To Con or not to Roe

[aheartattack]

My current rig is:

1. Intel P4 2.8 E (That's 1MB L2, 800FSB...not the EE)
2. MSI 875P Neo FIS2R
3. 1GB DDR-400 TwinMOS
4. MSI nVidia 5900XT 128MB AGP
5. 1 80GB Maxtor and 1 80GB Samsung SATA in intel ICH5R RAID

This was bought over 2.5 years ago and cost me quite a bit. It was kinda high end then, that's one reason I held on so long . Besides, the FX-62s were way out of reach. Now the Conroe seems a mouthwatering prospect. Problem is, I have only about $500 to upgrade. If I sell my kidneys I'd even be able to get to $700. In this situation, what sort of combo would best suit me? I'm not an extremely hard-core PC gamer, but oblivion would be nice to check out. I'd be mainly running Visual Studio and Ecclipse for development. As part of my school courses, things like SQL servers, Oracles, etc. may (will) be running (dev, not production). I will definitely be a Vista early bird. Linux compatibility is also an issue. Not a single version of Linux wants to install to the raid I've got.

A few more question:
1. Will the 965/975 chipset be able to read from the ICH5R set up raid, or will I have to back up 160GBs and restore them on the new board?
2. Is a 7300GT/7300GT sli or 7600GT(single) be better than my 5900XT? I won't be using more than 1280x1024 fro quite some time as a monitor upgrade will come much later. Would another graphics card be better given the price constraints?
3. Will DDR2 be much better than the DDR-400s I've got? Note: By DDR2, I mean DDR2-533 or DDR2-667.
4. Should I wait till the Conroe price drop when Quad Core comes along at the end of the year?
5. Would I be better off with an X2-4200 or similar?



Thanks for the help

 

[Polish3d]

Buy:


The cheapest E6300 you can find, overclock it modestly to get a processor faster than an FX-62
A 7900GT or X1900xt < optimal
150 dollars for a mobo
the cheapest 1gig stick of ram you can find

If you are playing at 1280x1024 or less, you should have a pretty sweet gaming system, relatively speaking

 

[TheTeacher]

I am upgrading? LOL From a Dual Opty 285 w/ 4GB RAM to a Conroe 6800 (I really hate Intel... The DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE!!) But I must go with the fastest setup, and seeing as most software doesn't use 4 cores, and I don't do a WHOLE lot of multitasking, I guess it's justified. That and I got 2Gigs of Corsair DDR2 1066 to go along with it, and an ASUS nForce board. I will upgrade to the 590 when it's available. I say DO IT!!!
Mike

 

[Keysplayr]

E6300 - 210.00
GB DS3 - 140.00
2x1 GB DDR2667 - 145.00
7900GTKO 250.00 or X1800XT 199.00

If you go with the X1800XT, it comes out to just under 700 before shipping.

Enjoy. All prices from newegg.

EDIT: And a nice PSU to run it all, so, well over 700.

 

[aheartattack]

Sweet. For that system, I might sell an eyeball and go for the 79GT.

One more thing, would SATA2 drives be significantly better performers than my SATAs? And would the GB DS3 be able to read my existing RAID0?

 

[shamans]

Don't you already have a decent enough setup? Annoyed by slow downs?

Seems to me you can wait a few months until conroe matures a bit more.

 

[aheartattack]

A bit of slowdowns. What's more annoying is a few months into my over the top rig, this wretched game came along called NFS Undie-2. Up till then, all games ran at full specs on 1280x1024. Heck, Unreal 2004 runs smooth with full settings with very little to none flicker (no slowdowns). From Undie-2, I've had to lower settings to medium, turned off the newer feautures, and oblivion's makin' me cry. In the end, I may have to wait a month or two (if I go for a E6400 or higher. And I do value my kidneys.). Then again, keysplayr2003's post may have me in the shops by Thursday