Sorry for the length of the following but need some suggestions for upgrading on a seriously limited budget.
I probably won?t be doing a serious overhaul again for another 2 or 3 years. My current system is a Athlon XP 1800+ with ATI AIW 8500 DV (64 meg) video card, 512 megs of 2700 DDR RAM and tons of PATA storage space (due to the AIW being used as my vcr). I also have a good ATX case and a 420 watt Antec ps that I plan to keep. I use Windows XP Pro.
My choice of CPU is between the $165 Athlon 3200 or the $300 X2 3800. I am leaning towards the more expensive chip: I am not a gamer (I generally play games that were popular 3 years prior) but I use Photoshop and I tend to have a lot of different programs/windows open.
My biggest question is: how much speed would I lose if I just stuck with my current 512 megs of cheap 2700 memory for a little while with these CPUs (or just added another 512 stick of cheap memory?) Reading the reviews I haven?t really gotten a feel of what the difference is between DDR 333 and DDR 400 with these new CPUs.
My ?dream? system: the X2 3800, a $100+ motherboard (maybe the EPOX 9npa ultra); a $100-125 video card (maybe a 128 meg X800 or X1600Pro from Sapphire or a cheap Geforce 6600GT); and as little in the way of memory as I could get away with. Total: $520-600 depending on memory.
Two less expensive options (which would let me get the upgrade started and then could improve it in the not too distant future) would be to get either an ASRock 939 Dual or an Nvidia 6150 based motherboard (about $60/$90 respectively). The ASRock would let me keep my current video card and is also supposed to be upgradeable to support the new AMD?s forthcoming CPU form. 6150 motherboards seem to have a lot of nice features but would the video actually be an upgrade from my ATI 8500? These options would appear to cost about $400 without memory at this point in time, and I could add a better videocard sometime before the end of the year.
Thanks to everyone for all the help I have received by lurking for the past few years.
I probably won?t be doing a serious overhaul again for another 2 or 3 years. My current system is a Athlon XP 1800+ with ATI AIW 8500 DV (64 meg) video card, 512 megs of 2700 DDR RAM and tons of PATA storage space (due to the AIW being used as my vcr). I also have a good ATX case and a 420 watt Antec ps that I plan to keep. I use Windows XP Pro.
My choice of CPU is between the $165 Athlon 3200 or the $300 X2 3800. I am leaning towards the more expensive chip: I am not a gamer (I generally play games that were popular 3 years prior) but I use Photoshop and I tend to have a lot of different programs/windows open.
My biggest question is: how much speed would I lose if I just stuck with my current 512 megs of cheap 2700 memory for a little while with these CPUs (or just added another 512 stick of cheap memory?) Reading the reviews I haven?t really gotten a feel of what the difference is between DDR 333 and DDR 400 with these new CPUs.
My ?dream? system: the X2 3800, a $100+ motherboard (maybe the EPOX 9npa ultra); a $100-125 video card (maybe a 128 meg X800 or X1600Pro from Sapphire or a cheap Geforce 6600GT); and as little in the way of memory as I could get away with. Total: $520-600 depending on memory.
Two less expensive options (which would let me get the upgrade started and then could improve it in the not too distant future) would be to get either an ASRock 939 Dual or an Nvidia 6150 based motherboard (about $60/$90 respectively). The ASRock would let me keep my current video card and is also supposed to be upgradeable to support the new AMD?s forthcoming CPU form. 6150 motherboards seem to have a lot of nice features but would the video actually be an upgrade from my ATI 8500? These options would appear to cost about $400 without memory at this point in time, and I could add a better videocard sometime before the end of the year.
Thanks to everyone for all the help I have received by lurking for the past few years.
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