500$ Upgrade or Wait?

[jbs2222]

Well finally I'am graduating highschool and due to that fact i have come into some extra money i think its time to upgrade, i have set my maximum budget at 500$ with all the rest going into the bank. My current system is:

Msi k8n neo4-f
3200+ at 2.35Ghz
1 Gig ocz value ram
saphire radeon x800xl
80 gig Wd HD

Ok now since going to college means i will finally get some respectable bandwidth i definatly want to get a 250-300 gb harddrive so i figure that will set me back around 200$ so what should i do with the other 300$ Ram, Vid Card, or just wait and see what happens with the m2? Oh yeah I'am definately a big gamer so thats primary concern. So what would you guys suggest?
THANKS

 

[GrammatonJP]

Originally posted by: jbs2222
Well finally I'am graduating highschool and due to that fact i have come into some extra money i think its time to upgrade, i have set my maximum budget at 500$ with all the rest going into the bank. My current system is:

Msi k8n neo4-f
3200+ at 2.35Ghz
1 Gig ocz value ram
saphire radeon x800xl
80 gig Wd HD

Ok now since going to college means i will finally get some respectable bandwidth i definatly want to get a 250-300 gb harddrive so i figure that will set me back around 200$ so what should i do with the other 300$ Ram, Vid Card, or just wait and see what happens with the m2? Oh yeah I'am definately a big gamer so thats primary concern. So what would you guys suggest?
THANKS

Wait for conroe, let that hammer the price of other stuff down.

last I check 250-300gb drives are around 99-150 now. Its dropping daily. After july re-evaluate the market

 

[Patrick Wolf]

250-300 GB HD won't set you back $200.

Here's the one I just bought and Windows starts about 10x faster on it.
I think it's great!

 

[dBTelos]

Buying a hard drive is all about feeding on the deals. This drive is a great deal and your mobo doesn't support SATAII so might as well just get a PATA drive. Get this RAM and completely remove your old RAM. After that you could upgrade your CPU or Video Card, its really up to you. Upgrading your video card would eventually bottleneck your CPU and if you upgrade your CPU you would eventually bottleneck your videocard. AM2 will not be a big improvement over 939 (and probably won't justify the cost), so stick where your at. I would recommend upgrading your processor with the leftover money. This will put you just over your budget but will give a good performance boost, is very good for overclocking, and duel processor support will enlongate the life of your machine.

 

[kalrith]

I agree with some of the recommendations on here. I will second the one for the Western Digital 250gb drive. That's what I have, and it's great. That 2GB kit is great and will boost your performance. Those two would set you back about $225 after the rebate, which leaves $275. While I think the dual-core processors are great, they don't do much for gaming. I also disagree with the statement that your cpu will bottleneck your system if you upgrade the video card. I think you would have to get an X1900XT (or two) for your cpu to be a big bottleneck in games. If gaming is what you want to do, then NOTHING will improve your performance more than upgrading your video card. With the X1800XT at $250 AR right now, I think that's your best bet. So my recommendations are:

$92: the WD2500KS mentioned by Patrick Wolf
$135 AR: the RAM mentioned by dBTelos
$255 AR: X1800XT

$567 - $85 in rebates = $482

Since you have a decent processor there (for gaming you won't get much more than a 10% boost from even an FX chip), then I don't see any need to wait. Hard drives, RAM, and video cards aren't going to plummet in price when M2 and Conroe are released, so why not upgrade now with the great deals going on?

 

[dBTelos]

Well kalrith, you have to think about the future. Sure, you get a 5% increase in speed (or so) from having one core, seperating from two. Thats great for now, but then in half a year or less, all the games benifit from duel core and your stuck with a single core cpu. Take a duel core CPU now. Anyway, your wasting money by recommending a SATAII drive for a system that doesn't support it, and their have been many problems with SATAII drives trying to slow themselfs to SATA speeds. PATA drives are also I much better value. So if you do as I recommended above, then you will have a great system overall. In a year or so you may not be satisfied with your video card, thats fine, because its the only part in your system preventing you from having an awsome gaming rig. So you upgrade your video card to a DirectX 10, new, fancy, shmancy, card then, when the time comes.

 

[kalrith]

Well, first of all, you wonderfully superior PATA recommendation is 34.7 cents/GB and mine is 37.2 cents/GB. You need to "think about the future" as you already said. He's not always going to have this mobo, but he might use this drive in his next one which will probably support SATA 2. There are arguments for both sides of this issue, but I don't think your recommendation is a clear-cut win.

Also, why buy a processor which is going to give you a 5-10% performance boost in games right now and MIGHT give you more of a boost in the future? I would personally go with the video card upgrade which will definitely give you a big performance boost in games right now. Then in six months or a year or however long it is before games take full advantage of dual core, you can upgrade your processor.

Also, you have to keep budget in mind. You don't know if he's going to have $300 to drop on a video card in 6 months if he spends $500 right now. I would check out some threads with 3DMark scores. I know they're not perfect, but at least it's something to compare system's gaming performance with. If you compare on FX-60 at 3.0GHz with an X800XL to his current processor and speed with an X1800XT, which do you thinks going to win? Even if the games took FULL advantage of dual core, that video card is going to limit the processor big time, and you won't be nearly as satisfied in games as you would be with a better video card and your current procesor.

 

[secretanchitman]

i would upgrade to a SATA drive (sata II if your mobo supports it), upgrade the video card to a x1800xt/7900GT, and maybe one more stick of 1GB.

so $100 for the hd, $300 for the video card, and less than $100 for a 1GB stick.

or if you can wait until next month, intels core 2 duo chips will start shipping and prices are definitely going to drop.