So my friend wants a new computer for Civilization V

For that budget I would go with the stuff I listed above, with the 5750. That comes out to $420CAD+shipping.

What PSU does he have? It may need to be replaced to power the new system. If it does, this would be my recommendation. It's the cheapest one I could find that I would trust for that system, taking into account possible future upgrades.
OCZ 550W : $65CAD

Also, on another note, how old is his HDD? If it's about the same age as the rest of his system I would highly recommend that be the next part that is upgraded.

Hmm, I'll have to see what type of PSU his old computer has. I'm pretty sure it's one of those ones that can switch between AMD and Intel. May or may not be crappy.

The harddrive he was gonna use is ancient (some 40 GB made-in-2001 piece of crap). I'm donating to him a slightly less dated 320 GB 7200 RPM IDE drive I no longer have a use for :p.

You could always design a system based a little higher then system specs. http://support.2kgames.com/help/take2_games/civV_spec

And if youre going to go with a 9800, might as well pay a few extra bucks and get a GTX+, its right around 100.00 with rebate from EVGA(I think).

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Originally Posted by ownaginatious

Hmm, perhaps AMD would be a better option then. There is basically zero chance of upgrading what he's got.

Here are his current specs:

AMD Athlon x64 Socket 939 Single Core at 2.2 GHz
2 GB (667 Mhz I think) RAM.
A8N-SLI standard motherboard
7950 GT video card

Is a 7950 GT still considered good? lol

Perhaps he can reuse that video card.

EDIT: Oh, and I forgot to mention. His budget is ~$400 CAD. He already has a case, harddrive, monitor and all that - so he only really needs a CPU, Motherboard, RAM and GPU (if the one above actually sucks :p)

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If Im not mistaken, 939 boards were AGP. He would not be able to reuse that video card.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Okele

And if youre going to go with <insert hardware here>, might as well pay a few extra bucks and get <insert slightly more expensive hardware here>

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Lather rinse repeat. This has emptied my wallet more than once. ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blueonblack

Lather rinse repeat. This has emptied my wallet more than once. ;)

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lmao +rep

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Okele

If Im not mistaken, 939 boards were AGP. He would not be able to reuse that video card.

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The 939 generation was a transitional one, so it's probably about 50/50 whether it's AGP or PCIe not taking any other factors into account. However, iirc, while there were AGP versions of the 7950, they were pretty rare, so I'm gonna guess his is PCIe.

Ya, it's a PCIe one. The board even supports SLI :o.

The only thing I'm more impressed by is the presence of SATA ports on my dell motherboard from early 2003. Well, when it comes to crappy old hardware that is :p.

for a sub 80$ video card i'd probably check out what ebay has to offer, the 7950 is an alright card, but i probably wouldn't want to throw civilization V at it.

a 8800GTS or even 8800GTX is about 80~100$. might even find a 9800GTX+ on ebay for about 100$

i second taking a good look at the power supply. if the PSU is acient and under 500W 36A on the +12v rail theres always a 9800GT Energy efficient model that doesn't require a secondary power connection.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-279-_-Product

If it were me I wouldn't be able to justify buying an 8/9xxx series card for that much at this point, just for longevity reasons. Sure, they're fine now, but will they be fine in a year? They might be, but I'm guessing probably not...whereas the 5750 probably will be.