Help me spend $250 or so to improve my computer

The Game Room
1

Here’s what I have

And I’d like my system to handle Civ 5 when it comes out, since I need this it looks like I can pick up a GeForce 9800 GT for around $100.

So my question is should I get more graphics card or doing something else entirely?

Keep in mind my hardware installation skills are limited.

2

What resolution is your monitor running?

The only real “drop-in” impact upgrades will be CPU or GPU, but nobody knows how Civ V will run in the first place, so it’s hard to make blanket statements. I was personally surprised that Starcraft II only used two CPU cores.

But I daresay you’d be okay if you upgraded the GPU (and not the 9800GT) in tandem with overclocking your CPU. Go for a GTX 460 or Radeon 5830 for DirectX 11 support.

3

I’ll second the suggestions above. Do not buy an outdated GPU. Go for an HD5000 series or the GTX 400 series.

You should be able to max out the graphics settings on Civ V with that GPU at 1080p. The CPU will matter more when ti comes to AI and the speed in which it thinks/takes action, specially since in this game there isn’t a lot of things happening at the same time.

4

Your current rig should be able to run civ 5 fine (just speculating, since I haven’t seen any benchmarks), but if you’re going to grab a new video card, grab a 5770 for $150. Much more powerful and much more future proof.

5

You meet the minimum specs so I’d wait until the game comes out. You’ll be able to run it (slowly) for a few weeks and once it’s out people will have a better idea of where would be the best place to spend your money.

6

1280 x 1024

7

Hmm…at that resolution you may be CPU bound. You might need a new video card regardless, but overclocking will give you some great results, and the e8400 is a good overclocker. Even on stock cooling I think you could get up to 3.6 ghz.

8

Or it could be that that’s the native resolution of the monitor.

Your overall hardware is good; I think your best bet is the graphics card. Watch out for power issues; your power supply is only 420W so the big cards may be a problem and SLI is out of the question.

9

Just wanted to say if you’re going to go over $100, spend $20 more and get a GTX 460 (768MB).

10

Yep a video card is the best way to see immediate improvement in performance.

I would advise against getting a new cpu. In many cases, this will also necessitate replacing the motherboard. If you don’t replace the motherboard, you probably won’t see a dramatic improvement in performance (if the CPU works with the old motherboard at all.)

I also love my 22.5" monitor.

But, there’s also some general fixes you can do. A new heatsink/fan is cheap and a worthwhile upgrade in most cases.

11

Try here.

12

How can I tell if it’s compatible with my rig? Looks like it needs Minimum of a 450 Watt power supply, and I have 420.

13

Looks like either the Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTX 460 are in my budget but both require a 450 W power supply which looks to set me back around $40.

For a relative newbie how difficult is all this to put together and what are the chances of this stuff being incompatible with the rest of my system?

14

You’re right, my mistake. I misread the PSU specs. If you go the route of buying a new PSU, give yourself some headroom as the efficiency drops significantly as you approach a PSU’s limits (Either of these would be good.)

The motherboard on that system has PCIe x16. I’m a bit confused because the motherboard is not saying PCIe 2.0 and the 9400gt that’s currently in your system is (as are the 5770 and 460). PCIe 2.0 cards are backwards compatible so you’re fine on that front – I don’t know enough to say that these cards saturate the 1.0 bandwidth and you’re losing out on some of the cards power.

I think installing this stuff is pretty easy. Almost everything is designed so you can only put it in correctly or not at all. Worst case scenario is having to update the BIOS if a graphics card is unsupported. If you’re just replacing the graphics card:

  1. Turn off the computer and unplug the computer from the wall. Unplug monitor cable(s) from the back of the computer
  2. Open up the case. Touch the (metal part of) the case to ground yourself.
  3. Switch out the graphics cards.
    [4) While you’re in there, get rid of all the dust ;).]

If you’re also doing the PSU, it’s as simple as keeping track of where the wires are going to, from the PSU. If something doesn’t work, you probably forgot to plug it back in!

15

If you go with the 5770 you probably won’t need a new PSU.

Check out this thread on Tom’s hardware: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/289528-10-5770-power-requirements