Mar
Ok, I bought a gateway 5058 a few years ago and I was wondering if it's feasible to upgrade.
I've got an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor 3800+, GeFORCE 8600 GT, and 2 gigs or RAM on this stock deal.
I asked some dude at Altex if I could just upgrade some of the things so it could run some current gen games and he flat out told me that it was useless to upgrade.
Now I would love to build my own personal but I have 2 problems: 1. I’ve budgetary constraints, and 2. It's physically unnecessary to build one since I already have 2 personal (one for my dad) and there wouldn't be any place to put another one.
Now I'm not a huge PC gamer at all. I honestly only want to play the Sims 2 (and the sims 3 when it comes out), Half life the orange box, and possibly world of warcraft on some nicer settings. I'm really not looking to get any new pc games in the near future (except might the stuff Blizzard releases) and so I don't really think I need to get another computer, but this is obviously not my expertise.
If anyone could give advice that would be awesome!
Answer:
The fellow at the Altex is half right, half wrong. He should have asked a few more questions about what you were after. When you take into account that you can buy a new personal for under $400 USD, what would be the point of spending $200 on a graphics card and $200 on a processor?
Me? I'm a fan of sensible upgrades. Spending $400 on an old system may not make much sense, but spending $200 in upgrades instead of $400 for a new system is sensible to me. And with your particular personal, upgrading is just fine.
Since you want to upgrade your personal to play newer games better, I would advocate upgrading your graphics card. I checked the specifications of the Gateway GT 5058*. It seems you’ve a 300 Watt power supply and an available PCI-Express ×16.
With that information in mind, and your mentioned budgetary constraints, I would suggest a graphics card like the NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT. Here is a quick video review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJPkJyDmH…
The 9500 GT is under $70 USD, will play the heck out of the Sims, and works just fine with your 300 Watt power supply. Many manufacturers (ASUS, XFX, Jaton) make GeForce 9500 GT graphics cards. Any one will do fine.
There are superior, faster cards that you could purchase, but they won't work with a 300 Watt power supply. If you consider buying one of those, you are starting to get into the area of buying a 450 Watt power supply costing $70-100 and a graphics card for $150-200. That makes the upgrades not quite as sensible.
Your processor is fine. Your RAM is fine. Everything else seems just fine. In fact, your computer's motherboard uses the older AMD socket 939 CPUs. AMD does not make socket 939 processors anymore. Finding one on the web is difficult. I didn't look very hard, but I did find one… for $500 USD. Ouch. Maybe ebay will have used socket 939 CPU's for less. Anything like a AMD Athlon 6000+ will not work. Wrong CPU socket. Sorry.
I hope this helps. If you need more information, please add more details to this question, or feel free to email me through my Yahoo! Answers profile.
Good luck.
Answer:
the best advice i would give you is dont upgrade at all.
yes. you may upgrade ur machine. maybe get a little more clockspeed ( a new processor)
or upgrade for a little more video ram (the video card).
but ur current hardware is kinda good. and the ram size is more than needed for those games.
Answer:
get an X2 6000+ and a 9600GT (or higher), you'll see massive performance gains. these should be cheap by now… then sell your old parts
Answer:
I've checked the requirements on the Sims 3, and your personal meets the “recommended”. so I wouldn't worry about it too much. From what I've seen so far, The Sims 3 will be more demanding on a machine than anything Blizzard will release for a while. And like a few of my fellow answerers have said, with a tight budget, it's hard to decide what you should do… (as far as upgrade -vs- buy/build new) but with your current specs, you should have absolutely no problem with any of it. I'm not sure about the 8 series Nvidia cards though. Get the 9500GT like they had said, and let 'er bump. Have fun
Answer:
Even though I haven’t seen each component of your personal, I suspect the Altex guy was being dishonest (I wonder why). Buying a new processor (as the answerer above me has suggested) could be quite pricey. You could overclock, though I strongly advise against that if you don’t have the supporting hardware or know what you’re doing. Most people tend to upgrade their personal memory and graphics card(s) for improved gaming performance, so following that route:
You need to do some research before upgrading any of your computer’s components, for example, as to whether they’ll be compatible with your motherboard, whether there will be adequate cooling, whether your current PSU will be able to support the new graphics card, etc. Even though this site is primarily aimed at those who intend to build their own Computer, you should find it useful: http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/pc-buildi… and http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/forums/to…
I also advise you post your question on their forum (http://www.buildyourown.org.uk/forums/), as the advice given there will probably be more useful to you than what you will receive here.
If you don’t want to go down the upgrading route, and if you’ve the capability, I advocate building your own PC over buying a new one. There’s very little reason why it would end up being more costly than buying a similarly spec’ed personal at retail.
That might be a bit extreme for what you need however, so perhaps a graphics card upgrade and improved computer memory is in fact what you’re looking for. You won’t need any more than 4GB (in fact, even that much might be considered a luxury). Also that’s probably what you’re limited to (assuming you run Windows-32 bit). As for upgrading your graphics card, it’d be better for you to do the research (as well as ask on the aforementioned forum), in order to find one ideal suited to your needs. Go to bit-tech.net for reviews. I hope that helps.
Update: WestRex Rob's answer is probably the most useful, he's done most of the work/research for you.
Answer:
Let me start by saying that if I used that computer right now, it would be the nicest personal I'd ever used in my life.
Most modern computers today are sold with at least 1 GiB RAM, a 2.2 - 3.0 GHz 32 bit processor, an integrated graphics card (the ATI RADEON Xpress 200 is quite popular), so by most standards, you already have a nice computer. You should be able to run those game just fine on that PC the way it is now. I'm quite happy with my PC (AMD Sempron 3400+ 32/64 bit 2.2 GHz processor, 512 MiB RAM, Nvidia 9500 GT by PNG with 512 MiB GDDR2 RAM).
That being stated, if you really want to upgrade your personal, you can go right ahead. Often people that work for electronics stores are told to say no to upgrade questions so that they can increace their profits. They make more money off a PC than a graphics card. You'd probably spend way more money buyitng a new one superior than that than if you you upgraded.
Answer:
You could upgrade your video card since the nvidia 8 series isn't the best, even compared to the 6 series I run. But I would also state upgrade the processor too. But it isn't necessary. In general you have a pretty good system. It's specs beat my system and I play a lot of the newer games. I barely lag using high-res mods for TES4 Oblivion. So your system is fine. And I've played HL2. Your system should run it fine.