Upgrading, ideas?

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Okies... my computer kinda sucks, and i'll be getting a little cash soon for my 18th, i worked out on yahoo that its about $446 to you americans, so... anybody got any suggestions for making this POS a better games machine?

i got at the minute Athlon XP 1900+ (only clocks in at 1200mhz, gonna fix this sometime later).
My MoBo can support up to 2200+
512MB DDR RAM
GF4 MX 460 (definately getting replaced, its faulty anyway).
80 Gig HDD (might buy another, i'm low on space).
Crude, old CD-RW
A DVD player which never fails to go unnoticed by my computer.

Thats about all i can think of, pretty happy with sound setup... Any suggestions?

 

I would say go to the 2200+ for the processor for $68.99 USD from newegg.com if you plan on buying online.

And then for the video card, I would say the Sapphire 9800 pro for $229.

And if you go optical drive, I'd say the Lite-on beige DVD-RW/+RW for $98

Or for hard drive, maybe another 80 and put those in RAID 0, or Maxtor 120gb 7200rpm for $91.

You could also go for the DVD-RW/+RW and the hard drive, and go with the Atlantis Radeon 9600 from Sapphire for $102

It all comes down to what you think is the most important. You're machine still doesn't look that bad; I've seen a lot worse and know people with a lot worse.

 

i've heard bad things about sapphire cards breaking down after about 3 months recently.

and another 512mb stick of ram might be high up the list.

 

I've never had any problems with that nor any one I know has had those problems Alright, well, there's a 9600 by ATI for $149.

I would stay away from NVidia cards, though, because they have really gotten shotty in quality, and are quite loud on top of the performance deficet.

 

Chieftec Dragon DA-01BD Full Tower
Antec TrueBlue 480W PSU
Asus PC-DL Deluxe Xeon Motherboard
Intel Xeon 3.0GHz
Corsair 1GB DDR XMS4000 Pro TwinX
MSI GeForce FX 5950VTD MyVIVO Ultra 256MB
Western Digital Caviar 250GB Special Edition 8MB

UK Site <-

 

OCUK is a top notch site, used it before, although I think I may venture to a computer fair for this pourchase, big savings can be made at those places.

 

Since your in England and probably going to be buying online I suggest you have a look at this site, it's cheaper than most places I've looked at (and based in England so low/no p&p costs).

 

nVidia and ATI cards are identical in practice (ATI is faster in theory, but most games actually are designed for nVidia cards so the GeForces tend to do a better job), so take whatever you can find cheaper. The GeForce FX 5700 is better than the ATI Radeon 9600.

From the looks of that, I'd guess your OS is Win 98/Me? I'd take that up to 2000 Pro or XP before doing any sort of hardware update.

That said, you could use another 512 MB of RAM. Your processor and video card really will do okay for another couple years unless you do a ton of FPS games.

 

You've got DDR and a gigahertz processor. You need at least a Ti4200 in there. For $100, that's very noticable upgrade.

Your processor can't quite handle both EAX sound and a Radeon 9800pro. Plus, you'll need a bit faster memory to keep the fastwrites writing fast (I'm guessing that's PC2100 in there). If you start talking about spending more cash than $100, you probably want to swap out your mainboard, memory, video card, processor, and psu.

 

IMO, the nVidia FX 5900XT is a better card than either the ATI 9600 or FX5700. I atcually bought all three and after a month returned the 5700 and the 9600 and kept the 5900XT (even came with a retail copy of Call of Duty) for well under $200.00. And I am very happy with the new card.

Add the faster memory and the Athlon 2200+ with the FX5900 and you should be set for a while.

 

I have NVIDIA 4MX and am very happy with it. Have used NVIDIA for several years with no problem. Computer techs have recommended to mestaying away from ATI.

 

Upgrade to any high speed CD drive. If your into the DVD stuff, or copying CD's illegally (I didn't say that if anybody asks), get a DVD/CD burner. Look for numbers in the 40-60X range.

 

i run Win2k Pro, GF MX 460 SUCKS ASS, yea, i'm an FPS whore .

i've been told by other sources that the GF FX series shouldn't even be considered.

I'll also need to fix my processor too, as it clocks in slowly, because getting a better graphics card would just result in a bottleneck otherwise.

 

Run any OpenGL game (most FPS games) and the GeFX will serve you better than the anything ATI has.

If you're running D3D, then I'd agree that ATI is better. There don't seem to be too many games out there in D3D, though.

 

Septic - Doom III will be an Open GL game. On the-other-hand, Half Life II will be Direct X. Probably ATI will be better for DX, but nVidia will be better in Open GL. But since neither game is out yet, it remains to be seen what the situation will be with these cards for certain. The rumor is that Half-Life II will not see the light of day until the end of this year. By then there will be a whole new bunch of cards. Doom III may make it out in less than two months. So take your choice. But I think nVidia makes more sense at the moment.

Here's how some of the more popular cards stack up:

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/evga_e-geforce_fx_5900_xt_review/page4.asp