Well seeing as you got an AMD 3 (not 3+)mobo, I would check to see what is the fastest CPU you can put in there as you will be well short for intel i5 setup, you might be able to run piledriver on there, in which case, flashbios upgrade to an AMD FX 8320, or the 1090T or 1100T should work if you want to keep the mobo. It will have to be second hand and they go for around 90-100 second hand. 8320 abou 120 NEW and maybe 15% faster than the latter and 250% faster than your current setup.

Then sell the graphics card for £40.

That should leave you about 120 quid for a GFX card and you will get something better and less power hungry than that 4870.

You could also try selling the mobo cpu gfx card for around 100.

That will give you a budget of 300, in which case, you can then go down the i5 route which would be faster and cheaper to run, but depends on how much hassle you want.

Qucik fix, research what is the fastest AMD cpu your mobo will take, stick that in, sell card, buy fastest card for money, there are loads of charts on google.

Please come again....

Thanks man! I've been reading up a bit and apparently the new intel CPU's are due out, which I assume will dramatically reduce the cost of the current i5 and i7 chips, so I'm gonna hold on for that. I'm looking at this graphics card as a short term solution (leaves me some cash for a few other things I want, non-pc related).

Saphire HD 7850 2GB - £150 delivered

Apparently it's easy to overclock and I could possibly overclock my current CPU for a little boost until I get something better... Always hard trying to upgrade on a small budget! :(

EDIT: I'm liking your idea too. Fuck. Now what?

i have this card and it's really good. i think you won't find anything better in this price, except 1gb version, wich is almost the same if it comes to real performance and is a bit cheaper

Sounds good to me man, thanks!

"Thanks man! I've been reading up a bit and apparently the new intel CPU's are due out, which I assume will dramatically reduce the cost of the current i5 and i7 chips"

I dunno about that, and if it does you looking at least 6 months away to feel the effects.

Just sell it all on ebay and buy an i5 setup, you will just about have enough then. you can also go down the second hand route too.

mobos and cpus are pretty bullet proof if not abused.

"CPU (Max Support) Phenom II"

According to the MSI page for my board, dunno about bios upgrades etc though.

There's another reason I'm kinda holding off on the CPU, after further thought. My brother has an i7 and motherboard sitting in a half-built case, it's been there for a while so I might try and wangle it off him. Maybe as a 'loan'! :D Could tide me over till I can afford a proper upgrade (along with that card I posted earlier)... If not, I could try your idea but I'm a bit unsure if people will actually buy all the stuff to top of my budget. Could end up taking quite a while and I'm hoping that putting in that card on its own will give me a good increase, not 100% sure though.

Thanks for taking the time to post some good advice!

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/proces...rison.aspx

Your mobo should support the 1100T like I said then. So just stick one of the better cpus in from that list and update the GPU.

If you want it for work aswell get an X6 (6 cores 1100T or 1095T), if its just games then get the best X4 you can (B64 or 975 or 980 or 970) and then you can afford that GFX card you posted as the x4 are cheaper.

Like I said, that AMD stuff holds its value well cos AMD new stuff even several years on is not much better thanks K10 Architecture.

If you can you should go Intel for gaming though, the money saving on AMD does not really add up due to the power draw and its only getting better from Intel.

Check this

Been reading more about this card, apparently it overclocks like crazy (54%!!). It's looking like a really good option and I think I'm gonna order it today. Hold off on getting a new cpu/board till a bit later. Check that thread though, I'm not expecting any overclocks close to those but even if I can push it a bit I'm sure I'll notice a big jump in performance for now.

Might have a look for a drop-in CPU for this board for a decent price too! Or see if I can 'borrow' that i7. :)

EDIT: If I forget about the other stuff I wanted to order, I could stretch to that card and a Phenom II x4, which I think would drop right in (like you said). Tempting!

£200 is small budget for upgrade?

I can build a decent config for that price, 160 Hz CRT included.

I just realised after clicking my profile that the last time I posted was a year ago, in Feb, asking for PC upgrade advice. Maybe you should avoid this thread in protest of my using ESR as a hardware advice site!

I did used to post a lot more back in the day though. Give me a break! Please?

YARR!

its 2013, a UT fan asking about for HW advice on a Quake forum wont get bashed :p

:D

get a 970 chipset board for £50-70, fx 4100 £60, a gt630 with gddr5 for £70

What's the point upgrading this (except additional HDDs or SSD)? It's still a decent config for years to come.
Perhaps a VGA upgrade, only if you're into newest games (which are tend to be a ton of lens flary crap most of the time anyways) - something around HD 7870.

Ordered MSI HD 7850 Twin Frozr AMD Graphics Card (2GB, PCI-E 3.0 x16) in the end. Thanks very much for the help! £159 delivered. It's apparently a fantastic overclocker and you can get as much as 50%+ performance increases with the correct cooling. I'm hoping it's gonna be a big improvement over what I have currently and will drop right in to the system when I upgrade to intel i5/i7 in the future.

Thanks very much again for all the suggestions, was well thought out advice! Took the easy option though. :)

Buy a graphics card and an ssd, done!

get ssd never look back

get std never hook back

Just build yourself something simple but good - I've been playing with the following system for a few years without any probs :)

Win7 Ultimate 64-Bit
Lian Li PC-X2000
i7 2600k @ 4.8Ghz
Asus Maximus IV Extreme
4GB XMS3 DDR3 1866MHz
nVidia 285 GTX
23" AW2310 1920x1080 @ 120hz
Intel X25-M 80GB SSD
WD Caviar Black 2TB x4
Razer Blackwidow Mechanical Keyboard
Scythe 3 button USB Foot Switch
WMO @ 500hz

Oh and the single best investment you can make is an SSD... But get an Intel one.

Samsungs are fine too. Especially the 840 (pro) series.

nice £200 budget there mate

lol - guess i was showing off a little :D But yeah £200 wouldn't even get you the case :( But still the components that are good for gaming/performance are relatively cheap:

WMO: £5
SSD: £75
nVidia 285 GTX: £150 but you can get a lower end card for less coz quake doesnt need much.

...and his 2.8 ghz system would be fine to run quake well with the above and existing memory.