Need to upgrade?

[bruenor]

As a once hardware addict I have sadly had this thing called "real life" keep me out of the loop for some time, and now feel a little bewildered by my options. I have never been a bleeding-edge kinda guy and generally prefer to let fads shake out and stabilize before jumping in. So I sit with my Albatron KX18DS Pro motherboard, an Athlon XP 2700+ (OC'd bus to 3200+), 1GB low latency PQI DDR 400Mhz RAM, an 80GB OS Maxtor EIDE HDD, a 200GB Maxtor EIDE Storage HDD, and an ATI Radeon 9500 Pro.

My "problem" is that this system has and continues to do everything I ask of it. I can play the latest games, run my apps, burn stuff, etc. including Oblivion, Dark Messiah, Guild Wars, and War Rock.

I wasn't an adopter of 64-bit CPU's and they still haven't really "caught on" IMO and Dual cores seem to be more of a novelty for my needs since I am not a huge multi-tasker or encoder. I was holding off on SATA until it matured (which it seems to be doing), and was leary of PCIe (still am since AGP versions of PCIe keep up, but since makers are forcefully retiring AGP early my options are becoming limited)

I am really only looking forward to games like Warhammer Online and Dungeon Runners and maybe one or two others coming out in the next year. Since I've waited this long, I'm undecided if I should hold out until Vista is out and kicking, DX10, etc. to make a new system or upgrade now. I've also been thinking of just upgrading my AGP card to the best I can and calling it a day.

Any thoughts? What would be my best bet (ATi or NV) for an AGP graphics card at this time that is a good mix of price/performance (the max I play games at is 1280x1024)?

 

[Aelfgeft]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150157

Past the 6xxx series, it's time to make the PCI-E jump. I wouldn't spend much more than 130-150 on an AGP card anymore.

 

[CompuDrew]

If your current rig does what you want I think you should wait until it isn't able to and upgrade at that point. New hardware will come out and what is high end now will be cheaper.

 

[bruenor]

Yeah I was between an ATI X800 XT PE (or some such version) and a 6800 variant, the one you mentioned seems to be a heck of a deal.

When you actually look at benchmarks CPU-wise the 3200+ still hangs right in there with the big boys such as seen in this chart: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/11/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_2005/page29.html

With as much change and products in CPU's and GPU's since the NF2 boards, it still doesn't seem like much actually uses any of it or requires it. I guess I just have to quell the itch to upgrade until Vista/DX10 is in full swing. I was hoping I was missing something.