Is it worth the money to upgrade?

[Staz]

I was given a $250 gift certificate to Fry's for Xmas, and was thinking about upgrading my system with it. My current system, which I mainly use for gaming, is:

XP-M 2500+ overclocked to 3200+
2x512MB of Kingston Hyper-X PC3200
Gigabyte Nforce2 mobo
80GB SATA harddrive
BFG 6800OC AGP videocard
Dell 2005FPW LCD

I was thinking of upgrading to an A64 939 pin CPU and compatable mobo. That upgrade would eat up my gift cert and cost me another $150 out of pocket. My question is will I see more speed for my over $400 investment and is it really worth it?

 

[Rip the Jacker]

Yesums

 

[dguy6789]

Wouldnt be worth it imo. Yes the Athlon 64 3200 would be faster, but not THAT much faster. You will notice a bit of an increase, but nowhere near the increase you could get spending the money elsewhere. an Athlon XP 3200+ is still considered upper mid range for computers, and there is nothing even an fx55 could do that it couldnt do, albeit a bit slower.

I would get a larger harddrive. That 80GB has to be cramped.

 

[nick1985]

Originally posted by: ItmPls
Yesums

:thumbsdown:



i honestly dont think its worth it.

 

[mwmorph]

the 2800+AMD64 will overpower your 3200+xp so i think it would be worth it to upgrade. also, the 3200+ can be overclocked to about 2.6GHZ and that will move it up to the ranks of the fastest cpus out there.

 

[Dravic]

Originally posted by: Staz
I was given a $250 gift certificate to Fry's for Xmas, and was thinking about upgrading my system with it. My current system, which I mainly use for gaming, is:

XP-M 2500+ overclocked to 3200+
2x512MB of Kingston Hyper-X PC3200
Gigabyte Nforce2 mobo
80GB SATA harddrive
BFG 6800OC AGP videocard
Dell 2005FPW LCD

I was thinking of upgrading to an A64 939 pin CPU and compatable mobo. That upgrade would eat up my gift cert and cost me another $150 out of pocket. My question is will I see more speed for my over $400 investment and is it really worth it?

for everyday use, you will not see too much of a difference, but if you are a serious gamer, then their is a large difference between these to chips in modern games...

Take doom3 for example

unless you call 20+fps no difference

with that 6800OC your bottleneck at around 1024x768 will be all cpu..

with a 6800NU and an 2100+@2.3ghz and 1 gig of ram I can only time demo
at ~50fps in doom3 at any quality settings, but i'm still running an older kt333
board(mem at cas2 185 though)

I'm looking to go a 3000+ a64 with an MSI neo2 plat. and overclock the ever loving crap out of it. Anything above 2.5ghz will be good for me, and would increase my doom3 scores by ~50fps up till 1280x960 res.

 

[perdomot]

Staz,
I would consider getting myself a 74GB Raptor unless thats the drive in your sig. If you really want to get into the 64 game, I would suggest a socket 754 3000+ cpu and the DFI mobo with the Nforce 3 chipset. Check out this article and notice how high you can OC this combo:

http://www.madshrimps.be/?acti...rticle&articID=250

You can get this cpu combo for $259 at Newegg. The dual channel of the 939s doesn't offer much of an advantage in most applications so why pay extra.

 

[cmv]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Wouldnt be worth it imo. Yes the Athlon 64 3200 would be faster, but not THAT much faster. You will notice a bit of an increase, but nowhere near the increase you could get spending the money elsewhere. an Athlon XP 3200+ is still considered upper mid range for computers, and there is nothing even an fx55 could do that it couldnt do, albeit a bit slower.

I would get a larger harddrive. That 80GB has to be cramped.

I'm with you. I only upgraded to my AMD 64 3200+ after many years of using my Celeron 566@850 systems. I actually waited too long but IMHO, this upgrade simply isn't worth it in the % increase. Do you really need a faster system? I mean, are you happy with how it works on the games you are using right now?

 

[unipidity]

Jeez, no. Put a lid on it... you have something that will run anything out there. Wait at least a year, or until the introduction of the next gen graphics parts and possibly dual core before even considering an upgrade.

Sell the voucher for $220. Buy something nicer, not related to computers. A musical instrument to learn. A holiday. Anything, but just dont be obsessive compulsive about upgrading computers.

 

[chinkgai]

Originally posted by: unipidity
Sell the voucher for $220. Buy something nicer, not related to computers. A musical instrument to learn. A holiday. Anything, but just dont be obsessive compulsive about upgrading computers.

:thumbsup::beer:

 

[Jester666]

Checkout Toms Hardware benchmarks of CPUs here