Written by Jason Cisarano  on July 17, 2007

Specials: The party's over and the E3 hangover is here.

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Now that E3 has ended and the euphoria at the idea of playing World in Conflict or Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare begins to fade, reality sets in for PC gamers across the globe. That little gremlin scratching around in the back of everyone's mind is slowly getting more and more insistent: УThere's no way that game will look like that on my old system.Ф It's a statement generally followed by a sigh of despair and accompanied with a bit of web surfing to hardware sites or PC vendors. Here are a few ideas to keep your PC playing next year's killer games without killing your bank account.

Obligatory caveat: The prices quoted here are current as of the publication date. Hardware prices and availability fluctuate quickly, so don't flame me if you can't find the same deal a month from now. In researching this article, I relied heavily on Newegg and TigerDirect.

Find your bottleneck. First, examine your current PC setup and find its weakest area. By identifying the weakest area of your PC and fixing that, you'll maximize your benefits while minimizing cost. When thinking about gaming, you can generally skip things like your optical and hard drives, unless there's a glaring problem in those areas. While they'll help your games install and load faster, they generally won't boost your framerates. The three main areas you should look at are RAM, graphics card, and CPU, in that order. New games will stress older computers in all three of those areas, and upgrades to those three items are manageable projects, even for someone who's never cracked open a case in their life.

Before you start buying anything, make sure that the upgrade you're looking at is worth doing. Is it worth spending a few hundred dollars in order to give your computer an extra year or so of life? That's a personal question that you'll have to figure out on your own based on what kind of games you play, how much you want to spend and what you'll get for your money. Also, you should consider whether your proposed new hardware is enough of an upgrade for your system. For example, if you're already running a 7800 GT graphics card, does it make sense to shell out the money for an 8600 GT? Sure it's a newer card with DX10, but how much of a performance gain are you really buying, if any at all? Do your homework at sites like Tom's Hardware and AnandTech and read reviews that compare the performance of different components.

Tweak, tweak, and then tweak some more. The first solution won't cost you a nickel. It'll just take some of your time as you learn more about your computer and your favorite games as you try to find the best balance between looks and performance. Not only do you want to get a handle on in-game settings (like antialiasing and shadow detail), but you'll also want to learn the right way to set your video card and even your operating system in order to get the most out of your games. Each game is different and there's a ton of stuff to learn, but one resource on the web will help you get all this straight: TweakGuides. Start out with their УTweaking Companion,Ф then go on to the guide specific for your brand of video card. You can also check out their УGamer's Graphics and Display Settings GuideФ for detailed descriptions of things like VSync and Triple Buffering. After that, you'll be ready to tackle their game-specific guide. Don't be daunted by the fact that the Tweaking Companion alone weighs in at 173 pages. This is PC gaming after all, so there's going to be homework involved.

Expand your mind. Adding RAM is an easy upgrade, and often the first one that budding enthusiasts undertake. For upcoming games, if you're running Windows XP, you'll likely want to have a full gigabyte of RAM at the minimum. Many games will be able to put 2GB to good use. With Vista, you'll definitely want that second gig due to the operating system's extra overhead. Before your upgrade, though, you'll want to check what you already have. First off, you'll want to check the specs of your existing RAM in order to find a matching module. If you've never done that before, Crucial Technology offers a УMemory AdvisorФ tool to help you figure out exactly what you've got. Even if you're not buying from Crucial, you can answer a few questions about your system or use their automated system scanner to get suggestions for upgrades. Mushkin likewise offers a system checker in addition to their Уperfect matchФ program to help make memory upgrades for consumer systems from manufacturers like Dell and Sony as seamless as possible. Before you buy, though, you'll need to check how many memory slots are open on your motherboard. Hopefully, you won't run into a situation where you have to ditch a stick of RAM because the slots you want to use are full. If you do, you might consider ditching all the old memory in favor of inexpensive new RAM, since identical sticks will run much, much faster in dual-channel capable motherboards. Check your documentation to see if your mb supports dual-channel mode.

New video cards bring the goods. Graphics card upgrades are one of the most excitingЧand frustratingЧprojects you can undertake. On the one hand, a new GPU will almost always bring more beef to your system if chosen wisely. New cards mean more eye candy and more processing power to handle said sweetness. On the other hand, a new graphics card means plenty of research: will the card be compatible with your motherboard? Does your power supply have the raw wattage to push the new card? Graphics cards are also a big investment, and definitely the most expensive component we'll talk about here today.

Swapping out a video card is a bit more involved than adding RAM, but it's certainly a doable project. There are two main compatibility questions to consider. First is the slot type on your motherboard. PCI-Express has been standard for almost two years now, but if you've got an older computer, you might have an AGP slot. Check your motherboard documentation or bust open your computer to check which one you've got. There are still plenty of AGP cards out there, but the Nvidia 7900 GS looks like it hits the price vs. performance sweet spot at about $180 today. If you want to spend the money, XFX is still making a 7950 GX2 for about $270. Remember that card puts two graphics processor on one board, so in effect you're running an SLI setup in one slot. How cool is that? It's a power hungry card, though, so if your system has a stock PSU, you'll likely have to upgrade before you can run this card. If you're not sure what kind of power supply you have, crack open your system and look for a label on the side of the unit. Most PSUs have a label that not only gives the max wattage overall, but also specific specs for the unit. You'll want to check the overall wattage and the amperage on the 12 volt rail versus the manufacturer's specs for the card you're considering.

