upgrade advice

[tsunek]

i currently have a celeron 566@850 in a bx mobo with 256mb ram and a radeon 32mb ddr card. i'm looking to upgrade this machine this summer for no more than 400-500 dollars. hd sound card and everything else are fine right now. any suggestions would be appreciated

 

[QTPie]

By then you can get a MB + 2GHz CPU for about $200;
a big hard disk (~60GB) for about $100;
a faster CD-RW (~32X) for less than $100);
a sounblaster live OEM for around $30 (but you don't need to if you're soundcard is ok or you have a decent on-board sound)
If you're not a gamer, then your video card is fine.

However, the memory might not be able to run at 133MHz. In that case, you should upgrade MB, CPU and memory for around $300. You should buy DDR memory since it's faster than SDRAM. Then wait for good deals on HDD and CD-RW later.

 

[N11]

Given the price of things today you could upgrade several things and stay under 400-500.

I guess the primary question is, what do you find lacking of your current setup? An 850mhz with 256mb memory is a fairly good rig, and can handle most everything in a usable manner.

What are you looking to get out of the system? If you are just a general user and are not heavily into games then I would suggest pocketing the 400-500 and waiting a year or so while technology continues to increase at such an interesting pace.