The $500 Gaming PC Upgrade

Building a powerful PC for gaming doesn't have to be expensive. In this article, FiringSquad spends $500 on a gaming upgrade, and compares its performance to that of a high-end Core 2 Extreme PC. The Core 2 Extreme rig is faster, but you may be surprised by how well the $500 PC is able to hang with it in Crysis, Call of Duty 4, and Unreal Tournament 3.

Just in time for an upcoming LAN party - if only I had any discretionary funds whatsoever... my poor gaming rig is starting to show it's age after 2.5 years...

Just to cut to the chase, here's what they settled on:

GeForce 8800 GT (EVGA) $249.99
Athlon 64 X2 4000+ $75.90
Gigabyte GA-MA69GM-S2H $79.99
OCZ PC2-6400 Platinum Revision 2 Dual Channel $79.99 ($44.99 after mail-in rebate)

I've always liked the Asus motherboards, that's what I used in CrazyHarry, but the Gigabyte sounds nice. However, it's not SLI like the MSI K9AG Neo2-Digital they also mention (which they say sells for $5 less...) Also, I already have the RAM, but I may need the faster speed for a new motherboard.

Again, this is an upgrade article, you’ve clearly already got a hard drive, optical drive, case, keyboard, mouse, monitor, and OS, or else you wouldn’t be reading this site. If you can, you might as well recycle those components and upgrade them as soon as your budget allows.

I'm pretty happy with my opticals, and my trusty Raptors in RAID0. They still burn something fierce!