Upgrade Help?

[Gatsby]

My current system is rather old (well old for these boards) and I'm not as up-to-date with computer hardware now-a-days, I need help.

Current setup
ABIT BP6
Celeron 400@400 x 2
512 SDRAM
ATI Radeon VE
Raid 0
-IBM 22 GXP 18 gig x2
Data Drive
Maxtor 60 gig
Plextor 8432
3com network card.
Antec 300W power supply.
Antec 1030W
Samsung 171s

I think thats the important specs on my system.

I'm hoping to spend a max of 400 dollars if possible.

Any advice would be apprecaited.
Thanks in advance.

 

[CrazySaint]

Here's two possibilities, one emphasizing overall system performance, the other emphasizing graphics performance:

System performance rig:
CPU: Athlon XP 1600+ - ~$60 @ newegg
Motherboard: Abit NV7-133R - ~ $90 @ newegg
RAM: 512MB Crucial PC2100 - $124 @ crucial.com
RAID: Onboard - FREE
Video: gF4 Ti4200 64MB DDR - $130 (faster in today's games) @ newegg
-or-
ATI OEM RADEON 8500 LE 128MB DDR DVI/CRT/TV - ~$119 (may be faster in tomorow's games because of extra RAM, cheaper) @ newegg
TOTAL - ~ $400-420

Graphics performance rig:
CPU: Athlon XP 1600+ - ~$60 @ newegg
Motherboard: ECS K7S5A - ~$53 @ newegg
RAM: Motherboard supports both SDRAM and DDR, so you can use your current RAM and upgrade to DDR later - FREE
RAID: HighPoint RAID Controller Card RocketRAID100 - ~$40 @ newegg
Video: gF4 Ti4400 128MB DDR - ~ $240 @ newegg
TOTAL: ~$400

 

[Bovinicus]

What kinds of applications will you be running on this system?

 

[Gatsby]

My main programs are mIRC, AIM, icq lite, IE and a lot of divx movies.

I don't play many games because my system is so old.

 

[Gatsby]

Anyone?

 

[rpc64]

The graphics performance rig CrazySaint suggested looks pretty good. I'm actually considering it myself now😛

 

[Gatsby]

Any other suggestions?

 

[zCypher]

All you need is mobo/CPU. Everything else is fine. However, if you DO plan on playing games, add in the video card too. Everything else is perfectly fine for your indicated use. DivX movies, IE, chat, email, etc ALL do not take much power, and can all be done simultaneously on less memory than you already have. That said, you'd have a very nice performance gain from swapping that 512 SDRAM with 512 DDR. Again, depends what you do with it. Not critical in your case, methinks. You already have a raid setup, you're already nice and set with plextor, and your NIC, case, monitor, etc.

$400 should be plenty to get you all up to date.