Is this worth it?

I was thinking of and hoping to completely buy a new system for about £1000, but I am in a sensible mood and having played the demo of Call of Duty 2 to find it runs fine on my system, maybe I can just spend a couple of hundred on a decent AGP graphics card (which will be redundant when I upgrade to a PCI-E system at some point either this year or early next year).

Firstly, is that a good idea? And secondly, what card would you recommend? Specs in sig.

I don't think so. If you're going to upgrade to a PCI-E system "later this year or early next year", why waste hundreds on a graphics card you're only going to use for a couple of months at best?

Upgrade now and get it over with.

Hmmm... I'm just having a hard time justifying spending a grand on a new PC when mine's okay, just because I want to play Battlefield 2 and up the resolution on Oblivion. :(

I bought a new PC the other day, I couldn't be happier really.

I mean, the mobo wasn't really what I was looking for so my sound suffers, but the dual core processor more than makes up for having an x1300 instead of a 6800. using my 6800 on my old amd 2600 had a slower framerate than the x1300 does on my new pc.

Probrably just that Oblivion takes use of dual core too that though.

Sounds like you should wait a few months, if the games work ok on lower settings, try playing them through the TV, i find games that run at 640x480 look much better on the TV. Bit of advice I heard from a mate that, and for me at least, it works.

My PC, which I got 2 years ago, still runs Half Life 2 totally fine, and I mean totally fine not slightly crappy :-) I'll save my money (what money?) a bit longer.

No. If yours is okay, then there's no reason to upgrade it, especially not since you plan on getting already obsolete hardware.

Save your money, and buy a decent new PC when the needs arrises. Oh and incidently, Battlefield 2 is crap.

eMachines... that's the only thing you need remember...

cheapest crap in the computer universe... and you will have change left over to put in a good video card after you buy one...

then in a year or two, you won't mind tossing it for another, higher performing eMachines, seeing as you didn't have to give no more than a single pint of blood for it in the first place...

this way you'll be able to keep up with technology, play the latest games, and eat... all at the same time...

i never understood the rationale for spending a fortune on a super wiz bang box, only to be king of the mountain for a week or two, then have to spend another fortune just to keep pace with an ever advancing tide of tech...

--Mike

Stick with Battlefield 1942, much more fun than BF2. You can download the Desert Combat MOD, which has kind of the same feel as BF2. I tried BF2, and just didn´t like it, good ol' BF1942 is much more fun.\

And anyway, BF2 will still be around when you do decide to upgrade.

Ragnar

Considering my specs, Oblivion only really becomes reasonably smooth (at any resolution) by turning the grass off, so I shouldn't worry too much about upgrading your gfx card for Oblivion.

Also, Battlefield 2 will benefit more from you having 1.5 or 2GB (2GB is just easier) of system RAM than a gfx card upgrade.

If you really do want to upgrade your gfx now, get either a fast 6600 or the cheapest (256MB) 6800 you can find.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=314618

Cheapest (AGP) 6800 I could find (£160), but it's a GS. Still, much better than my Ti4200. Unsure which way to go on this one... I'd upgrade a bit at a time if I could, but I can't upgrade anything without first getting a new mobo, at which point nothing in there could stay.

is there anything stopping you getting a pcie motherboard? I did that for my 754 athlon once because I got hold of a pcie graphics card.

Its only an extra outlay of £50 for the motherboard and some thermal paste for the heatsink. This is because you need to take the heatsink off and use a piece of kitchen roll paper to gently and firmly remove existing thermal paste for re-application on the new mobo.

When you apply thermal paste you only need a small pea sized amount in the middle of the cpu, the pressure from the heatsink will nicely spread it.

I don't think so. I'm pretty sure Oblivion doesn't use Dual Core at all, despite pre-release claims that it would.

When I upgrade my mobo, I'd like to go socket 939 so that would mean I'd need a new CPU & heatsink as well. And when I do that I'd also like to upgrade to SATA hard drives and faster RAM...