Serious Question About Upgrading

[Zarick]

Ive been talking to some people who made a similar jump from and to what I am considering.
I am at a 1.2ghz thunderbird, 512 pc133 and a geforce 3 on an asus a7v133 mobo.

My friend jumped from the same setup to a a7n8x deluxe xp 2400+ and 512 corsair twinx, keeping the geforce 3.

Essentially what he said is that he is disappointed. That he didnt really feel like the money was well spent. that there weren't significant gains in games to make it worth while.

He is telling me to wait until the next wave of games comes out.. save and then upgrade after I see what it really takes to run them.


Opinions?

 

[Bonesdad]

The mistake he made was to keep the GF3...he needs a better GPU to go with that system. A Radeon 9500 or 9700 will give huge boosts. I believe that his machine should be able to handle most newer games coming up...IF he upgrades to a better video.

 

[gjacknow]

I agree with the above post.

I was researching the best upgrades for a friend of mine and it really depends on what games you play what video card is best. Most games are GPU bound nowadays, but there are expections so you have to research it a bit.

Toms hardware (http://www.tomshardware.com/) has some good articles on comparing video cards in different games.

When upgrading I would be carefull about spending that extra $$ per component for that last 5% performance. It is not like you won't be upgrading again next year...keep the $$ for then.

A KT 400 MB, cheaper mem and a XP2200 CPU might give you the $ to get a better video card that would make the system overall a bit faster. It depends on your budget.

The GPUs coming out now should lead to some good deals on mid-upper level ATI or Nvidia cards.

Greg J

 

[paperfist]

I tend to agree with Bonesdad, but still you need CPU power to feed the GPU. I went from a GeForce2 GTS to a ATI9500Pro while keeping my AMD XP1600 and I got a pretty big boost FPS wise, but I was more impressed on how nice the graphics looked in all my games.

So I'd say a 1.2GHz is kinda pushing it as far as coupling it with a faster video card, but you'd definitely see a bigger improvement this way as apposed to what your friend did by upping the CPU power and keeping the video card.

 

[Zarick]

The problem is we just got these ti500s a year and a half ago. Now we are out of them again. Its too fast. These are expensive and its really hard to justify upgrading all the time.

 

[boyRacer]

Well my ti500 just went for $100 on eBay... which meant my 9700 cost me $140. Not too bad i would think. Moving on to a 2400+ plus TwinX... i'm sure your friend can plunk down at least $100 to complete that system.

 

[Corporate Thug]

GF3? whats the point of making all upgrades EXCEPT the video card which is the most important piece of hardware for gaming

 

[mechBgon]

If he were a flight sim guy, then the improvement in his platform would probably be much more evident.

 

[Zarick]

So what if I cant upgrade both my video and my proc, mobo and ram now?

Being that im running a 1.2ghz t-bird, 512 pc133 and an a7v133.
Would you recommend upgrading the mobo proc and ram? or the video now?

I really can't do both.. at most I have 300 bucks to spend for an upgrade.

 

[Malladine]

Zarick: For ~ $270 you could get yourself a MSI nforce2 board (MSI Motherboard for AMD Athlon/AthlonXP/Duron processors (@ 100/133/166 FSB), Model# K7N2-L (MS-6570-010)) with an xp 2100+ and 512mb of corsair xms memory (2 x 256). What you have to remember is that the gf3 ti500 is a good card, eve by today's standards. It's not far from ti4200 speeds and it will run any and all games out today with few problems. With that upgrade and keeping the ti500, you should even be able to play doom3 and hl2 at low-medium settings with a decent framerate. Those games will look better than anything else even at those settings

Anyway, the upgrade I mentioned above is basically the "next generation" beyond yours. Personally, I don't upgrade for 2 or 3 generations, but that said the nforce2 mobo will allow you to keep making smaller upgrades for years, if you're patient. In addition, it's quite a bit cheaper than your friend's (just the mobo is $30+ cheaper) and is as fast if you o'clock the 2100+ (very easy to do).