AMD Upgrade Recomendation or Suggestion

[Werty]

current setup:
AMD Duron 950Mhz
ECS K7VMM Motherboard
128MB Memory
rest are standards


since he's a bit short on budget, im planing to upgrade some of its parts for the following, cpu will be Athlon XP 2000+, GeforceFX 5200 128MB (128-bit), 256MB DDR...

heres my question, in terms of gaming how far could my suggested upgrade get him to?


another question also...

another friends rig is experiencing random instabilities.. in the past, parts have been broken down. first the harddisk got lots of bad sectors, and now the memory is damaged. he left the unit at home to be diagnosed. though the system is running fine now and stable with Prime 95 (in about half a day of running it), i have noticed that the PSU(a 300watt generic one) is giving of a lot of heat than normal units i have assembled. should i let him replace his PSU???,since 2 hardwares were already broken down in the past and might be PSU that did it???

thanks and willing to accept any help i can get...

 

[johnjkr1]

If he wants to game, stay away from the 5200, it is far to slow. go at least 5200 ultra or 9600xt...and he will need at least 256mb of system memory, but 512 is much, much better.

 

[dennisjai215]

i dont see why he dont overclock best way to get his money worth mobile 2400 xp clocks to 3200 without any trouble easily

 

[SickBeast]

Yes, he should definately invest in a quality PSU. I reccomend a 350W Enermax. AMD chips are famous for burning out cheap PSUs. A lousy PSU can cause the problems he has suffered and even worse.

For the CPU, he should get the fastest chip that his board can take. Update the BIOS to the most recent one, and read the release notes to see what his limit is.

For graphics, the 5200 is a waste of time and money. The ATi R9100 is the same price and will offer much better performance. If he can find one, the GF4Ti4200 is the cat's meow ATM. If he can manage a 2400+ CPU or so he honestly should invest in a Radeon 9700PRO; it will be a perfect match for that CPU and will annihilate all the other cards that have been suggested.

 

[johnjkr1]

He didn't explain how high the budget was, hence the 5200 ultra or 9600xt suggestion. Either can be had for under $100 and provide a very good gaming experience.

 

[3chordcharlie]

the motherboard is limited to 266fsb, I'd suggest buying the cheapest t-bred athlon you can find (probably the 2000+ you mentioned). you're right not to worry about oc'ing, as this board is really not going to get that job done. I would probably avoid the 5200 series video cards as suggested above; they just aren't very powerful (5200 ultra might be good enough).