Budget computer / Upgrade time.


Current specs:
1.4 GHZ AMD Athlon
384 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
Radeon 8500LE 128MB AGP8X
Motherboard is a ASUS something or other. Need a new one because this has a broken AGP bus.


Budget? Around 400.


Just looking for something to get me ahead for a while. something that can play quake IV at around 1024x768 on high-ish, and half-life 2 at the same.

Most likely, I want a gig of ram

That's going to be tough with jsut $400

uh...save up 200 more.

For that price you might be to pull off (if thats US money):

Asus A8N motherboard (Use its integrated sound card (though I'd suggest getting another soundcard if you can afford it)
AMD Athlon 3500+
Nvidia Gforce 6600 GT
512 GB Kingston RAM

Still I'd suggest saving some more cash to buy a 3700+ processor and AT LEAST a Nvidia Gforce 6800 GT and 1GB RAM. Its maybe 300$ more dollars but you'll really be up to date.

If you ain't much of a gamer and don't wanna go for a full switch to PCI-Express, then stick to the AGP motherboard and just upgrade your processor and video card to the more recent AGP cards. Of course, your motherboard may not support higher processor, in which case I suggest doing the PCI-express switch anyways.

Anyways, Jon'C and CoolMatty will be better help.

I told you that $500 deal was your best bet.

At this point I'd hold off on buying a new system. AMD is moving to a new socket shortly and they're adding support for DDR-2. It'll likely mean a new generation of the nforce chipset and a faster front side bus (533 MHz) so you'll get more performance out of your memory. Or, alternatively, it'll drive the price of S939 parts down.

If you had asked 2 weeks ago I would have told you to just upgrade now, but it's getting a bit close to be worthwhile.

Definately hold off for a while longer.

You need a whole new system, those old parts aren't going to do help you any.

And you'll only be able to get the most basic of PCs with that budget (in other words, you'll need to buy another in a year).

Could always read this.

http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20051014/index.html

And you guys aren't encouraging me when I just bought a new PC...

1) DON'T EVER LINK TO TOMSHARDWARE
2) You'll be fine for many years to come--the socket upgrade most likely won't be 100%, and it won't affect you much to be honest.
3) PCI-E will stick around.

There's just no reason to upgrade with such a tight budget and especially not when new technology is about to come out.

True. *feels better*

Btw, whats wrong with Tom's Hardware.

They've got a horrible reputation.

I've never had any problem with Tom's Hardware...

Thats what I was thinking, I agreed with most of the stuff I read from there (matter of fact it reflected a lot of what Jon and Matty suggested to me) when I was trying to learn before buying my computer. Any and all advice I recieved were great and I'm more than happy with my new PC. Matter of fact, I'm amazed by it in more than one ways, and I don't mean the dreamy blue led lights. lol

[url]www.hardocp.com[/url]
[url]www.anandtech.com[/url]
[url]www.arstechnica.com[/url]
[url]www.rojakspot.com[/url]

All much better, much better reputed sources than tomshardware. Let's just say they used to be bigoted--granted this was in the days of the GeForce FX and Athlon XP, and it's been forever since I've been there, but I refuse to go there still. The taint on their reputation lingers.

already have a decent soundcard. I am a gamer, but I just can't afford something uber right now. current mobo = old.




good to know, I'll probably wait for a small upgrade, or just contribute this money to an uber system. I just want to see what I can do now.

Any small upgrade you do to that machine right now would be a complete waste of money, as it'll not get you enough performance to play Quake 4 properly anyway, and you'll still need to replace it when you buy a proper new computer.

Do like me, bust your budge by a couple hundreds of dollars. Then charish your new computer like your moneybaby. Then sigh and go awww when its all cute and chugs for the first time. Then press its bellybutton and reboot. Awww what the **** am I talking about!!

<.<

>.>

*nods*