Where to now?

[ZzB]

Okay, my current Rig is as follows:

Athlon 1.4Ghz
Abit KT7A
768Mb generic SDRAM
Chaintech Geforce 2 MX (32Mb)
Generic Sound card
Quantum Fireball 20Gb @7200rpm

But I want more! Could someone reccomend what to go for as an upgrade path...
...either a DDR MoBo and a Geforce 2 Pro (costing around £250 inc. DDR memory), or a Geforce 3 (costing circa £250-300), or on the total budget option just a Geforce 2 Pro (@ £140). Basically I want the biggest performance increase to £ spent.

Oh yeah, I'm also having trouble with a MoBo/VGA issue between my Abit KT7A and Geforce 2 MX which occasionly leads to the Motherboard not detecting the video card on startup (obviously a problem!). I'd like to know whether this issue remains present with Geforce 2 pro, ultra and Geforce 3 based cards.

Any advice would be great. Thanks

 

[mesonw]

You're biggest boost would come from upgrading your gfx card. gf3's are considerably quicker than gf2pros, but like you say - twice the price. The slightly modified (improved vertex and pixel shaders) versions of the gf3 are coming out shortly (geforce3 Ti500 and Ti200 - effectively Ultra and MX versions respectively).

You won't notice a huge difference from upgrading to a DDR mobo and RAM - but if you want the extra 10-15% (or more?) boost - mobos based on the VIA KT266A chipset are currently the fastest.

Sound - get an SBLive!, SBAudigy, Gaming TheaterXP or Santa Cruz card. They're all decent performers when it comes to 3d-sound. Live! has been superceded by Audigy, but the other two seem to have less reports of incompatibility problems (although it usually tends to be conflicts with mobo VIA chipsets).

Hardrive - could be bigger. 160gb is the biggest at the mo' I believe. Pricey though, and you probably don't need a lot more than 20gb unless you plan on installing tons of games and have a fast internet connection (those mp3s and movie files really start to take up space ).

 

[MallowJr]

Def..defi..Definitely pick up a SCSI 100 GB HD if they exist, that's a paltry 20 GIG at hte time being!