Help me upgrade!

[tgrimley]

So here's the deal, I have been out of the loop hardware wise for about 3 years as I work on my mechanical engineering degree. My current system is:

1.5gb pc2700
1.6Ghz (amd xp 1900+)
abit kr7a-133r (there isn't much to upgrade potential with the socket A is there?)
agp 6800
dual 19" samsung 191t lcd's
klipsch speakers, audigy 1
250gb & 200gb pata drives, cd-rw, dvd drive, decent psu (300W)

So obviously it's been upgraded a little since I built it almost 5 years ago (6800, extra gb ram).

It's starting to feel slow to me... and I want to upgrade.

I multitask a lot, so here's what I generally have open:
firefox x 3 or 4
gaim x 5 or 6 windows
azureus
mediamonkey
remote desktop
tvtad
yahoo widgets
outlook
and either word+(excel or solidworks or matlab)

I also occasionally play games (usually just bf2 or DoW or q4,q3,ut or something).

I have about 600-700 to spend on upgrades of:
vid card (apg->pci-e w/ dual dvi?)
ram (at least 2gb)
proc (dual or not?)
mb
new powersupply
possibly sata hd

My needs are driven primarily by multitasking speed, CAD speed, stability, and then gaming.

Not sure about SLi, but it wouldn't be a bad idea since I want to go to triple head sometime.

This will be my 5th computer to build so I have a pretty good idea what I'm doing, I just haven't done it in a while.

Any suggestions, starting points, experience with similiar needs?

 

[kirbyrj]

Your budget is kind of hurting you with the amount of upgrades you need .

I'd definitely get a dual core. Cheapest is X2 3800+. Maybe get a ASRock Dual SATA2 board since you can use your old 6800 AGP card to hold you over until you can do more upgrading or possibly look at a 7600GT. Fortron Blue Storms are good PSU's that are cheap. I'd look at maybe a 500W version of those. I'd get a 2GB RAM dual channel kit and call it a day. SATA HDD's are nice, but since you already have two large drives, I'd just reuse those.

 

[SnakePlissken]

To the OP you could reuse the agp 6800 dual 19" samsung 191t lcd's klipsch speakers, audigy 1 250gb & 200gb pata drives, cd-rw, dvd drive, Update the PSU get a 939 board with agp and an opteron 144, and some kind of ddr400 mem.

 

[Bleedblue12345]

get this mobo, a decent mobo and u dont have to upgrade ure video card, also u have an option fgor pci-e, so id say do that