Upgrade to old PC

[WhyleyCoyote]

Don't believe the manufacturer's specs on "required PSU wattage" - they just throw a huge number out there to make sure their butts are covered if someone tries to run the video card in a system with 6 Velociraptor HDDs, 3 extra PCI cards, 3 DVD drives, 2 floppy drives, an overclocked 140w CPU, 7 case fans, and 8 USB devices - and a no-name, $25 "500w" PSU - and the extra load kills the PSU...

Give us the specs on your current PSU - in all likelihood, the GTX 660 will not draw much more than your 8800 GTS. Your whole system will probably draw less than 200w while playing games.

Thanks, I may just risk it then in that case... It makes sense, what you are saying about the 8800GTS probably having similar power requirements. It was a good card in it's day pity it was superseded so quickly though but that seems to be the way in all computer related equipment, that's why I am so surprised that I don't have to update the CPU or motherboard!!!

 

[jessterman21]

Thanks, I may just risk it then in that case... It makes sense, what you are saying about the 8800GTS probably having similar power requirements. It was a good card in it's day pity it was superseded so quickly though but that seems to be the way in all computer related equipment, that's why I am so surprised that I don't have to update the CPU or motherboard!!!

It was a good card through 2010, but you're right - to keep up with the latest games, you really have to upgrade to a new $200 card every 2 years or so. Whereas a $200 CPU will keep up with new games for about 4 years.

 

[WhyleyCoyote]

Thanks for everybody's help on my question, just to update you, I have purchased the 660 TI card mentioned above and tried 2GB of extra RAM unfortunately I have an issue with the RAM that I need to resolve:

I purchased one stick of 2GB DDRII RAM last night (after I was told by my supplier that it would work fine with my setup) I fitted the new bits last night and everything works fine but the memory, when fitted the machine won't boot windows, when removed it boots fine!

So the question is now:

1. Is the RAM faulty?
2. Is the problem due to having two different speeds of memory, or
3. Is it because I had 2GB of memory (purchased in 2007) in 2 slots working in dual channel mode and 2GB memory fitted to one slot trying to work in a different mode?

I suspect it's probably point 3! Can anyone help me out here?

Anyway graphics card is in and it's passed the Nvidia test thingy they have on their website, Windows 7 reports graphics score of 7.9 now (which is the max score)!!!!

Started installing BF3 to the PC last night from the new DVD's I have purchased from Amazon. It loaded something called "Origin" then it proceeded to download the game from the internet? It requires me to download over 16GB of data, it didn't even refer to the DVD again? Anyone got any ideas with this? It seems a crazy way of installing the software and it's very time consuming!

After Googling the above problem with BF3 it seems a lot of other people are having this issue also...

 

[o1die]

Number 3 is probably correct. Mixing ram and leaving one slot open may be your issue. The newer board manuals give you all possible ram configurations for each slot. You can sell off the other 1 gb sticks and buy a matching stick for your 2 gb stick or try a different 2 gb stick. Take your system with you and test any new ram before you pay. If the 2 gb stick is single sided (chips on one side only) then at least match that; if it's two sided (chips on both sides) then match that configuration.

 

[WhyleyCoyote]

Thanks o1die, I am going to try fitting a matching stick tonight - I had the one I purchased last night tested and it works fine on the suppliers pc so I guess it's due to mixing old and new memory and possibly the card doesn't support two sticks in one mode and one stick in another. I will run some tests tonight and see what combination works best, but I guess now I have two new sticks of memory it will be best to run them as a pair and like you say sell the others.

Just had a quick look on Ebay to see how much I could sell the memory for but it doesn't look like it's selling at the moment, hundreds of adverts but no takers!

 

[o1die]

If you can buy a matching 2 gb stick, then try all four in the proper slots. Most are color coded, so put both 1 gb sticks in the same color slots, and the same for the 2 gb sticks. See if that works for 6 gb total. Good luck.

 

[WhyleyCoyote]

Yes, I will try that first!

 

[WhyleyCoyote]

Well, I added the pair of new 2GB RAM strips into the PC last night and still had the same problem (when running them with the original 1GB strips) so I guess it's because the speeds are too different?

Anyway, I now have a working PC with 4GB of DDRII memory. I updated the performance report in Windows 7 and now my minimum score is 5.9 for RAM, CPU and Disk. Graphics are 7.9, so I think this is as far as it's economical to go with this motherboard.

Eventually got BF3 installed last night and it seems to be running well on the new setup, still got some settings to alter, but so far so good and so much different to running it on the PS3.

Next time it looks like I will have to look at updating the CPU, Motherboard and RAM but hopefully it will last a year or more now.

Many thanks for everyone's advice it has been really helpful!

 

[jessterman21]

Well, I added the pair of new 2GB RAM strips into the PC last night and still had the same problem (when running them with the original 1GB strips) so I guess it's because the speeds are too different?

Anyway, I now have a working PC with 4GB of DDRII memory. I updated the performance report in Windows 7 and now my minimum score is 5.9 for RAM, CPU and Disk. Graphics are 7.9, so I think this is as far as it's economical to go with this motherboard.

Eventually got BF3 installed last night and it seems to be running well on the new setup, still got some settings to alter, but so far so good and so much different to running it on the PS3.

Next time it looks like I will have to look at updating the CPU, Motherboard and RAM but hopefully it will last a year or more now.

Many thanks for everyone's advice it has been really helpful!

No problem - glad it's working for you.