Upgrade advise/guide

[Negatyfus]

I'm sure every once in a while a n00b comes to this places and wonders what the best latest hardware is, when to buy what and what the best price/performance ratio is. Bear with me here; I have too many other things to worry about in my life to constantly keep up with the latest technological advances. You've got your PCI-Express, AMD, Intel, boards from vendors who just yesteryear were exclusively involved with graphics cards-- and I'm just a simple software engineer.

My story is that I'd like to upgrade not so far in the future and of course I want the best bang for my buck. With PCI-E just out, I'd expect you to say that I best wait. For how long? What brands are recommended? What is overkill for the price vs. performance? nVidia motherboards seem best... AMD kicks Intel in the arse in gaming, 1GB DDR RAM seems nice... is there some place where I can get some clarity and solid advise on how and when to buy new hardware? Any new technology coming around the corner I should wait for?

Thanks for reading.

 

[Gravity]

Welcome to the forums!!

Well, your questions couldn't be more general. I suggest you look in cases and cooling for your case/psu needs and the video forum for vid card, etc.

Anandtech does some pretty spiffy reviews of most components on their home page and I think you'll find them useful in your quest for a faster box.

I personally like silentpcreview since I hate computer noise. I also frequent tomshardware.com and some other, more obtuse sites for misc info.

No matter when you upgrade, you will find that there is stuff just out of your financial reach that you'd prolly get if price wasn't an option. I recommend that you start with a budget and work from there.

you'll be able to find what you need. Some sites even recommend best bang for your hard earned buck on fast gaming machines, mid -range utility machines, small form factor boxes and cheapest you can get and still boot boxes.

Feel free to ask any specific questions, the forums are generally pretty helpful and friendly. I have personally benefited from the collective experience here on many occaisions.

 

[Negatyfus]

Yeah, I guess I was pretty broad in my question. Thanks for the warm welcome, though. I'm sure I will get more specific questions as the time that I will actually go through with this draws nearer. World of Warcraft will be released soon in Europe. (Although I read that it'll at least run on my P3-800. Yeah, that's old. But runs surprisingly well with a nice video card and more RAM).

I also found the sticky topic "System Buyer's Guide" by now, so that should be helpful. I've never built my own system. I suppose you can save a lot of money that way and they say it's really not that hard.

I guess I'm afraid to buy yesterday's techology when next month a new standard rules the day. And then you've got pages upon pages of information about all that. I fear hours of reading is unavoidable to get some good information. I already have read a good deal in the past and what I've come up with for a good gaming system in the present day is:

- AMD processor
- nVidia card
- PCI Express

...and then go just one or two below the latest and greatest. I guess that is a good starting point.

I've also been thinking about overclocking my 3 or 4-year-old P3-800 to speed up its death so I can upgrade sooner. Will that give me any reasonable performance increases, considering I suspect that the CPU is a bottleneck for my GeForce 3 Ti200?

 

[dug777]

Gday Gday, welcome 2 the forums i guess (again)

Not so sure about o'cing that p3, but if i was u i'd hang on in there for a couple of months at least, just to see how prices for DDR2, nforce4 mobos, PCI-E kards, and of course A64 processors (tho i suspect that they wont change that much, especially in the low-midrange).

DDR2 is still rather pricey, new and exciting mobo chipsets from ATI, nvidia are just around the corner, etc, etc... Its the old story, its never the right time to upgrade , we are all doomed to follow an endless upgrade cycle, with the latest and greatest always just round the corner...but in this case i really do think hanging on a few months would be beneficial

As far as upgrading is concerned, i go by the rule of just biting the bullet and doing it (within reason of course), and any decent, well thought out A64 rig bought right now will keep you very happy, hopefully for quite along time, and be a huge leg up from that rather venerable setup you are running.

 

[Icepick]

Welcome Negatyfus,

The good news is that someone already did the work for you. Last month Anandtech released three system building guides including recommendations for both AMD and Intel components. This link will take you to the mid-range system guide. At the bottom of the first page are links to the high-end and entry-level guides. If you're ready to buy right now and don't care about PCI Express then do yourself a favor and check out this link.

 

[Negatyfus]

Thanks, guys. That's the usefull stuff I was looking for.

When I bought this computer, I was wondering what games would look like when this hardware would be outdated. Now I wonder the same about current hardware. Thing is, where some people will complain about unplayable framerates under 25 fps (or even 30!) I find myself enjoying games at 15 fps with drops to 10 fps at times.

Still, being able to crank all effects up and not worrying about it would be nice, as well as steady and smooth performance for a change. You only really notice the difference when you know what better feels like.