Best way to upgrade?

[castleromeo]

I want to upgrade my comp to better allow me to play games, but I was not sure what the best way to do that would be? Right now i have a dell 0F4491 motherboard, Pentium 4 3 GHz processor, an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200, and 1 GByte of Samsung PC3200 (200 MHz) ram. What is the best and most effective way to spend my money to upgrade?

 

[John]

What's your budget? Your FX5200 is a huge bottleneck right now. I'd recommend a nice 7600GS AGP.

 

[stogez]

Upgrade the vid card as John suggested. Then try to get a new motherboard and overclock your processor. If you were ok gaming with a FX5200 till now, with those two upgrades you will be good for a while. And then you can probably just get a whole new computer.

 

[castleromeo]

Im not sure what my budget is. I would like to have to spend as little as possible, but I am willing to spend a few hundred. I had seen the Nvidia 7800 on sale at several places and thought it might be a good deal.

 

[castleromeo]

Do you think that the 7600 is the best agp card, and/or how does it compare to the Nvidia 7800? Also, what about the Radeon x1950 agp?

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: castleromeo
Do you think that the 7600 is the best agp card, and/or how does it compare to the Nvidia 7800? Also, what about the Radeon x1950 agp?

These are the top of the line Agp video cards and twice as fast as the 7600gs ,but twice the price.

 

[CurseTheSky]

The 7600 is LEAPS and BOUNDS faster than the FX 5200. That alone will get you a serious performance increase. A 6800 or X1950 Pro AGP card will do the same. I would stay away from the super-high-end AGP cards, as they're priced far beyond their PCI-E counterparts.

Keep in mind that the copy of Windows that came with the Dell may not reinstall if you put in a new motherboard. Personally, I would upgrade the graphics card to a decently cheap solution for now (6600, 6800, 7600, X1950, etc.) and upgrade to a brand new system when you can afford it.