Upgrading a PC for gaming

spratley

Hi! My 14yr old son is getting into PC gaming & is making noises about having a new PC for Christmas, but I'm not too thrilled at the prospect of shelling out £500ish. At the moment he has an Advent Centurion - the spec is (I think) - AMD Phenom X4 9650 Quad core/4GB DDR2/640Gb HDD/512Mb ATI Radeon 4350 graphics + Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. It's only about 2yrs old, so I am thinking about maybe just investing in some better components for this PC - probably a DIY job. I'm not sure about changing the processor, but I have installed a graphics card and extra memory on other PCs and also replaced the power supply on this one, when it went bang recently! This is a full size tower ie huge, so there is plenty of room inside to work.I'm not quite sure if there is a spare slot for extra memory - need to look inside. Anyhoo, would really like some suggestions of how I can upgrade, and the costs involved. The main problem my son is having is that he can't update his video drivers - is this a software problem or something to do with the age of his system? I don't mind paying a local geek to tune up/spring clean the whole thing if necessary...
Cheers!

spratley

Budget is in region of £200...

esuhl

spratley wrote: »

I'm not sure about changing the processor...

In my experience, the motherboard limits the types of processors that can be used so much that it's not usually an economical decision... It's an expensive upgrade that doesn't usually deliver much of a performance boost. But it depends on the specifics, of course...

Whenever I've upgraded a CPU, I've always upgraded the motherboard too.

A new video card and extra RAM are probably the most cost-effective upgrades.

spratley wrote: »

The main problem my son is having is that he can't update his video drivers - is this a software problem or something to do with the age of his system?

My friend gave me his PC to look at recently. I'm pretty sure that was an Advent PC (it was from PC World).

He'd added a graphics card and it was performing badly and the whole PC crashed periodically. I (eventually!) discovered that PC World had installed their own bodged-up BIOS which crippled offboard video adaptors.

A cynic might suggest that this would generate a fair bit of revenue for them as users upgrade their PC out of warranty and then need to pay PC World to fix the "problem". There was very little information about this online.

I don't know if you're experiencing anything similar, but I was able to identify the motherboard brand and model and locate the manufacturer's BIOS (instead of the PC World one). Unfortunately, the PC World BIOS refused to allow itself to be replaced with the manufacturer's version, so I had to downgrade the PC World BIOS to the earliest one I could find which lacked this "feature", and eventually I was able to replace it with the manufacturer's one.

Since then, the PC has performed much better and not crashed once.

I can't believe that PC World would go to so much trouble to take something that works perfectly and completely screw it up so your PC will crash repeatedly... that they'd not document this anywhere... would build-in a "feature" that tries to prevent you from fixing the problem... and then expect you to pay extra for a technical support package because of their unwillingness to provide any technical documentation.

Just one reason I'd never think of buying anything from PC World...

What model is your son's PC?

m0bov

Go onto the Crucial website and find out how much memory your system will take. Try to go to 8Gb at least. Then research a graphics card, you can also consider purchasing an SSD drive. Easiest thing is to do a clean install of W7 onto the SSD and load your games onto the current sata drive if it won't all fit on. You can also look at a s/h CPU to max the motherboard out and also overclocking.

gonzo127

the processor is not a worth while upgrade as the one you have is acceptable, and to make it better you would probably have to get a new motherboard aswell

Ram is a resonable amount as well, of course more is better, but 4gb is still more than enough for 99.9% of all games

so your biggie is going to be your graphics card as the 4350 is pretty poo for gaming

this however will be limited by the PSU you have just installed, so could you post details on what PSU you have installed? ie wattage, connectors (6 pin pci-e, 8 pin pci-e etc)

once we have a PSU details we can suggest a graphics card (or a graphics card and PSU combination)

Cisco001

GPU too weak.
What PSU have you got? (If you don't know, please open the case and tell us what brand and how many watt)
And what motherboard have you got?
IMO, If your motherboard could take it, I would suggest a Phenom II x4 965/ FX-4100 (£70 - 80) + AMD 7770 (£100) + decent 400W PSU (£40) if you don't have a good quality PSU
If you don't want to spend that much, leave out CPU upgrade. Just upgrade GPU

spratley

Thanks for the replies so far - will check on details of PSU & motherboard. The model of the PC is Centurion CPQ9104, and it was bought from Currys, so I hope it doesn't have the BIOS problem!
The "clean install of W7" - would this require me to buy a new copy of W7?

esuhl

spratley wrote: »

Thanks for the replies so far - will check on details of PSU & motherboard. The model of the PC is Centurion CPQ9104, and it was bought from Currys, so I hope it doesn't have the BIOS problem!

It's a different motherboard, so hopefully not... But in case it does, it looks like you have a Foxconn A7VMX-K motherboard, so you should be able to install the latest BIOS from the Foxconn website to replace the Advent one.

thefishdude

i would deffinatly say the gfx card is the way to go with that system. 4350 is no good for games its very low end. if it was me and i like a pc dable lol i would be looking for a second hand gfx around the 6850 mark on ebay

Cisco001

spratley wrote: »

Thanks for the replies so far - will check on details of PSU & motherboard. The model of the PC is Centurion CPQ9104, and it was bought from Currys, so I hope it doesn't have the BIOS problem!
The "clean install of W7" - would this require me to buy a new copy of W7?

You don't need to get new copy of W7. OEM version of windows would valid if you don't change motherboard.

Your motherboard is Foxconn A7VMX-K. The best CPU it could take is 95W Phenom II x4 955. But looking at the price, it is not worth upgrading from what you have got.

And thus, Go for upgrading GPU & PSU.
AMD 7770 (£85) / AMd 6850 (£110) with 500w - 600w PSU (£45 - 60. Good brand like Corsair/ Antec/ seasonic, etc)

Notmyrealname

I second Cisco001's advice. nVidia used to be the obvious choice for graphics card but AMD really upped their game.