$500 for upgrades. What to get

R

royjr

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 2, 2001
Messages
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Ok, so....out of the nearly $5K we're getting back, the wife is allowing me to allot $500 for:

- CPU
- Mobo
- RAM

Currently, my setup is:

P4 2.4b(533) processor
Abit AT-7 Max II (rev.2) mobo
Corsair pc-3000 512Mb DDR RAM (1x512)


As far as CPU goes, we can go with either AMD or Intel, no biggie. I just want something that'll warrant the greatest benefit to what I use my computer for. Mainly, for Photoshop and gaming. ONE Exception, though. I'm not willing to go PCI Express yet. So, it looks like my 9800 Pro will have to get us by for the next year or two.

Thanks!
 
Awesome. Thanks for the suggestions. Looking at that Gigabyte board's reviews, it seems foolish to go with any other board, for the price it's at. :) I would've gotten back to this thread sooner, but I was researching my ass off, whether I wanted to go Intel (possibly 240-pin DDDR2?) or AMD.

AMD definitely looks to be the affordable solution. That way, I can also get some good RAM. Your suggestion was really good, but....if I decided to bump my choice up a few bucks, what's your opinion on Kingston or Kingmax Dual Channel DDR RAM?
 
Kingston makes some quality ram, I'm not that familiar with kingmax but I am a little wary of them just because they are an unknown.

Were you looking at the Kingston HyperX series? And are you planning on overclocking? If that's the case, I'd look for some nice tccd based RAM like this gskill.
That will overclock like mad with an Athlon 64. However, you might want to get a better heatsink before you start trying to push you processor too far. I'm a fan of this Zalman . It's very quite and does a great job cooling.

If you aren't planning on overclocking that corsair value select (or the kingston ValueRAM) will be more than sufficient to run at stock speeds. In that case I would take your extra money and get a athlon 64 3500 for about 100$ more than the 3200.
 
^^^ Not recommended. It's 754-based and it's a little too old for an upgrade. 939 would yield more performance increase.

-J.
 
GeForceX said:
^^^ Not recommended. It's 754-based and it's a little too old for an upgrade. 939 would yield more performance increase.
-J.
Click to expand...
The motherboard is 939.

I had linked to the wrong CPU but it's corrected now.
 
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