Help me buy stuff!

[concreteDonkey]

My system:

MSI KT3 Ultra Aru
1900+ 266FSB Athlon (old so probably old core)
512mb 2700(333)ram
Creative SB Live 5.1
Creative 4.1 speakers
that's all the important stuff i think?

I'm upgrading for Doom3 and HL2 amongst other things.

Now, I'm gonna buy a graphics card for sure, looking at a connect3D Radeon 9800pro.

Ok, I'm not rich so I want to stick below £200 (yes pounds sterling, please don't be put off replying). As you may have noticed, the Radeon is about £107 delivered. Basically, is it too good for my current system anyway?
Was also thinking of another 512MB of the same ram.
Is it worth me getting a new CPU just for the 333FSB to match my ram?

HELP ME!!!!!! PLEASE!!!!

 

[imported_Kensai]

Eegads. I think you should get a new mobo/cpu combo (Not super high end) The ram should be fine for now and get a new VGA.

 

[mwmorph]

get a 6600gt. miminum price difference, better feature set, purevideo support, faster.
your cpu will be a bottleneck. a new socket sempy may be in order.
1 gig of ram is nice in games. not essential, espically at yuor budget, but VERY nice.

edit:wow, sucks to be in england. such a big price jump from 6600gt to 9800pro.

 

[concreteDonkey]

Originally posted by: mwmorph
wow, sucks to be in england. such a big price jump from 6600gt to 9800pro.

Yep: Radeon is about £107, Sparkle 6600GT is about £137 (about $70 more?)

So if my CPU will bottleneck it all, should i get a lesser graphics card and save up for a whole new system, what with 64bit and PCI express mine's looking a bit dead-end?

 

[mwmorph]

9800pro might run doom3 1024x786 highest fine, i think it might be a bit laggy.(if you had 1 gig ram, better processor.)(sempy 3000+ maybe?)

depends on how long it'll take for you to save up more money, and how much you'll have. i'd say without monitor keyboard, $800-1000 us might e able to buy you a decent 3000+ s939 nforce4 with a 6600gt, 1gig ram. not sure what vat is though, but it seems to be a killer.

 

[concreteDonkey]

1024x768 is the most i'm ever gonna play it anyway, I'm not looking for amazing performance, just atmospheric enough to properly appreciate the scariness!

I don't know how much money i'll save or how fast, what i mean is should i just give up upgrading my current system with it being a bit dead-end technology? Like if, by not upgrading it now, I can save up about £500 (about $1400?) by xmas2005, should i?

It'll be about half that amount if i upgrade now.

VAT is 17.5%

 

[mwmorph]

Socket A is dead now. Socket 754 is the new socket A. It does have a value oriented PCI-e Board, all the new semprons and the AMD64 up to 3700+. It wont have many newer stuff like Dual Channel or SSE3 but if you can live with that, you might want a 3000+amd64 system with +512mb pc3200ram(salvage the other 512mb from the current machine)It will run at pc270 speeds but that might drop you 2fps max, Creative SB Live 5.1 Creative 4.1 speakers can be salvaged and the HDDs can be slavaged, unless you need more storage.

now by christmas 2005, the next gen R520 and G70 processors will be out, so i cant advise you on what to buy simply because i dont know what the lineup should be like, but if you buy sooner(a month or 2), i can say that the 6600gt is still the best choice.(Ebay UK for some cheap deals maybe?). If you still have some to spend, get a 6800gt/x800xl.

Socket 939 boards cost more, have more features and is more performance oriented than value. All the Dual Core processors are heading to that platform. If you hold off to christmas time, you should be able to afford a single core 939 system.

 

[concreteDonkey]

this thread might be dead now, but:

Can I salvage my Zalman flower cooler from my sckt A board?

So I only really need a mobo/CPU/GCard upgrade.

 

[Munky]

Socket A uses a different cooler design than other sockets, so no, you cant reuse your old cooler. When it comes to gaming, the video card still makes the most difference, so if you want to play HL2 and D3, you could just get a 9800p or a 6600gt and it will run fine. I got a mobile barton + 9800p, and it runs HL2 smooth as glass at 1024*768 max quality + 4xAA/8xAF.