Upgrading my PC this summer

[Locut0s]

I've been working part time at 7-11 this summer to earn some extra money. So far my parents have been paying my tuition but it's time I started chipping in, starting next summer I will be working full time and devoting most of my money toward helping with university funds. This summer however I plan to upgrade my PC one last time, last time in a long while probably. Since this will be a final upgrade for a while to come I'd like it to be a good one. My current PC is not bad by any means but it's not the best for gaming at the moment and there are a few areas I'd like to spruce up, plus some extra stuff just for fun. Currently this is what I have:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
512 MB RAM
320 GB HD, across 3 drives
Sound Blaster Audigy Platinum
Plextor PX712A
Creative Geforce 1 card
21" Sony monitor
5.1 Cambridge Soundworks speakers

As I said this is quite a good setup and some of it I'm definitely not changing, like the speakers and monitor. I think I'll keep the sound card too. The other thing though is that some of the parts from my current computer are going to go to a dedicated MAME cabinet I'm building so I'll have to get some replacement parts for it.

So the question is, as far as upgrading my PC for Raytracing (Rendering), Gaming, and Multitasking content creation what would you recommend. I am thinking of getting a dual core Athlon X2 chip and at least 1 Gig of RAM but I'm unsure how much RAM to get. At some point you get really big diminishing returns from RAM.

For the video card I'm looking at getting an Nvidia 7800 card. I'll probably have an SLI mobo but I don't plan on getting 2 high end cards, I'm not willing to spend that much.

As for what I am going to spend I'm not 100% sure yet but from the amount I've saved so far and what I will likely make before the start of the semester I'm probably looking at around $2000 Canadian.

What would you recomend?

 

[The Pentium Guy]

With Rendering I'd say get 2 gigs of RAM. Also if you're a big time renderer you could consider one of those workstation cards (they do much better at that kind of stuff vs. gamer cards, but don't do as well in games).

I'm assuming $2000 canadian is roughly $1700.
DFI LanParty Ultra-D $130
4200+ $500 (estimate, not sure)
OCZ Modstream 520 $100
Raptor 74GB $180
WD 120GB $85
Some case: $80
DVD Burner: $40
7800GTX $500
2GB OCZ Value VX: $175

$1790

Something like that.

-The Pentium Guy.

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
With Rendering I'd say get 2 gigs of RAM. Also if you're a big time renderer you could consider one of those workstation cards (they do much better at that kind of stuff vs. gamer cards, but don't do as well in games).

I'm assuming $2000 canadian is roughly $1700.
DFI LanParty Ultra-D $130
4200+ $500 (estimate, not sure)
OCZ Modstream 520 $100
Raptor 74GB $180
WD 120GB $85
Some case: $80
DVD Burner: $40
7800GTX $500
2GB OCZ Value VX: $175

$1790

Something like that.

Sounds good to me, though I might spend a little more, depends on what I have by the end of the year. As for the vid card, I am doing raytracing almost exclusively using a text based/parsed raytracer called Pov-Ray which does not have any visual interface and hence can not benefit from any 3D acceleration. However it can greatly benefit from lots of RAM and a powerful CPU.

 

[Locut0s]

Originally posted by: Locut0s

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
With Rendering I'd say get 2 gigs of RAM. Also if you're a big time renderer you could consider one of those workstation cards (they do much better at that kind of stuff vs. gamer cards, but don't do as well in games).

I'm assuming $2000 canadian is roughly $1700.
DFI LanParty Ultra-D $130
4200+ $500 (estimate, not sure)
OCZ Modstream 520 $100
Raptor 74GB $180
WD 120GB $85
Some case: $80
DVD Burner: $40
7800GTX $500
2GB OCZ Value VX: $175

$1790

Something like that.

Sounds good to me, though I might spend a little more, depends on what I have by the end of the year. As for the vid card, I am doing raytracing almost exclusively using a text based/parsed raytracer called Pov-Ray which does not have any visual interface and hence can not benefit from any 3D acceleration. However it can greatly benefit from lots of RAM and a powerful CPU.

I'm also not 100% sure what to do with my current hard drive setup. One of my 100Gig drives is going to go towards my MAME system so I'll have to replace at least that one but I also do a fair bit of video encoding so I might get a larger one.

 

[Sentinel]

unless you are doing professional multimedia and 3d graphics the 7800GTX will be more than sufficient. i have been doing 3d work and CAD on my 1700+ Tbred, 1 Gig of RAM and 9600XT.