Recommended system upgrade?

Hi there,

I'm hoping you may be able to offer me some advice regarding the best system to run Second Life.

I currently have a Dell Dimension 4600, P4 2.8Ghz, 512Mb memory, 120 Gb Hard Drive (90% full most of the time) with a NVidia GeForce FX 5200.

I am looking to upgrade my system so that I can run Second Life well, (as well as Oblivion and Football Manager 2006).

I am considering upgrading to 1.5Gb memory, slaving a new 300Mb Hard Drive and adding a new GeForce card (although I'm not too sure which I should choose; 6600, 6800, 7600 or 7800). To be honest, the card is causing me the most angst, as I really don't know what will give me the most bang for buck.

My current system really doesn't do any of the games I like to play justice.

Any advice you kind people can offer would be grealy appreciated. Ta!

In your case i'd say prioritize memory and your gfx card. Your cpu should manage it okayish.

Any recommendation on gfx cards?

Cpu
"bob"bob" its ok for it.

Ram
min 1 gig, recommended 2gig.

Video card
6600-7900 (avoid TS/CS/LE)

SL at 7x00 card not much diffrence from a 6600
Oblivion on a 7x00 vs a 6600 HUGE, : >

Oblivon loves the 7600-7800-7900 cards, not that it doesnt work well on a 6800 either but theres a big diffrence fps in Oblivion.

Thanks for the advice

I forgot to mention, the current motherboard has 3 PCI slots (as opposed to PCI-Express) and 1 AGP. Does this have any impact on the graphics cards I can/ can't use?

-.-; youre doomed

nah most cards are for agp still, its far from dead, however they use more power so you prob need a +12volt to the vid card, to much strain on powersupply hello issues and crashing world.

Actually the majority are PCI-Express, and i'd certainly not upgrade to a non-PCI-E card. If you want my advice, save until you can afford to upgrade cpu, ram, gfx card and motherboard in one go. This allows you to select components that are matched to eachother's performance. Leaving any of the above out will cause a bottleneck somewhere. Normally motherboards arent part of that equation but you really want a motherboard with PCI-E and SATA etc. I think you should count on about $600 if you go for a mid-end solution, to about $1500 for high-end. Currently SL doesnt benefit from dual cores, so if you're a pure SL junky you probably shouldn't upgrade your cpu.

Anyway, dont expect huge improvements, my current rig :

- Intel Core 2 Duo 6600
- 2Gb DDR2 800 ram
- Dual 7950GX2 1024mb ddr3 ram
- Asus P2B-Deluxe motherboard
- 2x74Gb WD Raptors in Raid 0

And i run most busy sims at around 15-30fps. The point being, something is borked about SL that significantly reduces potential performance. Most likely FPS and network latency are tied in some way or form. So only upgrade if you have really crap FPS.

"nah most cards are for agp still"

english translation

most cards (that exsist) are for agp still (not that most cards made are for agp , but you can get nearly the same card on agp as pcie )

Yes i have a strange english its my 4th language -.o;

Upgrading everything wouldnt do much for SL , for every other game out there? ,oh yeah bigtime.

My older pc's
xp2600,2gig ram, 6600,
64-3500, 2gig ram, 6800
x2-4200, 2gig ram, 6800

has about 3 fps(isssh) less then this one i use -.- >

x2-4800,4gigram, 7900gt

Your system might handle a 7600GS. It's slightly slower than the 7600GT but there's an AGP version and it's got low power consumption, cost about $130-150 US. Along with your memory upgrade and new hard drive, could get you by until you're ready for a full blown upgrade. I play Oblivion on a 7600GT.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that any 7600 and up AGP card will probably require a secondary power connection. THe very last AGP card I bought was a 6600GT, which did require a secondary connection. In any case, I'd recommend at least a 400w power supply.

350-400 watts with +12V current rating of 18 amps or better should do for a 7600. An extra molex connector might be needed. The 7600GT I have did not need one.