Evil Empire Gaming

Thoughts on a Budget Upgrade

Been thinking about a budget upgrade recently, researching a lot of options and I've found a couple of useful resources.

But first here's an interesting stats page from Valve displaying system configurations for users of their Steam platform. Of course what we're really looking at are stats for Counter Strike players but still. According to them the most used video card is the Geforce 4 MX series. Interesting eh?

I find it interesting because reading hardware review websites would have you believing everyone has modern video cards and if you're upgrading the lastest and greatest is the only way you should spend your money. Hardware review sites often draw comparisions between budget and high end models that make you feel as if the budget models aren't worth spending your money on. They'll say this one has 16 pipelines and this one only 12, this one get's 10 - 20 fps more than this one.... But one thing they don't often rank is the user experience.

Anyway, here's a few articles that help. HardOCP have a US$500 Upgrade guide where they recommend an AMD64 2800+ (socket 754) and a Radeon 9600XT. Ars Technica have a system guide and their "Hot Rod" system configuration that uses a GeForce 6800 and a AMD64 3200+.

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