system ugrades/updates advice ?

[jmann8704]

This might be a little long winded but I want to give as much info as I can. My origional system consisted of an soyo dragon kt880 with a barton 2500 oc'd to a 3200 1 gig ddr400, 6600 gt vid card. It runs good so it became the work computer and I updated my box to a asus a8n sli- delux, xp 4000, 7800 GTX vid card. also with 1 gig of memory, both systems run seagate sata drives. I will say I was not impressed with the upgrade, I personally feel there is no performance dif between either system. So I want to upgrade again this year. I really dont want to do the switch over to ddr2 memory if I can help it because I am not wanting to spend $400.00 on another upgrade.
I have seen some pent d 940's in the 140.00 price range and after I add a mb and mem it puts me under the $400.00 range But will this be an improvement. Or would I be wiser to stay with the 939 amd and pick up a 4800x2 for 250.00 and call it good.
Id love to go the intel core duo route but that is gonna be way out of budget because I wont settle for less then a 6600 (per all the reviews).
I know with gaming the x2 4800 probably wont be much better the the a64-4000 I already have but once I get into heavy business apps and encoding I am hoping it will be a world of diference. (improvement)

Anyone have any words of advice aside from going the core duo route.

 

[Arkaign]

PD 940 < A64-4000+ for anything besides multitasking in Windows itself.

Get a cheap PCIe card, slap it in your 4000+, and sell it to someone who just needs a decent workstation.

Get :

E6300 or better C2D
2GB PC6400 DDR2
Reuse Video Card
500GB NCQ Sata 300 HDD w/16MB Buffer
Good P965 Mobo (check the roundups)

Overclock to E6600 levels and beyond, huge performance leap at all levels.

You should have noticed a big jump already from 6600GT to 7800GTX tbh .. try playing the same game on both with these settings :

1280x1024, all details maxed, w/4X AA .. in stuff like Quake 4, FEAR, etc .. you should see a slideshow on the 6600, and silky goodness on the GTX.

 

[mrzed]

You will never notice a "performance difference" until you are doing something that puts a strain on the current system. Any modern PC is overpowered for average computing now.

You didn't provide much information about your intended uses, but based on what you have, I would suggest holding on, unless you are doing a ton of encoding. Dual core of any sort will make a dramatic difference in encoding, a big difference in heavy multitasking, and a very small difference for most other things.

My suggestion would be to stick with what you have, or alternately switch to a X2 s939 while they are still widely available. Core2Duo is a big performance difference in benchmarks, but in real life, a high end A64X2 is not exactly hurting.

C2D is a stronger gaming platform, but most games are going to be far more limited by your 7900GTX.