Author Topic: System Upgrade Advice Needed (Read 182 times)

Dowding · « **on:** January 24, 2007, 10:13:59 AM »

Hello.

I am currently thinking about upgrading my PC without spending a fortune on it. My current system:

AMD 3500+ Athlon64 CPU
Nvidia Neo2 M'board
1 GB Crucial Ballistix PC3200 RAM
HIS ATI X800 XT Platinum edition graphics card

The m'board is AGP, but I can get a 512 MB ATI X1950 Graphics card and 4GB Crucial Ballistix PC4000 RAM for about £510 ($900 - although take into account the pound sterling is very strong against dollar at the moment).

Basically, will I see much improvement over my existing set-up? Do I need the 4GB RAM (I will have to junk the existing 1 GB as it is in 512 MB chunks - need matching pairs for dual channel)?

My PC usage is for high end gaming, but I'd like to turn it into a wireless networked home entertainment system as well.

MrRiplEy[H] · « **Reply #1 on:** January 24, 2007, 10:40:28 AM »

If you're going to spend $900 do yourself a big favor and upgrade your motherboard to pci-e. 4Gb of ram is also a big waste, 2 gigs will run everything you can throw at it today.

So instead of getting another dead-end agp card, change mobo, get a pci-e card and split your amount of ram and you'll have still money to spare. You will see marginal to no performance gains going from 2 gigs to 4 gigs - but the pricetag will more than double. Triple actually as you'll have to dump the existing ram.

Eagler · « **Reply #2 on:** January 24, 2007, 10:43:32 AM »

I think your mb is a socket 939 board.
I have a 939 also.
I am looking at getting one of these before they go:
AMD Opteron 170 Denmark 2.0GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Dual Core Processor

my suggestion would be one of those and keep the ram upgrade to 2gb
for video maybe this for $159:
7800GS APG

Eagler · « **Reply #3 on:** January 24, 2007, 10:56:24 AM »

video card comparison