Small budget upgrade help!

ToBXaH

n00b
Joined
Dec 18, 2006
Messages
10
My current system setup:

AMD Athlon XP 3200+ w/ AeroCool Deep Impact DP-102 CPU cooler
DFI LANPARTY NForce 2 Ultra B
GEIL 768MB DDR PC3200
EVGA Nvidia Geforce 6800GT AGP 8x
Western Digital 36GB 10000RPM Raptor HD
Samsung 40GB 7200RPM HD
Windows XP Home SP2
Vantec Stealth 420w psu

I thought when I built this system a year or two ago I would be able to run everything for awhile. To my surprise this computer struggles slightly with Oblivion on 1024x768 with only 2x anti aliasing. I'm extremely picky about the way my games look so I've now decided to do an upgrade. This is where things get difficult.
My first problem is identifying the weakest part of my system. It seems like something has to be a bottleneck to the whole system. My first guess would be the older Athlon cpu. I've never liked the cpu because for some reason the thing has never been capable of overclocking even with the Aerocool Deep Impact. Trust me I've tried everything. I looked online at the price for the XP 3200 and I saw that there still selling for even more than an Athlon 64 3700+. I'm confused. Next would be the NForce 2 board with 768MB GEIL ram. I'm not sure if I trust GEIL brand anymore because of bad sticks and overclocking problems like my processor but its seems to be running ok..
So this is my problem my budget will be under $200 plus whatever I can get from what I sell out of my current system. I don't wish to sell the 6800GT because that would require a complete system revamp. Too expensive.

My questionable solution?

I'm thinking about purchasing either the ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 motherboard with socket 939 or the ASRock 775Dual-VSTA on 775 socket. I would get these motherboards because they allow me to keep my AGP card but still upgrade to PCI e later on.

http://www.asrock.com/product/939Dual-SATA2.htm
http://www.asrock.com/product/775Dual-VSTA.htm

I was leaning towards the 939 board and going with an Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego, keeping the GEIL 768 and the Geforce 6800GT and possibly adding another stick of ram until I upgrade to an AM2 processor on the same board with DDR2 ram and a PCI e card.

Mother board: $66.99
AMD 64 3700+: $88.50
= $155.49
RAM later?

So you guys think this will help rid my bottleneck? Maybe get some more frames in Oblivion and other new games? :confused:
 
I'd go with a Conroe instead, but thats just me.
$180 - Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 Conroe 1.86GHz
$56 - ASRock 775Dual-VSTA Socket T (LGA 775) VIA PT880 PRO
========
$238 + tax and shipping

Some reviews on that board:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2810
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2813
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2814

Summary: DDR400 is still good enough; The slower PCI-E slot only hinders performance by only 10% with high end vidcards. AGP still performs as good as it did before.

With this setup, you'll be getting a dual core CPU that will outperform the 3700+ in games. I hope you have one 512mb stick + one 256mb stick, because that board only has 2 dimms, lol.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2802&p=11
 
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