Should I Upgrade?

[Markgixer6]

Hello all,
This is my first post, and I want to get some expert advice before splashing the cash. I'm wondering if now is the right time to upgrade. Here is what I currently have :-

Lanparty UT RDX200 CF-DR (socket 939)
ATI X1800XT (matched pair in crossfire)
AMD 64 X2 3800+
Audigy 2 ZX Platinum Pro
Corsair 2GB DDR TWINX2048 3500LL Pro TwinX (2x1048MB) CAS2 (433Mhz)
Western Digital 150Gb Raptor 10,000rpm
Western Digital 320Gb 7,200rpm

Here's what I'm thinking of upgrading to:-

Intel Core 2 DUO E6600 2.4GHz 'Conroe' 4Mb Cache LGA775
Asus P5W DH Deluxe 975X PCI-E (Socket 775) DDR2 Motherboard
Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX (2x1GB)

Everything else will stay the same and go onto the new board. I have 3 questions really.

1. How much of a difference will this make from a gaming point of view (Medieval 2 told me my current set up wasn't good enough to bring all the armies on in some battles..very insulting). How much of a frame rate difference might it make.
2. Should I be looking for some alternative upgrades here?
3. Should I wait before upgrading anything, and if so, for how long?

I should add that my budget is about £650.
Any advice is greatly appreciated, so thanks in advance. Oh yeah, obviously I'm overclocking, and will do so with any new set up.

Cheers
Mark

[liljim]

Wow Mark, interesting post. umm, ok. Let me start by welcoming you to PCTech.

My first thought,
Medieval 2 must be an awesome game for you to even consider upgrading an already powerful machine for it. I havent seen the game but its hard for me to imagine that your having problems running it with your config being what it is.

How much are you overclocking?
Just the CPU or mem and vid too?

What i dont understand, unless i just looked up the wrong game, is you blow away the system requirements

Medieval II: Total War <----Correct?

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

- English version of Microsoft® Windows® 2000/XP

- Celeron 1.5GHz Pentium 4® (1500MHz) or equivalent AMD® processor.

- 512MB RAM

- 8x Speed CD-ROM drive

- 700MB of uncompressed free hard disk space

- 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible 16-bit sound card and latest drivers

- 100% Windows® 2000/XP compatible mouse, keyboard and latest drivers

- DirectX® 9.0c

- 128MB Hardware Accelerated video card with Shader 1 support and the latest
drivers. Must be 100% DirectX® 9.0c compatible*. Nvidia® GeForce 4 Ti 4400 or
ATI Radeon® 9800 are the recommended minimum hardware.

- Monitor must be able to display 1024x768 resolution or above.



If thats the right game, do you have problems running anything else?

Personally i think you should have enough machine to run for quite a while yet. You would see some performance gained by upgrading but i couldnt say its worth the cost, especially with quad core CPU's entering the market.

[Mark121]

by exprince I have, your games would be better with
Intel's Core 2 DUO E6600
and at least an X1950XT or 8800GTS by a least 40%.
I play a lot of Battlefield 2 and RainBow Six Vegas.
Intel system seems more stable in my opinion

I my self have built another system with Intel retail edge program
consisting of

TT CASE
Intel motherboard BLKDG965WHMKR
Core 2 Duo E6300
2 GIGS PATRIOT PC2 5300 667MHZ (cas) 5,5,5,12
EVGA 7800GT 256 PCI Express
WDC 250 GIG HDD SATA2
AOPEN DVD/-+RW
ENERMAX 485W NOISETAKER
Windows XP HOME SP2

AMD SYSTEM

TT Tsunami Black
ASUS A8N32-SLI DELUXE
AMD Athlon 64 4400+ X2 with ZALMAN CPU COOLER 9500LED
OCZ Platinum EL PC3200 2 GIGs (cas) 2,2,2,5
EVGA 7900GT CO 256 PCIE SuperClock
Creative Sound Blaster XF-I Extreme Music
WDC 250 GIGs SATA2 7200rpm 16MB cache
2 LITE-ON DVD-+RW w/light scribe
Enermax 535watt PSU
Windows XP Home SP2