GTX 560 is essentially an heavily overclocked 1GB GTX 460. It's not as bad as the performance gap between the GTX 460SE vs the 1GB GTX 460.

Then again the GTX 560Ti isn't that much more. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Thanks so much peeps for the valuable info...im starting to look at the costs and I may keep my orignal pc as is and build a second. I could then let my daughter use my original pc running with lower vid settings which dosnt bother her and then either re-activate her CoX account or wait to free to play kicks starts...she is 9 and it would make a pretty good Xmas gift along with some new gifts as well(im not a 100% re-gifter/cheapo).

Father Xmas the pc u have in your sig for $1350 looks like it would get up and go once put together...is there anything you would change out on it to make it last me another 4yrs or until the next gen in vid cards comes out?

Thanks again all...drinks in Pocket D are on me

In the short term I was going to swap the HD 6950 for a GTX 560Ti because of all the AMD driver hassles. In the medium term I was waiting for the Z68 motherboards to drop it price because of it's SSD caching capabilities (add an 64GB or less SSD to the system and it can act as a cache for the larger, slower hard drives).

Can't really think what else it's missing that could extend it's life. Already has 8GB of memory, the CPU is plenty fast but I guess you could go to the i7-2600K which adds hyperthreading (8 virtual cores Vs 4 actual cores of the 2500K) and 1/3 more Level 2 cache (8MB Vs 6MB) and slightly higher clockspeed (which if you plan to overclock is sort of moot). But it's $95 more than the i5-2500K. And there is some merit in buying the fastest video card you can afford today to make it last as long as possible. On the other hand there is also merit in buying a reasonably priced video card now and upgrade it more frequently than the other parts of the system. And on the gripping hand there is always getting a second card (assuming games other than CoH) and going SLi or CrossfireX.

PCIe V1 is 4GB/s while PCIe V2.0 is 8GB/s. The standard is designed to fall back to PCIe V1 if either the controler on the motherboard or the card is PCIe V1.

As for impact to performance, it's negligible.

Thanks again peeps, i think ill buy and install the below until i have enough cash to build a second box

MSI N560GTX-TI Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

It looks to be in the $240 range which is in my budget and will hopefully allow me to push the games graphics close if not to the limit