Upgrade from my shuttle sn45g?

[cpush]

Alright here's my situation, I have a shuttle sn45g, the nforce2 ultra400 chipset with a 2500+ Barton and 512mb of apacer pc2700 running dual channel. With this beast I'm packin an msi geforce3 ti200 64mb.

I want to be able to run CS:S nice and smooth, with it looking nice at the same time. Doom 3 and HL2 will be added bonuses. Now, can I get by with just upgrading the video card to say a geforce 6600gt or 6800gt? (Obviously AGP). Or would that be a waste of money.

I can get a chaintech VNF4/Ultra nforce 4 board (around 110 bucks) for pretty much free from my friend. I would then buy the 3000+ AMD 64 which is about $150, and then a pci-x 6600gt ($180).

The question is, can I still get by with solely a fast AGP card, with my current setup, or should I spring for a new mobo/cpu/vcard.

Thanks

 

[Excelsior]

I think you could get by with just a faster agp card, but you would notice a pretty big improvement if you went to an Nforce4/3000+ 64 setup. Might also want to get 1GB.

 

[cpush]

thats what i keep being told, but i really want some more concrete answers if possible

 

[Edzard]

You may want to check the the date of manufacture on your Barton 2500 (year/week codes shown on top of processor - 3rd line in the rectangular black area). If the date code is prior to 0339 I believe the processor is unlocked which might enable you to clock it up to a frequency approaching that of an XP3200.

Or perhaps easier than the above (which requires taking your heatsink/fan off the processor), just go into the BIOS and see if it will allow you to increase the multiplier - if you can change it from the default of 11 to something higher - say 11.5 or higher, then you might be able to get by for another year or so (with decent framerates) with the combination of an overclocked processor and an AGP version of the GT6600. If it didn't insult your friend, you could sell the nforce 4 board immediately, apply the proceeds toward the graphics card, and watch the prices go down for both the nForce 4 board and the AMD-64 processor over the next year.....

Either way you go, from everything I've read, the 6600GT certainly looks like a good graphics card choice, but I must caveat that statement by saying that I don't know how it plays with "CS:S."

If the system demands made by "CS:S" can be related to those of Doom 3, you may find these to be helpful links:

http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2149&p=1

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2277&p=1

 

[cpush]

i decided to go with new system thanks guys