Hi all. I'm looking for some upgrade advice.
My machine is primarily a gaming machine. I have a large amount of RAM (2 gig) and a medium-end graphics card (GeForce 7600) which I feel are both fine by today's standards. What I'm thinking of upgrading though is my CPU.
Reason for this is that I love to play The Sims 2. After reading up about how to improve performance, I've been told by a couple of sources that this game in particular pushes a lot of work on the CPU as opposed to the graphics card. However, I'm quite concerned about different socket sizes or shapes with CPU's.
My motherboard is a "WinFast 760GXK8MC", which I believe is a Socket 754, however I've noticed that CPU's with that socket seem to be few and far between. The main place that I've bought from in the past has none, most of their AMD processors are Socket AM2. I don't believe there are any Intel or other processors that fit this socket, as Wikipedia says it was developed by AMD.
Can anybody advise me unto the steps of upgrading a processor? I've dealt with graphics cards in the past, so I know a fair bit about them, but I've never so much as touched a CPU!
If I have to buy a new MoBo, then I will, but will it be easy to find one with a Socket AM2 slot for the CPU and an AGP slot for my graphics card? I hope not to have to buy another graphics card for a while, and the one I have is AGP. Also, will the RAM I currently have installed be ok in a new MoBo?
Dunno how much I'm asking here, so I do apologize if I'm causing unnecessary grief for anybody reading, or if I'm talking absolute twoddle!
Thanks
My machine is primarily a gaming machine. I have a large amount of RAM (2 gig) and a medium-end graphics card (GeForce 7600) which I feel are both fine by today's standards. What I'm thinking of upgrading though is my CPU.
Reason for this is that I love to play The Sims 2. After reading up about how to improve performance, I've been told by a couple of sources that this game in particular pushes a lot of work on the CPU as opposed to the graphics card. However, I'm quite concerned about different socket sizes or shapes with CPU's.
My motherboard is a "WinFast 760GXK8MC", which I believe is a Socket 754, however I've noticed that CPU's with that socket seem to be few and far between. The main place that I've bought from in the past has none, most of their AMD processors are Socket AM2. I don't believe there are any Intel or other processors that fit this socket, as Wikipedia says it was developed by AMD.
Can anybody advise me unto the steps of upgrading a processor? I've dealt with graphics cards in the past, so I know a fair bit about them, but I've never so much as touched a CPU!
If I have to buy a new MoBo, then I will, but will it be easy to find one with a Socket AM2 slot for the CPU and an AGP slot for my graphics card? I hope not to have to buy another graphics card for a while, and the one I have is AGP. Also, will the RAM I currently have installed be ok in a new MoBo?
Dunno how much I'm asking here, so I do apologize if I'm causing unnecessary grief for anybody reading, or if I'm talking absolute twoddle!
Thanks
