how much is my hardware outdated in comparance to the latest ?

[Gomce]

I have
1.4 Thunderbird
256 mb DDR
Geforce 3 able to do 280 / 580

?

should I plunk some cash now and upgrade to 9800 PRO, i875 Gbyte mobo and 2 x 256 PC3500 ram?

 

[boyRacer]

Do you need to upgrade?

 

[Ionizer86]

If you're running your games at good speeds, no need. If you're not gaming, you may not need to. If you're itching to upgrade and want to have some extra parts to possibly do a 2nd pc as well, sure, why not? (though 9800p, i845, etc may be overkill while 512mb may not be too futureproof).

 

[Ionizer86]

dbl post

 

[Gomce]

well I don't know,
I saw a friend with GF4 Ti4200 and XP 1800+ and Vice City looked so much smoother on his PC Also this new Mercedes game that just came out... I don't know, I haven't gamed on my PC in a while. Only playing Gran Turismo 3 on the PS2 occasionaly. The desktop currently serves as a satellite TV with a DVD card in it... main work is done on my laptop (1.8ghz p4 m, 512 ddr, 15" screen 1400x1050..)

 

[Luagsch]

that new mercedes game has some funny attitudes. a lot of eye-candy is only abailable when a gf4 or higher is installed.

if you want to upgrade look what cpu you may install (maybe a athlon xp 2100+ is the highest you can go... depends on mobo). and get yourself a 9600 pro. also put in some more ram.

but if you don't game forget it IMO

 

[Slogun]

Your system is not bad.

If you want current games to look good, then upgrade.

If you can wait, there are some very major hardware changes coming a 6 months or so. New CPU's that probably wont be compatible with today's mobos, PCI Express will be a major improvement while at the same time making AGP video cards obsolete.

Having said that, I just did a major upgrade into the world of 3GHz CPU and 800MHz FSB(O'clocked to 3.3GHz with 1GHz FSB), hyperthreading and dual channel RAM cause I want to enjoy all those new games that are starting to come out now.

 

[StraightPipe]

you're definately behind the curve for new games, when I got to that point with my old P3 450mhz, I considered the upgrade, but it was gonna max at 1.2g if i kept the mobo, if not I was going to be rebuilding the whole thing. I ended up buying a whole new system, and .

the really nice part is i can keep the old one runnign downloading apps all day long, and never get a performane hit on my new rig. then I just slide them across my network onto the new rig.

I was pleased to see that the prices have come down alot too, my old rig was near top of the line @ $2000 and my new one was only $1200 (no monitor, cuz I've already got a bunch)

also you can get a KVM switch that will let you use the same Keyboard, Video (monitor), and Mouse for multiple Pc's, just push the button to switch.

 

[sharkeeper]

It depends on what you do with your system!

I was in a department and their fastest (to use) PC was an IBM PIII 550 w/ 128MB! It was running Windows 98SE with no BS installed and it was much faster than a Dell Optiplex P4 2.0GHz 256MB with XP Pro. Unbelievable. The group leader asked me why that POS was so fast and I told him it was because it wasn't doing anything! LOL

Cheers!

 

[Corporate Thug]

Originally posted by: Gomce
I have
1.4 Thunderbird
256 mb DDR
Geforce 3 able to do 280 / 580

?

should I plunk some cash now and upgrade to 9800 PRO, i875 Gbyte mobo and 2 x 256 PC3500 ram?

your rig is a paper weight, j/k.

i wouldnt upgrade just yet

 

[Ionizer86]

Yea, the state of the rig is really quite important. For kicks, I underclocked my AthlonXP to 500MHz (100 bus * 5) because I'm really doing web browsing and HW related stuff a lot now. The slowdown isn't really that noticeable. Yes, at higher speeds, it's more fluid but hey, I can always push up the clock later when I'm actually doing some stuff with the PC