Advice needed - Upgrades for my PC

[PorscheMaD911]

Hi all,

My two year old pc is as detailed in my signature, and it needs an upgrade.

Why does it need an upgrade? I have just bought a Logitech G25 wheel, and want some grunt to play racing games, GT Legends, GTR 2, NFS Carbon etc.

I used to have a Geforce 6800 vanilla 128 mb, another 512 mb ram and SB Live!, but I was using Linux for a year or so, and gave those components away.

So, for gaming, what should I do? I'm thinking at the moment:
- Replace the 512 mb stick with 1 Gb (the mobo drops down to DDR-333 with 2 sticks in), and offload the 512 mb stick second hand;
- Put in an AGP 7600 GT; and
- Put in an Audigy 4.

This will all cost about $500 Australian, and should make for a much better gaming pc.

I was toying with the idea of going with an AGP Radeon X1950 Pro instead of the 7600 GT; it looks like a lot of performance for about $350 AU. Not sure about my CPU being a bottleneck though, although IIRC the 3100+ is (was?) a decent value gaming chip.

Of course the other option is a whole new build, dual core, PCI-E, DDR-2 etc, but I'm basically just looking to set myself up for a year or so of enjoyable gaming while preparing for that and seeing what kind of BYFB DX10 cards pop up. I game at 1280 x 1024 high detail, but don't care about FSAA or anisotropic filtering.

I had thought about picking up a PCI-E, DDR-400 socket 754 motherboard for around $100 AU, which would mean I could transfer my new video card to my next system, but the X1950 Pro and 7600 GT aren't DX10, so by then I would probably want to change it anyway.

What do you guys think?

 

[UMfanatic]

upgrades are tricky I have spent a week debating my upgrades and only just now finally made a decision on the upgrades I was going t choose, well the only DX10 card is the 8800 and those are pricey, it all depends on how much you can spend on upgrades

 

[ShellGuy]

I woldn't put ne money in to a agp card, due to the fact that they wont' do anytihgn for you in the near, If you must upgrade then add some ram and see what happens, i would suggest that you do a whole new build to bring ur self up to date after the first of the year.



Will g.,

 

[UMfanatic]

do not go for a socket 754, either do socket 939 or AM2 or if you can do a socket 775 and get a C2D

 

[PorscheMaD911]

Cheers for the advice.

UMfanatic, the only reason I was thinking of going for a socket 754 motherboard was as a stopgap measure using my existing processor.

I had a think and a hunt around, and for $264 AU delivered I can pick up an ASROCK 939SLI32-ESATA2 motherboard (which Anandtech reckon is a pretty good board) and Athlon 64 3800+ Venice combo. That offers a couple of PCI-E slots if I want to go SLI down the track, although only DDR-400 RAM (not that it makes much difference speedwise). Also opens up Athlon X2 options down the track.

I can then pick up a PCI-E Gainward 7600 GT for $214.50 delivered (or a Powercolor X1950 Pro for $291.50), and add some PC-3200 1024mb Corsair Value Select RAM for $198.00.

That's up to $700-ish AU, but I can probably recoup a little by selling my existing motherboard, CPU, RAM and video card.