I am about to upgrage...... here's what I am thinking of.


MSI 770-C45 Mobo
AMD Phenom II X4 945 (both Tom's Hardware and PC Gamer have this best "bang for buck" last month).
4G crappy cheapo 1333MHz memory (that's the brand make, honest..)

Please let me know if you have any suggestions. I don't want to spend more that £250. I a'm also hoping my 8800gt will cope with stuff like B:BC2 once the rest is upgraded.

The above is coming out at around £230 from scan.

You're talking to someone who spends £1000 every time I upgrade, as for BC2 and MoH it may be at the limits of what the card can do as EA do go to town for PC graphics. You can get a new ATI Radeon HD 5830 for £150 but you could always wait and see once you've upgraded.

As for me may be a new graphics card around November time

Remind me what spec your PC is Andy ? I found out the graphics card can take a dent out of the CPU if its not up to scratch, so you might just need to upgrade your graphics card ???

I spent £500ish on my PC when I got it, but I havent looked at the CPU's & GPU's in ages so not up to date like you

I still have the AMD 64X2 4600 (2.4G chip), 4G DDR800 and the 8800GT.

I personaly think the 8800 is still good enough as I am only running it at 900x1440. The tell tail for me is that B:BC2 runs the same FPS regardless of the graphic settings. I am assuming that is a CPU bottleneck.

Remember that the AMDX2 chips are roughly 1/3 slower than the equivalent Intel chips. I also have the option to crank the 8800 up from 600 to 700 core speed (still staying under 80deg under load with stock cooler), but doing so at the moment seems to have no effect. Again this may be due to cpu bottleneck.

Okey dokey!


Here's the plan......

Phenom II Quad 955 Black edition = £105.69
4G Corsair Ram 1333 = £57.69
Asus M4A77T Mobo = £63.18 same as last mobo i looked at but with USB3 support.

It's basically the PC Gamer Magazine rig. Why re-invent the wheel!

Grand total = £226.56

I'll still be using the 8800GT, but am hoping it will cope OK @ 900x1440.

I'm placing the order in 2 weeks, hopefully in time for BO's

I am a convert to Intel now, but if a mag said it was good - go with it. If you can play MW2 on the 8800 still BO should play fine as its the same engine used.

Are you going to install Windows 7 on it ? Let me know if you need help






PS. Picky but it should be 1440x900 unless you are planning to play in portrait mode