Upgrade or Bottleneck.

[Trisomy21]

I've been contemplating upgrading my PC for a while now, it's definitely time.
My main cause of concern is whether or not it'd be worth it to upgrade certain
Components or save money and upgrade everything.

Here's what I'm working with.

AMD Athlon XP 2700+ 333MHz fsb
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB
ASUS A7N8X nForce 2
2x 256MB Corsair XMS-2700 DDR333
Creative Audigy Gamer
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 EIDE 160GB ATA-133 7200RPM 8MB
Antec True Power 550watt

And here's what I've been offered.

1GB stick of PC-2700 DDR333 no-name: $80 (CAD)
ATI x800xt PE AGP 256MB $300 (CAD)

My question is, would it be worth spending $300 on a card like this, and another $80 on memory,
would I be better off buying a cheaper card like an x1600 Pro?
I'm sure there would be a lot of improvements, but would the CPU become a very noticeable bottleneck?

Personally, I'd rather just spend $380 than go out and buy a new MB, CPU, RAM and PCI-E video card.
Just to play some new games.

Thanks

 

[imported_rod]

If I were you, I would Overclock your CPU, and get a 6800gs/7600/x1600pro or similar (something decent but cheap-ish). Then, in 12 months time, build an AM2/PCIe system.

Really, it depends. But if you just want to keep your system going a bit longer, do what i said above. I wouldn't bother getting more ram, since it'll only improve performance a little, and you can't use it in an AM2 system in the future.

RoD

 

[acole1]

Originally posted by: rod
If I were you, I would Overclock your CPU, and get a 6800gs/7600/x1600pro or similar (something decent but cheap-ish). Then, in 12 months time, build an AM2/PCIe system.

Really, it depends. But if you just want to keep your system going a bit longer, do what i said above. I wouldn't bother getting more ram, since it'll only improve performance a little, and you can't use it in an AM2 system in the future.

RoD

I don't think his CPU will OC unless he has made some modifications to it. I have an xp 2800+ and I know it won't.

I would suggest:

RAM #1 priority
video #2
cpu, motherboard #3

Just upgrade those in that order as you get a chance. I don't know what the cad/us conversion is, but they have had some good deals on ram at newegg lately, that might beat your $80CAD for generic.

The 6800GS is a good buy for video and also only about $150 US for the eVGA version.

For CPU and motherboard you would probably be best waiting till you can buy a whole AM2 package at once. These upgrades (ram and video) will probably hold you over with a slight bottleneck at your CPU.

 

[Trisomy21]

Well, I've been out of the loop for a while now. After catching up and reading about the
6800 GS, well, I'll certainly be buying one.

Thanks for the help!

 

[spikespiegal]

If your intent is mostly gaming, then spend your cash on a video card and spend less on a processor.

I'd prefer a gig of RAM regardless.

 

[kevinthenerd]

I'm sitting at 512MB RAM, and my next step is going to be another half gig myself. I never game, but my system slows down a lot (resorting to paging) when multiple users are logged on.

 

[Sniper82]

Buying the 6800GS or anything newer then you have will be a waste without at least a gig of memory.