Small Upgrade?

R

rivacom

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 23, 2007
Messages
348
My current setup is as follows:

Gigabyte Mother board G8- something
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ at 2.0ghz
2 GB of DDR 400 Corsair RAM
DVD Burner
120GB IDE Drive
250 Western Digital SATA 7200rpm
Nvidia Geforce 7600GT 256MB
Windows XP Home

Now I'm looking to do a sort of short term upgrade for my computer, nothing extreme, just an improvement over my current setup. I see alot of combo deals for cheap and thought maybe it was possible to do a little upgrade on mother board, cpu, memory, and case. Then use the other parts from my current build and have something that might last me for a couple months. Any suggestions? I'll go amd or intel, looking to keep it under 300 if possible.
 
I would save up more and go with a C2D or a Quad, and a 8800 series video card. It will be a lot more worth the money. I finally decided to do this a few months ago and i am loving the new rig (see sig)
 
I figured I'd only get these responses, I just purchased a home so the cash flow isn't huge atm. So little upgrade is all im looking for right now. I do plan on going bigger, but thats 5-6 months down the road. Like I said Im most likely looking to update the board, cpu and memory and case if theres a cheap solution.
 
What are your case and power supply?

You could purchase a new CPU, motherboard, and memory -- from either Intel or AMD -- for under $300. But two problems would then emerge: the video card could become the bottleneck in the system (especially if you plan on playing the latest games on it), and/or your PSU might not be able to handle the new parts (especially if you are planning future additional upgrades down the line).

For example, at NewEgg, you could purchase for under $250:

Intel - a Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard ($81), an E2160 dual-core processor ($80), and 2GB (2x1GB) of G.Skill DDR2 800 memory ($50).

AMD - an Asus M2N motherboard ($73), an X2 4200+ dual-core processor ($80), and 2GB (2x1GB) of G.Skill DDR2 800 memory ($50).

But there's really no cheap case solution. You would have to purchase the case and power supply separately -- and a good, quality power supply often costs over $50. Or, you would have to find an Antec case/PSU combo (Antec is arguably one of the few case makers with decent, if not great, case/PSU bundles), but they tend to cost more.

Having said that, you could be better served, for right now, by finding a used Socket 939 processor and a better video card (at least on the level of 7900GS/X1800).
 
I say Eff it and keep what you have

If you have a s939 board then I would search around F/S/T forum here @ [H] or try Newegg for some x2 solution.
 
The board is 745, so no .upgrade without upgrading the board and memory. With recent bench mark tests, its the cpu pegging out and the video card can actually handle quite well, so I wasn't worried so much about the video card. The case is actually falling apart a little bit, and the power supply is a 450W. The case is useable but if there was a cheap solution I would like to rip it out and replace it.
 
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