Upgrading discussion

[Harrison]

I'm currently on a

Gigabyte 7n400 Pro2
AMD 2500 barton (at 1.8ghz)
1.25 gigs of ram (ddr 333mhz[one stick is 400 but it's gimped because of the other 3 sticks])
ATI Radeon 9700 pro

Just want some opinions on what I should spend the money I'll have soon on...

I was thinking of getting a 6800gt, or MAYBE an x800....maybe...
(Im an nvidia fanboi)

Think grabbing a new processor and better quality ram would be more worthwhile? (might need a new MB for that depending on what CPU I want to snag)

I'm of the crowd that believes where I'm at that a video card of high end quality would benefit me most as a gamer...

[fefn]

I bought the following sys for the release of Doom3:

3.0 GHz Intel Pentium Processor
1 GB 400 MHz DDR RAM
Geforce 6800GT
Antec Sonata Quiet Case
WD Raptor 10krpm 36GB HD (SATA)
19in LCD with 16ms response time

and I just took the old peripherals, drives, cards, 5.1 sound, etc from my old machine. It was expensive as fuck, but if you're a serious gamer, the performance will be worthwhile to you. I highly recommend the 6800GT. I haven't had a single issue with it yet and the performance is pretty damn impressive. The 10krpm is a little frivolous, but it produces noticable results. Also: the 19in LCD is incredible and I will never go back to CRT again.

As far as your processor/RAM go, they could both stand to be upgraded. Go with a 2.8-3.2 GHz processor and a gig of 400mhz RAM. You don't really need more than a gig of RAM. If you find that your system slows with a gig of RAM, your bottleneck is elsewhere and adding more RAM will show only minor results. It is a little fallacious to assume that Vid Card will improve your system the most, because without a decent processor, a great video card will be severely inhibited.

Unfortunately Doom 3's multiplayer sucks like a Hoover, so it lasted me all of 6 days before I beat the single player twice. Now I patiently await the arrival of HL2/CS2 and dread the temptation that will be EQ2 ><

[Harrison]

I was thinking of getting a water cooling system and overclocking the ever living shit out of my processor, as the 2500 is a very overclockable CPU.

But then again, for that same cash I could get an equivalent CPU speed stock...

Ive thought about getting a SATA hard drive, but Im unsure of how much performance that would give me. (my board supports SATA and raid)

I'm just torn, Im still semi leaning towards the 6800gt (if I get that it will be the only thing I can afford)

[Minrott]

Fefn - Try out Farcry

Finawin - If I were you, and had the system you have, I'd simply save to build a new one. It's not a bad setup, maybe a bit over average, but I think to get serious performance out of it, you'd have to replace more than is worth it. So if it's keeping you in your games for now, save some cash up, and build a ground up comp. Once you have $1000 to spend, go the whole nine yards, mobo, cpu, video, ram. Then integrate your old stuff to fill the gaps. By that time, the 6800 will be much more affordable, and you could have yourself a 3.2 gig system for half the price it'd cost you now.

If you do decide on the vid card now option, get the 6800 GT. I have nothing bad to say about mine.

[Lyion]

If you do decide on the vid card now option, get the 6800 GT. I have nothing bad to say about mine.

Ditto. I have one and no complaints. Its excellent.

[10sun]

Buy a car.

-Adam

[Harrison]

Massachusetts requires you to get insurance on your car, I wont be able to afford the monthly payments for a few months.