Budget Upgrade

[clickynext]

My motherboard died recently and it's outdated so I have little choice but to upgrade. The objective of this upgrade is to spend as little money as possible, while still increasing performance. Here's my plan:

Current System
Asus P5P800-SE (dead)
Geforce 6800 AGP (sold for $70)
2GB DDR400 (sold for $120)

Planned System
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L ($100)
Geforce 8600GT PCI-E ($100)
2GB DDR2-800 ($50)

Parts that will be carried through to the new system
PentiumD 805
Seagate 7200.7 SATA
Antec TruPower 430W

Bottom Line
$250 - $190 = $60 spent


Does the plan look ok to you? Please comment, suggestions would be appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Zap]

:thumbsup: A-OK!

 

[tno]

I just looked over your vid card thread, and looking but looking at the budget you list here, I think you could be better served by waiting and saving up another hundy and throwing down for a better card. I had a similar upgrade path as you but got to benefit from some craigslist goodness and went with the 8600gt, and i really wish I'd gone bigger. Don't get my wrong, the card runs great, especially o/c'ed well. but that other 100 would have put me in a whole different class of cards and I would really be able to run anything out in the next year+. and I'm not talking about the 8600gts either, I'm talking about those 8800gt's coming out and last gen high end cards.

 

[clickynext]

Hmm, you've got a good point there. Another 100 seems like it would make a huge difference in gaming. I wonder how much my PentiumD 805 would limit a 8800GT, though.

Is there a known ETA on when the 256mb 8800GT will be widely available? Since my old mobo died, I'm without a computer at home until I finish this upgrade, so time is a bit of an issue.

 

[tno]

Here's a thought. We know that the 8800GT's will hit $200 sometime. Buy an eVGA 8600 (any variety) and then use their step-up program to get into one of the $200 8800GT's. Might even work for me! As far as being held back by the CPU, it's hit or miss whether a game is CPU hungry or GPU hungry, but either way, you should be able to turn on a lot of graphics features and play at a decent resolution a lot more smoothly with the 88 than the 86. Good luck.

tno