Need help building computer

[Lukaszade]

So I have an old HP Pavillion a6455.uk desktop and am going to upgrade it for gaming.I have never before built one before so I need a bit of help These are the parts that I am looking to get.

OCZ buy at the cheapest price, best deals, online shop - Ireland
SAPPHIRE TECHNOLOGY buy at the cheapest price, best deals, online shop - Ireland
CORSAIR buy at the cheapest price, best deals, online shop - Ireland

Would these parts fit my computer?
Would they run games like Guild Wars 2 and Battlefield?

Also, I have a Toshiba Satellite A500-17X laptop so is it even worth upgrading?

[paul9]

This one?
HP Pavilion a6455.uk Desktop PC Product Specifications HP Pavilion a6455.uk Desktop PC | HP® Support

[Lukaszade]

Yes

[paul9]

To be honest Lukaszade, I was just going to tell you that your current PC is not a bad starting point for some upgrades.
Some are too old to really be worth spending the cash on, but at least you have a quad core processor, AM2+ motherboard, and a PCI Express slot for a graphics card.
Personally, I would look at Crucial or the website you are already using and see if the 2 gig memory sticks would be a better deal than those 1 gig sticks. I suspect your system has 4 gig installed already, but only shows 3 gig because you have Vista 32 bit OS installed.
I would look to upgrade at least to Vista 64 bit, or much better to Win7 64 bit.
If you keep a 32 bit operating system, then you will be wasting your money on memory upgrades, as the system will not be able to use any more than it already has.
All the items you have chosen will be compatible, but I was waiting to see if Shyguy and others had any advice on your choice of graphics. It looks like it should be okay to me, but then I have a GT220 and it plays the games I want it to, so am happy with that, for now. Don't laugh at me for that.

[ShyguyXPC]

Graphics card will be HEAVILY bottlenecked/choked by that older Phenom Quad core. the 1st Gen Phenoms were not all that great, it was AMD's first Quad and Triple Cores, but they weren't able to keep pace with Intel Core 2 Quads at the time.

They may be able to play the games, but for CPU intensive games, Phenom II and Athlon II X4's will be much MUCH better than the older 1st gen Phenoms.

I know they made one or two Socket AM2+ Athlon/Phenom II's but most were AM3 sockets, you'd probably need a Bios Update to support AM3 CPU's if they can even be used on your System.

But you would have to make sure that it was supported by the motherboards bios, and from what I can tell it doesn't look like it, at least from Paul's Link.

that motherboard, some aftermarket boards with that same chipset did support Socket AM3 CPU's, but most of those had DDR3 memory on them instead.



I agree that adding more RAM currently is pointless unless you upgrade to 64-bit windows (Windows 7).

If your looking at a 2GB Video card, that right there subtracts 2GB of the 4GB max of 32-bit Windows from the total, so you will only be able to use 2GB or less for the OS.

If you currently have 2GB in there, your OS will see less than 2GB, because the 4GB limit also takes into account Cache or Buffer Memory on the CPU, Hard drive, DVD Drive, Bios chip, and so on. Which doesn't add up to much, but you would maybe only see something like 1.9GB or so of Available Memory.

Your laptop is better spec'd than your Desktop, the Intel Dual core in that should be similar to the AMD Phenom you have, faster better DDR3 RAM, and Windows 7 64-bit.

If this is the one you have: Satellite A500-17X - Product Specifications - Toshiba

downside is the GPU, its not exactly a good gaming chip, at least not for Battlefield games, and GW2.

But the Achilles heel of any laptop for gaming is usually the Graphics chip since most are not upgradable.



That Radeon 7870 would be heavily choked by the older AMD Quad core, and on a 32-bit OS.

You could buy the 7870, which would probably not perform any better than a Radeon 7770 or 6850 at best on the same system, but if you upgraded your PC or bought a newer one, you could tap into the unused extra performance boost that was there from the get go.


What kind of budget do you have for your upgrades, if its enough you might be able to build a decent starter system able to play those games.

[Lukaszade]

Thanks so much for that information,I would have probably wasted 400e on something that couldn`t perform to its full potential.I think i`ll just stick with my laptop for a while as I`m still in school and the money I have takes a long time to save.Ill just have to stick to lower graphics and the PS3 I guess.Thanks for the knowledge though I now have a much better understanding of the gaming situation

[ShyguyXPC]

on your current system, you could still throw in a lower range Radeon 7750 or 7770 and be fine with that, shouldn't be too much bottleneck, if there is one.

just get a 1GB card, this way you can still use 2 or more GB of RAM for Windows.

those 7700 series will definitely be able to run those games, maybe not max settings for Battlefield 3 and such, but GW2 it will run fine.

you could even get away with a 400W Range Corsair or Antec or similar PSU upgrade since the 7700's barely use any power themselves, 7750 uses less than 75W of power (55-60W), and 7770 uses about 80W or so.

This way you save money on the GPU buy, and PSU buy, and you don't have as much if any real bottleneck in performance. There might be some, but if there is, it won't be as bad as the 7870 would of been which is more than twice the 7700's performance range generally.