Help me plan my upgrade

[Thoth093]

Hi there, oh great ones.

Here's my system as it stands:

-Athlon 64 3200
- 1 gigabyte 3200 RAM (three on motherboard, one RAM slot left)
- ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128
- Two 80 gig hard drives, one SATA, the other regular EIDE. I think it'a an ATA-100 drive.
- Windows XP pro
- Onboard sound

I believe that'll do.

Here's what I want:

I want to upgrade my computer, which is a year old in October. What I do not want to do is get a new motherboard/processor.

I want to update my graphics card and possibly throw in a bit more RAM. I don't plan to upgrade anything else really until next year or longer (possibly six months-plus), when I'll probably just buy a new machine.

If I want to spend between $300-$500 total, what's the best video card option? Should I bother to add another 512k Ram stick? What would you do, given what I'm wanting?

I've thought about adding a more premium sound card, which might reduce CPU hit slightly. Thoughts on that? I know Creative is coming out with new cards, which might mean the current generation of Soundblasters could drop severely in price.

What say you all?

Brian

 

[Ricemarine]

Ok. first off. to clarify

-Athlon 64 3200+. not 62...
-ITS 512 MB not KB, otherwise we'll never reach quantum computing.
-Regular system specs consists of
CPU
Ram <brand, and speed>
Hard drives
Power supply
Motherboard <BRAND AND TYPE>
Video card
+ anything else I probably forgot.
-Fill out regular system specs, and we'll decide from there k?

 

[Kyanzes]

With five hundred dollars to spend, you could buy:

- 1x XFX7800GT $380

- 1x MSI K8N SLI Platinum - about $90

- 1x Chieftec 420W PSU 24 pin - about $75

Total: $545 and you could sell your old mobo & video card ofc so it would remain well below $500

Simply move the RAM to the new mobo. I wouldn't bother throwing in more RAM for now. The MSI K8N SLI comes with on-board creative sound (hardware ofc) so you don't have to spend on it. I wouldn't give a toss about the new X-Fi... Maybe the Z-Fi

 

[love2skate824]

ummm msi neo4 sli platinum is around 170, not 90....

 

[Kyanzes]

Originally posted by: love2skate824
ummm msi neo4 sli platinum is around 170, not 90....

Your right of course. Still, selling the old stuff would cover the $125 extra.

 

[The Green Bean]

I say get a 7800GT and add another GB of ram