Low budget upgrade

[twislayer]

Hello, i am new to this forums and decided to make a thread here because i've solved almost all of my PC problems following guides on this website, I own a pretty okay gaming rig but my friend doesn't and she lives half way across the planet, I'm asking for help to suggest upgrades for her computer as we both want to play the same games together and her computer is currently a potato.

we're looking for a low budget upgrade to handle current MMORPG games and not AAA games so we're not looking for the best performance boost, anyway she currently uses an Nvidia GT440 card with an Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 CPU @ 2.66Ghz and 4Gigs of RAM, like i said we're on a fairly low budget here so i suggested a GTX 750Ti or a GTX 1050Ti, i think those cards are incredibly good for the price tag they hold and I'd like your opinions on weather they'd go well with the current CPU or if we will have to switch it out to something better, will need to upgrade the RAM to at least 8gigs as well.
Detailed replies are really appreciated, thanks.
PS sorry for my terrible english

 

[vapour]

which country?
total budget?
what specific games?
PSU model and age?

 

[justin.m.beauvais]

I think that if you could get your hands on something like a 660Ti, a 750Ti, an R7 260X, an R9 270, or even a newer card like a GT 1030 or GTX 1050 that you'd be good to go. 4 GB of RAM isn't bad for most games. AAA titles are just now moving beyond the 4 GB bare minimum. 8 GB would be ideal, but even getting up to 6 GB would be good enough for the majority of games.

For lower end gaming the Q9400 isn't a bad chip, but these days you could get an old 4 core Xeon, a first generation i7, or even a Sandy Bridge i5 for fairly cheap. Any of those would be a healthy upgrade. All of those will need a new motherboard and possibly new RAM though, so that will drive the cost up a bit, but there is always the old Dell workstation route where you get something with a Xeon W3550 or i7 900 series, somewhere between 4 and 8 GB of RAM, and throw a GT 1030 or 750Ti in it and you're good to go for gaming for somewhere around $300. Of course, when you get around the $300 range you are starting to get into the argument for a Ryzen 3 2200G with integrated Vega graphics, a new motherboard, and 8 GB of DDR4 and just reuse the case, PSU, and hard drives from the old build.

 

[twislayer]

total budget? why i made this post
what specific games? MMORPG's
PSU model and age?

Germany
Not sure about the budget yet, thus why i made the post
Bless online, Aion, Black desert online etc basically MMORPG's
no idea about the PSU either, will get back to you with this one

 

[twislayer]

I think that if you could get your hands on something like a 660Ti, a 750Ti, an R7 260X, an R9 270, or even a newer card like a GT 1030 or GTX 1050 that you'd be good to go. 4 GB of RAM isn't bad for most games. AAA titles are just now moving beyond the 4 GB bare minimum. 8 GB would be ideal, but even getting up to 6 GB would be good enough for the majority of games.

For lower end gaming the Q9400 isn't a bad chip, but these days you could get an old 4 core Xeon, a first generation i7, or even a Sandy Bridge i5 for fairly cheap. Any of those would be a healthy upgrade. All of those will need a new motherboard and possibly new RAM though, so that will drive the cost up a bit, but there is always the old Dell workstation route where you get something with a Xeon W3550 or i7 900 series, somewhere between 4 and 8 GB of RAM, and throw a GT 1030 or 750Ti in it and you're good to go for gaming for somewhere around $300. Of course, when you get around the $300 range you are starting to get into the argument for a Ryzen 3 2200G with integrated Vega graphics, a new motherboard, and 8 GB of DDR4 and just reuse the case, PSU, and hard drives from the old build.

what about keeping the current CPU and just upgrading the GPU and RAM? 750Ti sounds like a perfect card for this budget build in my opinion i did watch a few YouTube videos about the Q9400 paired with a 750Ti or a 1050Ti, 4GB ram and it looked perfect

And i'd prefer to stick with Nvidia cards as i've never tried AMD cards before, my current build is GTX 1060 6GB, i5 6500, 16GB RAM and it's more than enough for current and upcoming games in 1080p

 

[geofelt]

What is your budget?
Where will you buy?

MMO type games depend a lot on the performance of the single master cpu thread.
If that is your situation, a better graphics card may not do much.

Run YOUR games, but lower your resolution and eye candy.
If your FPS increases, it indicates that your cpu is strong enough to drive a better graphics configuration.
If your FPS stays the same, you are likely more cpu limited.

In the US, $220 buys you a G5600 processor with HD630 graphics, 8gb of ddr4 ram, and a lga1151 motherboard.
The Q9400 was a great processor in it's day. It has a passmark rating of 3354 and a single thread rating of 1128.
By comparison, a modern G5600 has a rating of 5695 and a single thread rating of 2292.
And... the integrated HD630 graphics is considerably stronger than the current GT440. More like a gt1030.

 

[vapour]

My suggestion is to sell your cpu/mb/ram/gpu and get below:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor (€93.29 @ Alternate)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-AB350M-DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (€63.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Memory: Patriot - Viper 4 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (€94.89 @ Alternate)
Total: €252.17
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-06-01 18:58 CEST+0200

IGPU is good enough to handle any MMORPG, new AM4 platform can allow future upgrades as well.

 

[twislayer]

thank you so much for the recommendations, i will see what i can do and if it works out i'll let you guys how it went thanks alot.