upgrade sempron 3300

[jdl]

My son is using a sempron 3300, nvidia 9500 video card, 2 gigs ddr memory
He mainly plays WoW and star wars games like battlefront I & II.

what are some cheap upgrades for him?

Athlon II X3 440 Rana?

 

[450]

I'd upgrade the GPU and CPU.

The 9500 is rather weak. On the ATi front I'd consider a new HD5670 or used HD4850, for nVidia cards I'd get a used 8800GT. Wait, what PSU does your son have?

Also CPU wise I'm not sure what's in your budget, the X3 sounds fine though.

 

[jdl]

I have 2 options.

upgrade my pc
Ati 4870
intel e8400


or just buy him a budget system (he is only 9 so he isnt playing COD/BC2), only games like WoW and older star wars games.


I would like to stay under $250 for CPU/MB/Mem (possibly a new vid card but that isnt that big of a deal as i can get that later)

 

[DTN107]

List out full specs on your PC. Is it an old 754/939 pin system?

 

[jdl]

Yes it is an old 754 pin system

Sempron 3300 egg
asus k8n motherboard egg
2gig wimtec 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) egg
PNY VCG95512GXEB GeForce 9500 GT 512MB egg

not sure of the psu

 

[450]

I messed up.

The 9500 is probably enough for that system.

The Sempron 3300+ is either socket a or 754. Since he mentioned an nVidia 9500 I'm going to assume its a s754 w/PCI-E. EDIT: I was writing this before I saw the above.

$400 gets you a new Dell Vostro with a monitor (core 2 duo based, just add gpu)
Or you could use this as an excuse to grab an i3 or i5.

 

[theCanadian]

I have 2 options.

upgrade my pc
Ati 4870
intel e8400


or just buy him a budget system (he is only 9 so he isnt playing COD/BC2), only games like WoW and older star wars games.


I would like to stay under $250 for CPU/MB/Mem (possibly a new vid card but that isnt that big of a deal as i can get that later)

Have you looked at a bare bones system? There's a couple good ones on the egg.

 

[jdl]

Have you looked at a bare bones system? There's a couple good ones on the egg.

I was looking at this combo

then just grab some memory and a new GPU

Normally i just would give him my system and upgrade mine, but i dont want to spend alot to upgrade when my system works fine for my needs.

 

[W.Feather]

that system will be nice, provided you match it with a good GFX.....pick yourself up an old 9800 GTX from someone, they run pretty much anything out there, on decent settings, and get 4 GB of ram(pretty cheap)

 

[theCanadian]

that system will be nice, provided you match it with a good GFX.....pick yourself up an old 9800 GTX from someone, they run pretty much anything out there, on decent settings, and get 4 GB of ram(pretty cheap)

Oh yeah. That X2 240 is plenty powerful enough and the board is quality enough to expect some overclocking features from. I'm liking this combo.

 

[450]

Is the power supply good enough? If it isn't, pick up an Antec or Corsair PSU around 350-400w.