After being stuck with a typical lacking oem motherboard without a PCIe 16 slot, I've finally got round to this xmas when all the money reels in for upgrades. But so far things are a little tight. My bday is on the 3rd of January and it's usually then that I get the second half of money i receive.
Currently I have £130 from xmas (not as much as last year, but it's good). So estimating around an equal second sum i should have £260 to spend on upgrades.
Firstly, I selected a motherboard that fits in my current case (micro ATX here), has PCIe 16 and I'd fancy an upgrade to DDR2 533 aswell. The Asus P5VD2-MX was the perfect choice here (it even has onboard video incase the gpu i buy clogs out on me).
For RAM I plan to buy 2gigs of Corsair Value DDR2 533.
Now for the main issue. With the above selections (which were the cheapest on scan.co.uk), I only have £63 to spend on the GPU and BF2. I can get BF2 for £12 at GAME leaving me with a mere £51.
The best card I could find is the Palit 7300GT Sonic, which despite being a 7300GT runs at 1GHz GDDR3 and 500MHz gpu along 8 px pipelines.
The cooling and card size make it look rather weak, but according to this review w/ tests; it plays BF2 on high settings @ my 1024x768 at 87FPS and 58FPS. This is on a system with half the ram i plan to buy and at an slightly slower CPU speed (I have a P4 516 @ 2.93ghz).
Although I'm a cautious and sometimes skeptical person, has anyone here got the Palit 7300GT Sonic?, I would be really greatfull if anyone could confirm or deny the reviews I have read or pass any comments about the system.
If all goes to plan the system will be:
-300W PSU
-P4 516 @ 2.93Ghz (lga775)
-Palit 7300GT Sonic 256MB, 8px pipes, 1ghz gddr3, 500mhz core
-2gigs of ddr2 533 ram
Currently I have £130 from xmas (not as much as last year, but it's good). So estimating around an equal second sum i should have £260 to spend on upgrades.
Firstly, I selected a motherboard that fits in my current case (micro ATX here), has PCIe 16 and I'd fancy an upgrade to DDR2 533 aswell. The Asus P5VD2-MX was the perfect choice here (it even has onboard video incase the gpu i buy clogs out on me).
For RAM I plan to buy 2gigs of Corsair Value DDR2 533.
Now for the main issue. With the above selections (which were the cheapest on scan.co.uk), I only have £63 to spend on the GPU and BF2. I can get BF2 for £12 at GAME leaving me with a mere £51.
The best card I could find is the Palit 7300GT Sonic, which despite being a 7300GT runs at 1GHz GDDR3 and 500MHz gpu along 8 px pipelines.
The cooling and card size make it look rather weak, but according to this review w/ tests; it plays BF2 on high settings @ my 1024x768 at 87FPS and 58FPS. This is on a system with half the ram i plan to buy and at an slightly slower CPU speed (I have a P4 516 @ 2.93ghz).
Although I'm a cautious and sometimes skeptical person, has anyone here got the Palit 7300GT Sonic?, I would be really greatfull if anyone could confirm or deny the reviews I have read or pass any comments about the system.
If all goes to plan the system will be:
-300W PSU
-P4 516 @ 2.93Ghz (lga775)
-Palit 7300GT Sonic 256MB, 8px pipes, 1ghz gddr3, 500mhz core
-2gigs of ddr2 533 ram
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