Looking at some options here

L

l0cke

Gawd
Joined
Aug 13, 2005
Messages
810
Right now my sad system looks like this:

Amd Athlon X2 3800+ 939 (Arctic cooling 64)
6800gs Pci-e (Arctic cooling again)
MSI Sli Mobo
Broken DVD drive (doesn't burn, still reads fine)
120gb Seagate sata 3.0 hard drive (almost full)
1gb of RAM :(
Antec Lanboy 2 case :)

Recently I received $100 to newegg in gift certificates. I am now looking for the best way to spend it. I do not plan on spending it all right now but waiting until I have some more money saved up, sometime in December is when I would be buying probably. I KNOW I need some more RAM and that I will be needing a new hard drive. What would be the best course to upgrade my system gradually? Or should I just save up a lot and buy a whole new system?
 
Ram then gpu but very hard to recommend upgrades without knowing your intended uses; ie gaming, surfing, ripping/encoding, etc...

Also budget would be most helpful.
 
I plan to play games, games, and games. I do not really care about high settings, I just hate lag and low-res player view textures.

Budget is somewhere around $500 for upgrades, more for a new system if it is necessary.
 
The easiest way to spend $500 -- just to upgrade your current rig -- would be:

<$300: GeForce 8800GT (NewEgg is out of stock, so you would have to look elsewhere)
$50: 1GB of PC3200 DDR RAM
$110: 500GB SATA300 HDD
$30: IDE or SATA DVD±RW burner

Total $490 (not including taxes or shipping)

The 8800GT would be first priority (as RoBo mentioned); that will produce the biggest notable increase in performance (when playing your games). Next, you would need more RAM. Since you needed them, I threw in a larger capacity hard drive and a new DVD burner. If you can find one, see if you can get a used X2 4800+ or FX-60 processor; having one of those could extend the life of your rig for at least another year.

Having said that, any new system with an Intel dual-core processor and a motherboard with Intel's P35 chipset would perform much better (overall) than your current rig.

$90: Abit IP35-E
$83: Intel E2160
$55: G.Skill 2x1GB DDR2 800
$30: IDE or SATA DVD±RW burner
$110: 500GB SATA300 HDD
(Hold on to your video card, for now...)

Total: $368 (not including OS, taxes, or shipping)

That above configuration would do a better job than your current rig... but, any way you slice it, you wouldn't have enough to overhaul your rig completely and get an 8800GT. (You could omit the DVD burner -- which you don't really need if your current one can still read discs -- and you can get a cheaper, lower capacity HDD -- especially if you plan on keeping your current one as a OS drive -- but the 8800 alone would make up the majority of your budget.)

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the 8800GT would perform well regardless of the monitor you're using. SLI is only needed if you want to play games on a 1900x1200 or larger resolution.

If you want immediate improvement now, go with the first option, in the order that I laid the parts out. If you want a more long-term "solution," go with the second option -- but save up to $700-800 so you could buy an 8800GT.
 
If you spend $500 on upgrades now, when do you see yourself building a whole new system?

I'd go for the 1GB RAM, 250 or 320GB HDD, and 8800GT when the price comes down to <$200, which is supposedly soon. A burner will always be in the $30 range for the foreseeable future.
 
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