Upgrading My Gaming PC

[IbramGaunt]

I posted this in the General Technical forum, but I was told I'd get a better response here......

So here goes, this is what i currently have:

AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.21ghz)
1024mb RAM
Radeon 9800 pro
120gb Hard Drive.

I have €500 ($640/£350) to spend, but I'm not sure what to buy.

I was thinking of upgrading the Graphics card and CPU, but maybe you have better ideas.

I'd like to be able to run the latest games at fairly high graphical settings or is this even possible with my budget?

On a side note, do many people buy second hand Graphics Cards and CPU's and would you get much for them?

Thanks in advance. ;)

[fishybawb]

What motherboard do you have currently?

The graphics card would be a very good place to start, although with no PCI-E slot, you'll be limited in that respect, so you may want to consider a motherboard upgrade as well. The 3200+ isn't exactly new now, but it's a decent enough performer still IMO... Again though, telling us your mobo model will allow us to suggest alternative CPUs too :)

There's a pretty good market for second hand computer hardware on eBay, so that could be an option if you're looking to sell.

[AllGamer]

CPU and RAM are decent
Video card is "barely" staying amont the top 10
iT Was Excellent for its time, but now in days... well... it is, some what Dated...
I still use the same one though :D

but yeah if you are going to upgrade probably will get the latest X1900 ;)

now if your HDD 120 GB is 5400 rpm, then by all means upgrade to a better 7200 rpm or 10,000 rpm HDD (WD Raptor)

you'll see much better performance upgrade a simple HDD, no joke

i've got 2 old PIII-1000 and PIII-1400 running extremely Decent for 3D games like American Army and alikes, that gives you a pretty good idea, how it performs on similar games.

that's all by only upgrading to a better and faster harddrive 7200rpm running on SATA, with your average 64mb/128Mb Video card (Nvidia/ATI) with 1 gb of ram

i found out the major bottle neck for most system is not the CPU/GPU, but RAM amout, and HDD speed

[ATI RADEON 8500]

Your mainboard probally doesent have SLI/Crossfire capablity so buying 2 video card probally too expensive for you because you would also have to upgrade the mainboard.

Graphic card the most imporant part for gaming. You will notice a leap upgrading from an 9800 to the lastest card.

[IbramGaunt]

My current Motherboard is "NVIDIA nForce 3 250Gb Chipset Based K8N Neo" to be precise...

Question: Upgrading my hard drive, how will that improve my gaming experience (I'm not well up on computers btw).

[AllGamer]

the upgrading HDD part only applies if you have an old 5400 rpm drive

:t

[ATI RADEON 8500]

From what I understand is that mainboard you have is an AGP only so no SLI/Crossfire ablity on that one.

As for the hard drive.. The faster the hard drive is the faster the game preloads and retrive informations during game play.

[rwest]

If it was me I'd look for a socket 939 MOBO and a PCI-E card.
Staying with your current socket will allow you to keep your processor and ram. These boards are coming down in $'s fast. $350 to $400 should get you into a decent board and vid card.

Then sell you old board on E-fu** you bay.

You should be also able to find SATA on this kind of MOBO. Depending on you persistence in searching you could end up with alot of room for future upgrades.

[MadPistol]

Hey rwest. Just a word of advise. You need to watch the language on these forums. They do crack hard on here.

rwest is right though. Socket 939 mobo that has a PCI-E video card type would be a good idea. It will make it easier for further upgradability.

[IbramGaunt]

Well I don't want to have to upgrade my mobo too often, so how long would a new one survive before it would have to be upgraded again?

Can anyone actually tell me specific mobo's, cpu's, graphics cards etc. that I can have a look at because I really have no idea what to search for...

Thanks. ;)

[ATI RADEON 8500]

If you really dont want to upgrade your mainboard then your limited to AGP video card. PCI-E are taking over AGP and eventurally AGP wont exist anymore.

You could buy the best AGP card and use it until your next upgrade. But if you plan to buy a AGP video card now then upgrade again with the next generation card.. I strongly recomond you to go with PCI-E.

[cuelebre]

Upgrading is never an easy decission, specially when you have a perfectly machine that fulfills let's say about 90% of all your "needs".

You mention this is a gaming machine, what games would you like to play that your current setup is not up to the task??

If you are limited to AGP, with that CPU, an 7800 GS is your only ( best ) option but.......for how much longer would you keep the system knowing that Conroe is here and a 7800 GS will set you back about $300.00.

I'm in the same boat as you, I was looking to upgrade my kids machine, a P4 3.2 OC to 3.7 with that video card with the only pourpose to be able to play Oblivion, but after purchasing one it was returned, never even installed, because I realized it was an expensive and very short term fix that will not help at all. We have 21" Sony and 22" Mitsu Monitors, if I can't have all the eye candy.....then what's the point ??

Save your money now, save some more untill good stable Mobos for Conroe are widely available and prices for all the top hardware go down and then get yourself a killing machine. My guess is that by Xmas time $1000 will do wonders and you are almost there. Good liuck.