Advice on a certain purchase...

[forcemac101]

I have been thinking about upgrading my current P4 system, and was wondering other thoughts are.

Here is what I currently have. P4-2.53 (533) on a Gigabyte 8IHXP 850E motherboard, with 512MB of RDRAM.

I have a chance to buy an Intel 3.0 (800) plus motherboard for $200 bucks. I know its a steal, but I would have to spend another $240ish to get a 1GB of ram for it. So total price $440ish minus what I can sell my RDRAM board, ram, and proc for.

Or, should I re-sell the 3.0GHZ and board, stay on my 2.53 and go for a Raptor 74GB. I currently have a pair of older 2mb cache 80gb drives in RAID 0, and I think they are feeling their age.

I am kinda weary of dropping some money on DDR I, thinking that DDR2 might be out this summer or so......I would love to do both and but I don't think its in the cards....

3rd option is to sell the 3ghz and board and sit on the cash for awhile.....waiting for RAPTORS to drop...and maybe to squess a raptor and proc/mobo purchase...

I play mostly games, and some DV editing. I have a 9800-non pro.

A 1GB of ram would be nice, but its just too damn pricey for the RDRAM. THat and I would have to chuck my current RDRAM as my banks are full.

 

[Laforge]

I'd say go for the $440 option.

The raptor isn't going to give you anywhere near the performance boost you'll get from going with an 800mhz fsb cpu and DDR.

Although, the raptor would be cheaper..

Now.. if you do decide not to follow my advice, and decide to sell the board and cpu.. I'll give you $250 + shipping.

 

[forcemac101]

Originally posted by Laforge
I'd say go for the $440 option.

The raptor isn't going to give you anywhere near the performance boost you'll get from going with an 800mhz fsb cpu and DDR.

Although, the raptor would be cheaper..

Now.. if you do decide not to follow my advice, and decide to sell the board and cpu.. I'll give you $250 + shipping.

Which board and CPU the INtel board and 3.0GHz? Or the Gigabyte and 2.53?

 

[DeFex]

It depends what you want. overall gameplay will be improved by faster cpu, if you are allready OK with game play but map loading is too slow, then go for the raptor. the hard drive is the slowest thing in your computer, so any improvement you can make is good.

for video editing, the raptor would help, because video is so large you will be using a lot of disc access (unless your videos are all very small). however transitions, resizing, encoding etc would like a faster CPU (especially a hyperthreaded one)

personally i would do the CPU/RAM upgrade, and save up for a raptor for the next upgrade.

 

[forcemac101]

Yeah, but then I keep thinking prescott is right around the corner.......decisions decisions.

 

[Spidey329]

Originally posted by forcemac101
Yeah, but then I keep thinking prescott is right around the corner.......decisions decisions.

Well, the deal on the 3.0 + mobo is worth it. Personally, if you can get it, grab it up, if you change your mind, just sell it. You could probably make 25-to-50 off of it.

The Prescotts are coming out next month supposedly, but you gotta remember that (unless your deal applies to other items) the Prescott 3.0 is going to be the same price as the current 3.0 RETAIL. Not your super-deal. Not to mention you gotta' buy a Prescott approved or Prescott compatible board (which will be slim(availability-wise) supposedly, so the price on them may just be a little higher). You'll be fine with 512 DDR. Unless you plan on overclocking, you could probably go with some PC3200 DDR. But I did see NewEgg with some Level II Mushkin for $238 (can't remember if it was 512x2 or not) <edit>$283 for PC3500.