Budget PC upgrade. Help please!

[sonysamsony]

Hi all,



Earlier I was planning to get an i7 based system built but now I have decided to upgrade it when it becomes mainstream. Anyway coming to the topic my present PC is:



1- PROCESSOR: INTEL CORE 2 DUO E6550 (CONROE) 2.33 GHZ
2- MOTHERBOARD: INTEL DG33FB (AAD81072-303)
3- VIDEO CARD: ATI RADEON X700 SE 512 MB
4- MEMORY: KINGSTON DDR2 2048 MBYTES 333.3 MHZ
5- HARDDISK: 250 GB
6- POWER SUPPLY: 550 WATTS



I wish to upgrade it as follows:



1- PROCESSOR:INTEL CORE 2 QUAD Q8300 2.50Ghz (4MB CACHE - 1333 MHZ)
2- MOTHERBOARD: INTEL DG33FB (AAD81072-303)
3- VIDEO CARD: HIS (PCI EXPRESS) ATI PCX 4870 1GB (256-BITS) DDR 5
4- MEMORY: KINGSTON DDRII 2GB-800 x 2 = 4 GB
5- HARDDISK: SEAGATE 500GB 3.5" HDD SATA-II 7200RPM 16MB Cache (ST-3500320AS)
6- POWER SUPPLY: 550 WATTS



I wish to know the below mentioned things:



1- Is the upgraded build hardware completely compatible with each other?

2- Is the Core 2 Quad Q8300 is a good processor or should I select some other quad prcessor since it has 4MB Cache only, is it good for gaming?

3- My motherboard has Intel G33 Express Chipset while earlier I was considering Asus P5Q motherboard which is Intel P45 chipset. Whats the difference between these two and would the performance of my Pc suffer if I go with my selected motherboard? All in all what difference would there be?

4- Is the video card good enough to run all present games and also are there any problems with heavy ATI cards or they work perfectly as Nvidia's cards do? Any other suggestions for video card are requested.

5- Is the power supply enough for my upgraded build?



Please inform and with my best regards to you all.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Which PSU do you have? As PSU's are not all created equal. Another route to consider is to save on the processor, and OC the one you have and use the saved cash on say a 4870 x2 or something like that.

 

[Upendra09]

1 the mobo might create problems

2.C2Qs are very good for gaming since it is a quad core

3.the current mobo might bottleneck the rest of the components, go with the p45 or something beter

P= no onboard vid mem
G= onboard vid mem

the difference isn't much between them.

4. ATI cards are very good and run stable there might be a few driver problems but they are fixed easily. Stick w/ the ATI

5. Maybe, depends on the brand of the PSU if it is a major one then u might be okay but if it is one of those cheap ones then no, u need a new one.