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Planning upgrades to fit budget

M

Maxspeed996

Senior member
Started building PC's 2 years ago....and I'm trying to keep my system fresh and fun for me without blowing the bank , or hearing it from my wife!!
MOBO - Asus P4PE
Processor - Intel P4 2.4 (no HT) 533 fsb
Ram - 1 gig (2x512) pc2700 Kingston
Hard Drive - 55 gig (don't remember brand) standard IDE interface.
Video - ATI X700 PRO 8x/4x agp

I'm pretty happy with the machine that I put together , I can run any of the newer games , which is what I'm using the machine for. But I'm finding myself craving better video , speed ....etc.
I've been steadily upgrading this MOBO from P4 1.8 and 256 ram , with 64mg agp 4x card. And I've noticed every time I upgrade , how it has affected the performance of what I've been doing , mainly gaming. In games Like Doom3 (high video needs) to games like Guild Wars (Memory hungry). I have now , another P4 that is Identical to the one that I currently run , and just purchased a stick of Kingston 512 pc3200. Now I'm wanting to see if getting a newer mobo (I am very happy with ASUS) that will accept the 478 socket processor will give me a marked improvement again over my current system.
Right now , my processor which has the 533 fsb can't be running at 100% since I have PC2700 ram in the machine , and my video card is 8x/4x in a 4x slot on my board.
Will upgrading to one of the higher end motheboards kind of unlock the potential of my video and processor , and use the pc3200 ram. That would give me some more upgrade potential down the road....be it a better p4 , more memory...
Anyone out there in my shoes that can't just go out and get the latest SLI board with dual video cards and all the bells and whistles!! Let me know if you think I'm on the right track! Thanks for the space AnandTech.
 
The more and more I read is telling me that I'm still behind the times. If I'm wanting to stay in the games. After years of running Intel , am I going to be happy with AMD? Can someone make me a convert? What would be a good way to go for me in comparison to my current machine?
 
Yes deffinatly go AMD.

Get the following

-MSI K8N-Neo4/SLI
-AMD Opteron 148
-2x 512MB G.SKILL Value RAM
-Hitachi 160GB HDD
-HIS X800GTO OC

This is exactly what I have so it should do you very good unless you want to spend more or less money.
 
i still use a similar setup as my main system.

http://anandtech.com/mysystemrig.aspx?rigid=31588

if you're looking for upgrades that won't break the bank for your current system, i'd start with the RAM and the HD. if you haven't already, think about over clocking. on my stock HSF, i just bumped it up to a 10% OC in the bios with Auto settings and i got 2.65 and haven't experienced any crashing or errors when i run WoW or BF2.

i've always had a good experience with Intel and just recently took the plunge with AMD. i just finished building an AMD system the other day, and i'm kinda happy with the way it turned out. sure i had some bumps along the way (Maxtor HD + Asus A8N5X = HD disappearing from my system), but just like everything in life, it's a learning experience.

the next system i build, just for gaming, will most likely be an AMD as well.
 
Yea , I think the main reason I had thought of upgrading was that with the extra stick of memory (512 pc3200) and the extra p4 2.4. If I were to get a new motherboard , all I'd need was to get a hard drive , and memory , and I'd have another system , and give the current one to my wife. Minus the video card of course....she could have the 128 pci card I have in another machine!! I thought their were a few Asus Motherboards out there that would allow me to use my current hardware , and with the pc3200 memory it would open up the FSB on my P4 to it's full 533 , and still have the option of going with a faster 800 fsb processor later. Plus an 8x slot which should make a difference for my video card. I can't yet run doom3 on Ultra resolution... but that's not hurting my feelings right now....although I do wonder what that is like.......!!!!
 
here is the board that I'm looking at...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131492

That and the ability to put some GOOD memory in it I would hope give me some pretty noticable performance increases.

Do you think that with the options on this board I'd be missing out on very much performance for what I'm doing with it? I'm playing games like Doom3 - GuildWars - Quake 4.
Would a sound card help increase performance since I'd be able to disable the integrated one? (Does that take it off the bus...?)
Not trying to keep up with the Jonses , I don't have the bank for that. But I've been really happy with the performance that I've had to this point. Although I've not had the opportunity to sit down at one of the newer SLI rigs that are totally pimped out with all the goodies.
 
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