good upgrade?

[ramazorg]

I have 1.8 ghz p4 and 256 megs of rambus memory with Radeon 8500 videocard.

I was wondering what would be a good upgrade so I can play games like ut2003 and stuff and so they wouldnt choke

I was thinking of overclocking to 2.4 and buying 256 more megs of ram and radeon 9700 pro..do you think it would be worth it? or should I just save up for a new pc and buy it when new games like doom 3 and half life 2 come out?

thanks!

 

[gf4200isdabest]

My suggestion is save and buy later. Ut2003 sucks. BADLY...Don't waste your money until there is a good game out that you wanna play (probably hl2)

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: gf4200isdabest
My suggestion is save and buy later. Ut2003 sucks. BADLY...Don't waste your money until there is a good game out that you wanna play (probably hl2)

i agree, but he should be able to play ut2003 with his current rig, i mean i ran it on my 3dfx voodoo5 5500 and celeron 533 for a while

 

[ramazorg]

well I can run it, but Radeon 8500 really blows with direct 3d ok? d3d in this card is a lot slower, and I believe ut2k3 is direct 3d.. I can run open gl games no problem, but for example in Raven Shield (which is based on ut2003 engine) I get like 30-40 fps..

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: ramazorg
well I can run it, but Radeon 8500 really blows with direct 3d ok? d3d in this card is a lot slower, and I believe ut2k3 is direct 3d.. I can run open gl games no problem, but for example in Raven Shield (which is based on ut2003 engine) I get like 30-40 fps..

Hmm... ATI cards usually do worse in opengl and better in D3D. i think the 9700 pro and more RAM would be good but Rambus ram is expensive so you may even want to invest in something else because down the road you'll end up switching to DDR memory and at that time Rambus will be hard to sell, even at low rates. I'd reccomend waiting and saving up more money to turn to an 865PE solution and switch over to DDR memory. It'll be very roughly $120 for the board, $70 for 512mb PC3200, or $80 for 2x256MB PC3200 so you can run in dual channel. Thats about $200. That will get you set for a longer period of time IMO. The 8500 should be fine but you can upgrade if you like.

Also, thought about selling that stuff? You can sell all that and get $100 to $200 which would cover your new mobo/DDR RAM cost and all you'd need to buy is that video card and CPU if you sold that too.

If I were in your situation, I'd get out of Rambus ASAP because the value of that is very low because of the DDR RAM prices so low and the RDRAM prices always being very high which will mkae future upgrade situations tought because of high RDRAM costs and not being able to sell it easily.

 

[Insidious]

Don't know what you want to spend, or if you have completely ruled out a system upgrade.

If you don't want to spend more than a couple hundred bucks... I think you will get the most result with moving to a GF4 video card. I certainly believe it will gain you MUCH more than increasing your memory size.

I only suggest the NVidia to avoid stretching the budget.... but if you have the $$ get a TOL video card (which, at the moment probably is an ATI)

but if you have the patience, and the $$, then I agree... you are best off doing the system upgrade when you can. IMO, you'll be happiest in the long run this way.

-Sid