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$50 upgrade...possibility?

M

Mexicorn

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 11, 2002
Messages
285
I got a $50 rebate card from a cell phone deal a while back which expires by the end of this month...basically this is a HARD $50 cap I have to work with.

From the specs you can see in my sig, there's definitely a lot I need to upgrade. Enough so that i'm probably putting together a whole new system by this coming summer/fall. So i'm really not worried about how infinitesimal the upgrade may be, as long as its an upgrade.

Well, on to my question....is it possible for me to upgrade ANYTHING in my rig for $50? At first I thought I could get a cheapo videocard to replace my Geforce 3...though it seems that tihs thing is still pushing its weight around, since all the $50-100 cards i've seen seem to have lower clock/memory speeds (even if they do have more vram). I guess my second resort would be RAM, but since i'm on ancient SDRAM, it's probably gonna be like $50 for what...128mb?

So there it is. Anyone have any ideas on what else I could do for my ghetto-upgrade?

(FYI - my system still runs surprisingly well...HL2 and WoW have both been pretty playable at medium settings, however 15-20fps is the norm. Any fps increase is worth it IMO)
 
I recently sold my GF3 Ti500 for about 45 bucks on ebay. If you could then have 90-100 to spend on a card (a used one from the for sale forums might be the best bet) you could see a pretty good increase.

EDIT: Just looked around on ebay and saw a 9600xt and a 9500 pro both going for around 85 bucks, so if you could get some decent cash for your GF3, you could definately swing a decent upgrade.
 
New motherboard there are many great nforce 2 boards with dual channel that support pc133 and ddr for under 50. Mine was under 50 but doesn't support pc133.

~Adam
 
hmmm, that does sound like an interesting possibility. Problem is I need to get rid of this stupid rebate card by december. I think in the end I might just get a newegg gift card or somehting and open up my options to slightly more expensive gear...

Also, looking up the specs on my GF3, I see that it's got 500mhz ram after DDR. Now the the specs in the newegg descriptions for vid cards say things like 400mhz/ddr....now does that mean 400x2 = 800mhz speed? or it's 400mhz after the ddr?

I guess my last question would be, if I have $100 freed up now, would it be a better upgrade to get another 256-512mb ram, or get a decent $100ish videocard?

EDIT: didn't see that last post while I was writing...hmm, what would a new motherboard be able to offer me? I feel if I start going that road I might snowball into "well, if I need a new mobo I need a new proc, then might as well get new ram, then hell let's build another system" which i'm not thinking of doing for at least the next few months. And about the ebay deals. I know that there are some good deals to find, and I'll probably try selling my GF3 through a friend that's got some ebay talent, but I never really got into the whole "eBay" thing and would much rather buy something that i'm sure will work and have all propery materials/boxes/warranties etc.
 
CleanSlate said:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=845296

That's my upgrade thread.

That's after ddr. no way a gf3 has 800mhz ddr on it, it wasn't even invented then or was too expensive.

~Adam
Click to expand...

I know my gf3 is 250x2mhz from ddr. What i'm asking is do the specs for IE the radeon 9250s and such (that say 400mhz/ddr for example) mean that it's 400mhzx2 ram? or 200mhzx2=400mhz? That's all
 
UPDATE: Seems like the whole "verified by visa" system put in with newegg's gift certificate system has pretty much foobared any chances of me getting a gift card made, so I still can ONLY spend <$50 and it has to be by the end of the week heh. As a last resort i've jumped to RAM...

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-150-338&depa=0

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-136-116&depa=0

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=20-223-010&depa=0

those are the only chips closest to $50 that I can get. I know it's a bit iffy to go with cheap RAM, but I figure it'll serve its purpose for the 6-9 months max i'll be using it.

One think that confuses me a bit though is the 'high density' description that is in some reviews. It seems that some (if not all) of these chips are incompatible with a wide variety of chipsets. I'm running a VIA VT8363 (KT133) chipset which I think should work...but i'm not sure. Anyone familiar with these older chips and compatibility?
 
a new motherboard will give you the biggest increase, IMO. when i put my 950mhz thunderbird in my nforce2 board it was like a whole new processor... with the kt133 that it was on, i could barely pull low settings and 1024x768, even with a r9600 pro, which i KNOW can pull 1280x1024 w/med- high on far cry. when i put the tbird in my nforce2 board, it could pull the same as my barton can with a considerable frame hit, but it was SO MUCH NICER it was unbelievable.

edit: of course, with a nforce2 board youll need some DDR.. but itll make you much happier with your machine... just an idea :)
 
nforce can't use pc133? I thoguht it could...

Edit: no it's 400mhz effective which means 2x200

~Adam
 
CleanSlate said:
nforce can't use pc133? I thoguht it could...

Edit: no it's 400mhz effective which means 2x200

~Adam
Click to expand...
well it supports up to 400DDR, but it does go down to 266 (133x2) but no nforce2 board ive ever seen has sdram slots, nforce2 came after the big trasition IIRC
 
I understand that not much of this is gonna help me much...and I know i'm gonna be doing a complete overhaul in the next few months, so I understand that no matter what I get, it's not gonna do much. Problem is, time is a factor. After this week i'm leaving the country for the holidays, so these things will just go to waste. Anyone know if the RAM is viable?
 
lithium726 said:
just get some dvds or a game or something
Click to expand...

I originally had 2 rebate cards. Now I have 1 rebate card and 1 copy of WoW :D . Other than that though, I don't know of any games that I would be interested in getting, and don't really ever buy DVDs (don't watch many movies more than once). I thought the best alternative would be to just get something...anything...which could up my rig performance a bit...even if only slightly. I might end up giving up though...seems like this hard cap on money really offers little in the way of upgrading....


***************************EDIT********************************

MOUSE!!! The cordless mouseman on my old kb/mouse wireless combo has always had lag too harsh for gaming, so has been moved to my laptop. I've been on a v3.0 Intellimouse for a while since then.

Is there a difference between these 2 mice?
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=26-104-151&depa=0

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=26-104-150&depa=0

Only difference I see is the color...and i'm a fan of blue over red anyway :cool:

There's also:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=26-105-142&depa=0

which i've heard a few good things about..with the MS mouse I could also probably get a decent pad as well (are they even necessary?)
 
you listen to music or read or anything? its 50 dollars that i would rather spend on something that ill enjoy rather than upgrade in a couple months, you know?

edit: maybe you could get a 40gb drive or something? get rid of that crappy 20g you have in there?
 
DONT BUY MORE RAM, its a slow death buying more pc133 ram (whats the bandwidth / speed on those things anyway)

wait til u upgrade for ram
 
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