P5QL-E Upgrade possibilities

[scagliozzo]

Hi, i'm going to buy a used desktop with these specs (300eur also with 22"monitor):
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3Ghz
- 4 gb ram ddr2
- ATI radeon HD 4850
- motherboard ASUS P5QL-E
- Hard disk 300 GB

1st question.. I hope to play without problems, in good graphic details to "Wow Mysts of Pandaria", and "Guild Wars 2". It seems to be possible, isn't it?

2nd: I'm evaluating upgrade possibilities of this pc for future years (not expensive ):
Can I use a Radeon HD 6850 or similar high level cards on this motherboard?
The CPU or Ddr2 could be a drawback?

3rd: Any other advice?

Thanks in advance!

 

[jay_nar2012]

It supports a Core 2 Quad Q9650 with a bios update i think.

 

[scagliozzo]

But with current CPU and current Ram, only changing the graphic card, can i really improve performance into games, like the difference that there is beetween HD4850 and HD 6850? ty again!

 

[kareed44]

There isn't much headroom to upgrade above that CPU in the old 775 slot. The e8400 was a really capable CPU in that generation of processors and it wouldn't be worth it to upgrade. That being said, it has great overclocking potential, and isn't going to hold back anything but the high end GPUs these days. That video card would pair just fine with that CPU and DDR2 ram. It would play those 2 games medium settings with some nice frame rates. I know this because I play WoW and Guild Wars 2 (beta) on an e8400 and a Radeon 5770 and I have no issues as long as the details aren't cranked up.

 

[McgheeL]

Only purchase if you can get a good deal. say $50 - $75 for the box and the Monitor seperate.
that stuff is very outdated i could see it in a cheap corp setting that does not know how to treat its employees. Although, It would be good for displaying a vm running from a server.

Check out the $500 build article on this site if you want a less expensive system.

LM

 

[scagliozzo]

Ok! thank you all for your support
I'm now evaluating a new buy:

-CPU Intel i3-2120 3,30 Ghz 3MB Cache
-motherboard MSI H61M-P22
-Ram DDR3 4GB 1333MHz
-Hd Seagate 750Gb
-Case Atx c133m-x
-OS Windows 7 Home Premium Sp1 64bit
- ati Radeon HD 6850 or similar video card benchmark

for 320 euro (without monitor)

could it be a better buy looking forward?

or for 250euro I can play for 2 years with the cheapest:
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3Ghz
- 4 gb ram ddr2
- ATI radeon HD 4850
- motherboard ASUS P5QL-E
- Hard disk 300 GB
- 22" samsung monitor

Which one is the best choise??
ty!

 

[jay_nar2012]

I would still go with the i3, you would get better performance now and in the future than the C2D.

 

[InvalidError]

Which one is the best choise??

I would carry the GTX480 over to the new PC and use the ~$150 saved to bump RAM to 8GB (+$25), upgrade to a h77 board (+$25), get an i5-34xx instead of i3 (+$70) and set the rest aside for a future GPU upgrade.