Older machine-worth upgrading anything?

E

ep3w

Gawd
Joined
Apr 4, 2008
Messages
694
I use my notebook a majority of the time since I am in college, but I have an older PC sitting at my parents house that I am wondering if its worth upgrading at all since I will be using that more this summer. Its an emachines t6524. I do play games but I realize its not exactly the best machine to be working with...
Its got an AMD athlon 64 3500+
1GB of DDR RAM
Nvidia 6800XT
Antec power supply since the stock one stopped working
Is it worth upgrading anything on this or what is the most likely bottle neck? I was also doing a little looking around and it as an MSI motherboard, I was wondering if I can flash the bios with an MSI one instead of the emachines one but can't seem to find one. I beleive its a MSI MS-7184 but I don't see that anywhere on the MSI website, unless I am missing it. Thanks!
 
you're stuck on a dead socket, you have *very* limited options.

-folding drone/fileserver
-linux firewall

what "games" do you even play on that anyway?
 
you could part out the 6800 and get a couple bucks for it...

IMO: If you are trying to play some new age games like COD4 or Crysis or something, just get a brand new one/make your own.

If you just wanna see if you can get a couple cheap upgrades to play CS 1.6 with better frames, just buy a couple new parts for a little cash.
 
I figured the motherboard would really limit my upgrading options. Its a PCI-e slot but thats about the only advantage. I haven't used it lately but it does play games like battlefield 2 that weren't written for dual cores surprisingly well. I can play at 1280X1024 with all high settings. I typically play a little bit older games on it, well older as in around the time of BF2. Now to just find the money for a new build...
 
So i understand you wanna base the build around BF2?

if so you probably wont have to upgrade too much.
 
evanisthecoastie said:
you could part out the 6800 and get a couple bucks for it...

IMO: If you are trying to play some new age games like COD4 or Crysis or something, just get a brand new one/make your own.

If you just wanna see if you can get a couple cheap upgrades to play CS 1.6 with better frames, just buy a couple new parts for a little cash.
Click to expand...

I am not expecting it to play any newer games well, it runs both of those at all lowest settings, but like you said I was just curious if I could do a cheap upgrade to an aged machine. With the prices of parts dropping it is so tempting to start a build.
 
well, if ya decide to go with a budget build, post a price limit, im sure theres a ton of people willing to choose some budget parts for ya, helped me on some of my builds :)
 
It looks like a budget build is probably the next step. I think even with a decent budget I could get something that significantly better than what that is now. Now I just need to find a budget to work with...
 
$600 - $800 could give you a nice setup, but bumping your budget up to $1000 will help you build a system that could play nearly any game out now.

Sample setup:

$105 - Antec Sonata III w/ Earthwatts 500W PSU (free shipping)
$90 - Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L
$78 - A-DATA 4GB (2x2GB) DDR2 800 kit (free shipping)
$200 - Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 or Core 2 Quad Q6600
$26 - Samsung SH-S203B SATA DVD burner (free shipping)
$90 - Western Digital 500GB SATA/300 HDD (free shipping)
$240 - XFX GeForce 8800GTS (free shipping)
$100 - Vista Home Premium 64-bit (free shipping)
=====
$929 - Subtotal (not including shipping, taxes, or rebates)

This is just one possible setup, but it's a good example of what $1000 could do for you.
 
if u want to upgrade another gig of ram would be good and possibly an x2 processer.



or for less than $200 u can upgrade to a c2d setup
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top