Please provide upgrade advice.

[Louie1961a]

Here are my system specs currently:

550Mhz Coppermine PIII O/C to 733Mhz
Asus p3v4x motherboard
256MB of PC-133 SDRam (2*128mb sticks)
Maxtor diamond max 10GB, 7200RPM hard drive
Asus v7100 GeForce 2MX (32mb) video card
17' IBM P70 monitor
D-link 10/100 ethernet
Yamaha YMF-724 PCI sound card
Motorola Surfboard SB 4100 cable modem

I am thinking about getting an asus v8420 Ti42000 (64mb) video card ($130) and a Celeron 1.2 Ghz processor (with the converter card, and with the hopes of overclocking it to 1.6Ghz by bumping the FSB from 100 to 133 same as I am doing with my current coppermine CPU) for $53

Two questions: Is there a better way for me to spend $200 to upgrade my aging system, and is there any issue running a tualitin CPU on this ASUS mobo? I am thinking this would be a very economical upgrade. I primarily use the machine for playing games.

 

[Serp86]

Are you planning to use it for games?
The celeron and gf4 ti 4200 will give a good boost - but definately not enough to last (for games). For work - this is more than enough - although you may only need the geforce MX.

For games, however, this is a different story.
Don't know the price in the us - but i would try to find this system;
Athlon XP 1800+ and motherboard
256mb ddr(maybe 266mhz)
Geforce MX 440 or Radeon 9000pro
40 gig hard-disk.

If your budget can hold out try to get this. If you find a good motherboard, you can easily update to a high-end processor later, and the video card can be upgraded later without having the CPU as a bottleneck.

Open your wallet, take a hard look in it, and find what you think is best. However, this depends on the future uses of the system.

 

[Louie1961a]

I use the system for gaming. I really can't pry any more money out of my wallet right now, with a new baby on the way. My question is really where is it best to spend my money. The alternative I was thinking of was to maybe get an ECS K7S5A, AMD athlon xp 1600+, and a cheaper video card (like maybe a GE force 3 Ti 200, Raydeon 9000, GE force MX 440, etc.) Although, I would re-use my old memory if I go this route

Clearly if I had the money I would be going for something like an Nforce 2 motherboard with one of the new 333Mhz FSB Athlons, and a Raydeon 9700, PC 2700 memory, etc. But that system has to wait a while.

For now, I just have to figure out what to do with what I have and my puny budget.

Thanks for the input.

 

[dmw16]

I think, given a budget of $200, that would be a good upgrade route. You may want to consider spending a few more dollars and making sure you put good cooling on that CPU if you're gonna overclock.
-doug

 

[Markfw]

ECS motherboard and fastest CPU you can get with Radeon 8500. I don't know where you are, but where I am, I could get the MB and XP2000 for $120. Then all I would need is to find the video for $80 (might be a little tough)