For PCI-E owners, there are more video card choices, including the latest DX10 capable solutions from both Nvidia and ATI. The 8600 GTS cards are looking like great deals right now if you want to save some money, and both XFX and Asus are offering factory overclocked versions in the $160-170 range, all with 256Mb of GDDR3 memory. These cards do require at least 350W of overall power on your PSU plus a special PCI-E power connection directly to the card. If your PSU doesn't make the grade, you can opt for the 8800 GTЧjust make sure you go for a fast memory and GPU clock.



And then there's the 8800 GTS. You can find the 320Mb version of this card at or below about $300, and it's definitely a powerhouse at that price. ATI's comparable 2900XT rings it at closer to $400, and even though that card packs 512Mb of memory, Nvidia seems the clear choice here. These cards are by no means cheap, but they will put you closer to the front end of the card market as it stands today. These are DX10 cards, but remember that Microsoft's official stance right now is that only Vista will support DX10, not XP. But before you go figuring the cost of a new OS in your upgrade price, you should know that there are coders out there right now working on making DX10 work with XP. It's a work in progress, but an early build is available to the public that wants to get games like Halo 2 and Shadowrun to work on XP.

If you're not ready to plunk down that cash yet and you've got a decent last-generation card, why not consider an SLI setup? Assuming your motherboard and PSU can handle it, search around for a cheap card to match your old one. If you haven't looked into SLI for a while, you'll be happy to know that the setup no longer requires identical cards as long as your drivers are current. As long as you have two matching GPUs (two 7800 GT or 7800 GTS cards or what have you), they can be from different manufacturers and can even be clocked differently. So scour ebay for deals or hit up a friend for that old card he's not using any more and get yourself a few extra frames per second.

Dual core goes mainstream. Early adopters of dual-core processors didn't see much, if any, boost to their game performance since so few games were designed to take advantage of them. The idea of gaming while also running an antivirus scan wasn't really an enticing reason to drop a few hundred dollars on a new CPU. Things have changed, though, and current and upcoming games are being designed to use any and all available cores to the fullest. If you're currently running a dual-core processor, you're golden, but if you aren't, this might be an upgrade to consider.

If you're running an AMD processor now, chances are you have either the socket 939 type or socket AM2 type. AM2 is the current socket and you've got plenty of dual-core Athlon 64 X2 choices out there at or around $100. The 2.6 GHz 5200+ Windsor core is an excellent deal right now at about $130. Whichever CPU you choose, make sure you look for one with dual 1MB Level 2 caches. The on-die caches are there to hold instructions and data that the CPU is currently working on and saves it from going back and forth to the RAM so frequently. You'll definitely see a boost over the smaller cache sizes. If you've still got a socket 939 motherboard, you've got a few options left at some great prices, but they're disappearing fast. There are still some dual-core Opteron processors available, and the 2.2 GHz Opteron 180 looks good like the best deal at about $145. It's known to overclock well, but even right out of the box should give great game performance.

On the Intel side, things are a bit different. The current socket type is the LGA775, and the older socket 478 doesn't offer any dual core options. If you're still running an older socket 478 processors, it's probably time to think about more drastic upgrades. Socket LGA775 owners have plenty of dual-core options ranging in price from under $100 to almost $1000. When choosing your processor, go as far as your budget will allow, but keep your eye on things like cache size and front-side bus speed. The FSB is the bridge between your CPU and your Northbridge, which in turn leads off to the rest of your computer. The 1.86GHz E6320 Core 2 Duo Conroe looks like a great deal at about $165 with its 1066 MHz FSB and 4Mb of L2 cache. Like AMD's Opteron 180, this CPU has a reputation of being a great overclocker, if you're ready to step into that brave new world.

Or, go all the way. If you're looking to take the plunge and buy a new system without breaking the bank, HP's m8120n comes set up with an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU, 3 GB of DDR2 RAM and two 320 MB hard drives. Yes, that's УquadФ coreЧfour processors in one computer for just over $1100. It looks like the best deal on the PC market right now, especially when you consider that the Q6600 processor retails for about $500 on its own. There is a downside, though. At this price, you aren't getting a monitor and the computer is reported to be loaded with crapware (think AOL trials, etc) that you'd likely want to uninstall right away. Even worse for the gamer, though, is the video card: it comes with a low-low-end Nvidia 7350 LE that would have trouble pushing decent framerates in last year's games. It looks like the m8120n comes with a 350W power supply, which is the min wattage for an 8600GT, so that's a potential upgrade. Still, to be on the safe sideЧor to run a more power-hungry cardЧyou'll want to drop in a power supply with a bit more juice.

Bottom Line
As long as wild-eyed game developers keep packing new features into their games, the race for new hardware is never going to end. For gamers with modest budgets, the goal is to make the best hardware choices possible and to do smart upgrades as needed.

One final note: Remember that the suggestions given here are general for a wide variety of systems and may not take into account the particulars of your system. Before you go out and buy any hardware, do plenty of research to make sure what you want to buy will be compatible with what you have. Figure out exactly what's in your existing computer, find the upgrade hardware you want, then scour forums, manufacturer sites and tech sites to make sure they're compatible with one another. Extra effort in the research will definitely save you time and money in the long run. At the same time, if you're new to hardware upgrades, you'll want to read a few tutorials on exactly how to approach your upgrades from a hands-on standpoint. Your local newsstand can be a good source for this, since in any given month, at least one of your favorite PC gaming mags will have a hardware tutorial with plenty of photos.