Upgrade now, or wait, on a small budget, what do you think?

[Ghost]

I'm currently running a Pentium III 700Mhz, system with 256 megs of RAM and a GeforceTi 4, 4400 video card.

Yeah, I haven't been playing many games lately. Too busy playing poker 🙂

Anyway, Unreal 2004 came out, and a few of my friends love the game. Doom III is due out sometime soon, and in the not too distant future, so is Worlds of Warcraft.

I'm not sure if I should wait for the new PCI-Express, Grantsdale, BTX stuff, or upgrade now.

I see if I spec out an Intel Pent 4, 2.8 Gigahertz processor, with 1 gig of value Crucial ram, and an Abit board, I can spend about $471.00 not including shipping.

I would consider AMD, I know they get more bang for the buck, and perform better in games then Intel, but I'm just not that familiar with AMD. I see the A64 3000 costs about $222.00 I'm not sure what price I'd pay for a mobo. I don't need firewire, SATA, gigabit Ethernet, Raid or anything fancy. And do I get 3200 DDR RAM with the AMD, or is it a slower interface?

If I drop $471 or thereabouts on an Intel or AMD system, I would stick with my current video card, which certainly isn't top of the line, but good enough, I think, for a little while yet. I don't run anything higher than 1024x768 anyway.

So, should I upgrade now, with a system that would be a nice jump for me in terms of performance, and yet still relatively cheap? Or should I wait for the next round of systems scheduled to roll out in the new few months.

I have 2 concerns. First, when the new systems hit, will I want to pay those prices? How much are the PCI-Express boards and such going to run anyway? Second, I'm going to miss at least weeks, if not months of UT2004.... 😉

And if I get a PCI-Express system, with Intel, anyway, I'd have to get a PCI-Express video card, right? And that would probably add significantly to my total cost. I know VIA or SIS is offering a dual AGP/PCI-Express setup, but are those vendors as stable and as reliable as Intel? When I was building my Pent III system years ago, VIA and SIS seemed to have some stability issues....

And how much of a performance jump will the PCI-Express sytems give me on games that are going to be released in the next 6 to 18 months anyway? Not much, would be my guess. Right?

*Edit* No desire to overclock either system.

Any thoughts would be appreciated...

Thanks

 

[SkaarjMaster]

Depends on if you want to play games now or later. I'm not sure what the CPU requirements are for UT2004, but you should at least get another 256MB of RAM and the video card is fine.

 

[Ghost]

Ideally would want to play now. Unreal2004 min specs are 1Gigahertz processor, recommended is 1.2 I think. Almost twice what I have....

I just don't want to get burned by buying a system now, and kicking myself in the a$$ in 2 months....

 

[duragezic]

Well no matter what you do, you're gonna always face the same issue of deciding when to upgrade. You're gonna get burned no matter what.

Any new tech is probably gonna cost a ridiculous amount of money (especially high-end video cards). Any new cpus are always gonna cost a ton. Although I know little about pci-x, I doubt it will provide any huge perf increase. That's just my opinion though. For the most part, all new stuff that comes out talks sh1t about how much more bandwidth it has or whatever but nothing really gets much of a perf gain until a year or two down the road.

So I say go for it. I have a hard time believing a 2.8ghz p4 w/ 1gb of ram would have any trouble running new games for the next year or two, especially if you choose to upgrade the video card later.

 

[Gurck]

I'd say go for it as well. Not sure where you're getting $471 from; an Athlon xp 2500+ is about $75, a good motherboard for it another $75, and while a gb of ram is nice to have, you can get by with 512 (and can upgrade later) for about $85 (unless you plan on heavy overclocking), which is a total of around $235. Don't have to worry about dual channel ram either, with an Athlon xp. About the only thing I'd personally wait for at this point in time would be a video card - but you already have one that's still got some life in it. There're always times to wait and things to wait for, but with a 700mhz pentium-3, the situation sounds pretty desperate 😛

 

[Ghost]

I just priced the AMD Athlon64 3000+ at Mwave. That chip, the AOpen AK86L mobo, and 1 gig of Kingston RAM as a package comes to $471.00.

That would probably be a better system in terms of gaming performance then an Intel 2.8Gigahertz cpu with 1 gig of ram on the Abit IS7 board, wouldn't it?

 

[ku]

I personally think you wouldn't really be hurting yourself too much for a small upgrade if you do it now. However, buying a brand new computer with brand new everything is another story. With all this new stuff coming out, you really don't want to spend a lot of bucks just to have it obsolete in it's upgrade path. But for an upgrade likes (and mine =P, got all this thursday and today) I think anytime is really a good time. But just remember, you'll always be kicking yourself when it comes to technology T_T

 

[SkaarjMaster]

RAM prices are a little insane right now, I would wait a couple months and see how they are then. Price the RAM you want now, then price it in two months again.

 

[SilentZero]

I would be one to wait since you are on a small budget. You will be able to get more for your money in a few months of time as prices will surely drop more and more over the next few months, especially with the release of all this new hardware pending. Aside from that, a few more months will give you time to save some extra cash to use towards your upgrade.

 

[Markfw]

Originally posted by: Ghost
I just priced the AMD Athlon64 3000+ at Mwave. That chip, the AOpen AK86L mobo, and 1 gig of Kingston RAM as a package comes to $471.00.

That would probably be a better system in terms of gaming performance then an Intel 2.8Gigahertz cpu with 1 gig of ram on the Abit IS7 board, wouldn't it?

That would KILL a 2.8 P4 for gaming, and be faster at almost anything else, maybe even encoding. Thats a great package.

BTW, any memory 3200 or better should work, but the Athlon64 seems to like tight timings. I am now running 1 gig (haven't updated sig/specs yet) since I just bought Far Cry, and it takes 700 meg running only the game !