To Upgrade or Not?

[Xenoid]

First off, my current specs to give you an idea of what I'm coming from.

Athlon XP 2100
nForce 2 chipset
nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 128mb 8x AGP
3 x 256mb PC-2100 Kingston DDR
40gb Seagate ATA100 + 160gb WD ATA100

I have been 'fantasy building' for a couple years. I finally have money, but it's not at a well paying job being it's $8/hr in retail. This is what I'm looking at:

Intel e6400
Gigabyte DS3 mobo
ATI X1900XT 256mb
2 x 1gb DD2-800 4-4-4-12 Crucial or OCZ or similiar branding
2 x 320gb WD 7200.10 SATA 3.0gb/s in RAID-0

Roughly $1500 CAD after shipping on ewiz.com (80 USD for SHIPPING)

The problem is, I live in Canada so finding a shipper from an American site (Canadian sites like Anitec are a complete rip-off) is hard and shipping is pricey (80 USD). Right now I'm looking at ewiz.com if anyone has experience there or at another site that would be cheaper with their shipping please tell me unless 80 USD is a realistic ship price.

I'm having a hard time deciding if this is what I want to do. I don't plan to upgrade for quite some time after doing this, but it's a lot of paychecks. The question is, should I do it, wait a while, or wait a long while because every 12 months what you bought isn't good anymore anyways? Another option is to pick up the best AMD offering, but I'm thinking of going for this since it's quite a bit faster and still not that expensive compared to in the past for a top-notch system.

Advise me if you can. Sorry this is so long...

 

[vhx]

Ironically I had the same vid card and processor as you before upgrading and upgraded to the Same processor and motherboard as you are suggesting.

TBH I would suggest to buy a lower end video card for now (7600GS or something), then spend more money on a DirectX10 card when they are released in a few months. Do this if you don't plan on upgrading again in several years. I bought a Geforce4 Ti4200 right before DirectX9 came out, like 5-6 years ago and ended up kicking myself because of that. I was poor as well.

 

[BurnItDwn]

The e6400 is a really nice CPU and the "bang for the buck" value is pretty good too

I have an ATI x1800xt and I love the card (my old vidcard was an AGP Geforce 6800 that died, so I was running a Radeon 9700 pro for a while)
I don't know if x1800xt's are still available, but I do recall they costed around $75 less than the x1900xt and offered more "bang for the buck" in terms of performance.

In your case, since you won't want to use pc2100 in your new system, don't bother with an AMD X2 setup here. The Conroe offers better performance per dollar than the X2 does. The only real benefits that I see by going with the AMD route would be going with Socket 939 and being able to reuse your existing RAM (not a good idea as you have PC2100), or because cheaper 939 boards run around $60, and a nice Abit or Asus board runs under $100 instead of $160 for the DS3.

2GB of ram is really the way to go. I don't know anything about DDR2 though ... (Running PC3200 DDR on a socket 939 here)

The Hard drives ... ehh, I'm not a big fan of WD. I buy only seagate due to their 5 year warranty. That being said, the drives coming from WD are generally good.


In Conclusion, nice rig, you could trim a good amount off the cost going with an AMD X2 4200, a cheapo 939 board, a 7900gt or x1800xt *if you can find one*, and you might wind up with marginally better "bang for the buck", however given the high shipping cost, and the difficulty you seem to have at obtaining new hardware, I would advise against that.

I don't know what vendors are best for Canadian buyers, but i think I recall a LONG time ago, outpost.com used to have a Canadian division.

Good luck

P.S. I think your summary is a bit off .... 7 years ago, all the rage was the Abit BP6 and dual celeron 366's being OC'd to 550.

 

[Xenoid]

The X1900 XT 256mb is only 250~ USD and performs almost as good as the XTX and 512mb version of itself. I don't think that's too much to spend on a video card.

I guess what I'm mostly asking is should I wait or just go for it? DX10 cards are going to be out of my price range for some time when they come out and I don't know how long it will be for AMDs new shizzle to come around if it's even better.

I don't think there is much long term value in going for a slightly cheaper, but slower Athlon X2, but I may be wrong. I don't really plan to upgrade for some time after doing this. Either way I have to replace everything I have.

I should note that I don't think it's worth cutting a drive out of there because they're only 90~ USD each and they're huge..plus RAID-0 doesn't hurt. Trust me, I use the space.

Originally posted by: BurnItDwn
P.S. I think your summary is a bit off .... 7 years ago, all the rage was the Abit BP6 and dual celeron 366's being OC'd to 550.

Nearly six years since my cpu came out. My bad there. I focus on that most since most of my gaming is Half-Life 2.

I am also thinking of trying to unlock my little CPU. Problem is, it already runs HOT even with a huge Thermaltake on there at max speed. Averages from MBM show cpu at 48, case at 38 and fan at 5438 rpm. Got it all from a friend (minor upgrade from an XP 1800) so maybe he did a bad job with his thermal paste... It might all buy me a little speed/time. Certainly improved my video card...

 

[alimoalem]

you could wait and the total price will probably drop by around $100-200 by the time the year is over. if you're low on money, don't get DDR2-800 ram. i'm assuming you'll be overclocking but the DDR2-667 stuff can usually hit DDR2-800 with CAS 4 timings (check anand's review of DDR2 ram) and cost between $120-170. also, even though RAID-0 can benefit you, i would hold off on the second hard drive til you need the space so you can make the initial investment a little less.

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: Xenoid

Topic Title: To Upgrade or Not?
Topic Summary: First upgrade in 7 years

Athlon XP 2100
nForce 2 chipset
nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4200 128mb 8x AGP
3 x 256mb PC-2100 Kingston DDR
40gb Seagate ATA100 + 160gb WD ATA100

Advise me if you can. Sorry this is so long...

that stuff was available ... in 1999? 'cuz rite now it's 2006. In 1999, I remember the Pentium II and III were still dominating AMD like crazy.

you were lucky if you got a prebuilt computer with AGP in 1999...! I was jealous of people with integrated AGP graphics, and more jealous of AGP slot motherboard computers.

PCI graphics were the thing for gaming... sike! especially if they were integrated...

anyway,

Intel e6400
Gigabyte DS3 mobo
ATI X1900XT 256mb
2 x 1gb DD2-800 4-4-4-12 Crucial or OCZ or similiar branding
2 x 320gb WD 7200.10 SATA 3.0gb/s in RAID-0

the storage you've chosen and it's method of a RAID 0 sucks.

just get one 320gb drive.

otherwise the system looks good to me with a quality PSU and nice LCD monitor to go with it.