Upgrading

[Gamingphreek]

Yo my dad is looking to upgrade his system, and i dont know where to start lol.

Here are the specs, he doesn't want anything fancy just enough to play FS2004, RTCW, and all that good stuff.

Asus P4B motherboard

P-4 1.8GHZ @2.2 (Not revision A so its slow as hell without a-synchronous caching).

768MB PC-133 (Ouch lol)

ATI Radeon 9600XT

Soundblaster Live 5.1

All hes looking for is a decent high entry low midrange system.

He thinks getting a new M/B and RAM is the first step, but even on an 865 PE that 1.8 w/o the revision A is going to KILL his performance.

What shouldhe do first.

-Kevin

 

[Gamingphreek]

bump... anybody?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I'd sell the board, CPU, ram, and SBLive and buy a NF7-s, 3200DDR, and Barton mobile 2500+, and most likely a new PSU and WD80gbSE too. Then I'd overclock and stability test it all for him. Once he gets on that he should be stoked with the price to performance ratio.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well my dad and i are having a little fun racking on each other because hes an Intel loyalist whereas ill buy who ever is winning. (He can build his own computer but my opinion means a lot ot him )

He wants to order a P4P800SE and get the DDR 400 memory (512 or 1 gig not sure)

As for the HD he already has a WD 120gig 8mb cache drive. I dunno whether it would be more prudent to buya new CPU or new M/B and memory first.

Which would be better for him to use if he gets this board. Onboard sound or SBlive.

Also which should he upgrade.... which one does he need the most?

-Kevin

 

[DAPUNISHER]

If he has an older HDD the new 8mb cache models are a nice upgrade, just look at the latest raptor vs the rest review here on the front page. I'd say that be the first thing to swap if the current HDD is indeed older. The SBLive vs on-board is largely subjective but I'd take the soundmax over the old dated SBlive anyday. For ram, if he wants to spring for 1gb get it, since some tasks and games already eat up more than 512mb. Hopefully, with the new board and ram you can juice that old willy for 2.1-2.3ghz too.