If you get a new processor (reccomended eventually, as £30/week is decent enough), make sure the motherboard supports the chip. While all Athlons from the original K7 500Mhz all the way to the Athlon XP 3400+ use the same socket, the motherboards only support chips
up to the day the were designed. While they're all backwards-compatable, they're not forwards compatable. Here's a breakdown of what socket fits what Proccesor:
- Socket A (370): AMD Athlon XP 3400+ or earlier
- Socket 939: AMD Athlon XP (Newer Models, up to at least 3800+)
- Socket 478: Intel Pentium 4/Celeron (Older Models, up to 3.4 Ghz)
- Socket 775: Intel Pentium 4 Prescott (Newer model, will be up to 4 Ghz by the end of the year)
- Socket 754: AMD Athlon64 (Up to 3400+)
- Socket 940 AMD Athlon64 FX (or AMD Opteron). Very expensive, but beats the S*** out of EVERYTHING else, P4, Athlon XP/64, Apple G5, you name it. Of course, few of us can afford the US$900 (£502) for a single 64 FX-53 chip.
If you don't feel up to the frustration of building a new computer, there are numerous companies that will assemble a machine with components you select, and prices for this service has made it almost as cheap as bulding your own.
For your video card, which generation of GeForce is it? If it's a GeForce 2, then yeah, I'd say replace it. However, if it's a GeForce 4 MX, then it's not the most pressing issue for upgrading.
If you are going to upgrade your card, You're going to have to think about how much of your money you want to dump into it. If you're going the Radeon way, I wouldn't go less than a 9200SE. They're rather cheap (<£30), and should be easily availible. IF you want more, go for the 9600 line; at the top, for a little more than £80, the 9600XT is a nice card (my brother's very pleased with his), and comes with Half-Life 2 to boot. (Given how well UT2k4 and Doom3 turned out, I have positive hopes for HL2).
NOTE: the ammount of memory on the card isn't terribly important. Givenm the standard texture compression ratio of 6:1, a 128MB card has plenty of memory for even Doom3. More important factors are the DX generation of the card (almost all cards availible retail are DX9, the latest), the number of texture pipelines (determines how many transparent textures the card can layer; most of the reasonable-priced cards have 4), and finally the speed of the GPU (generally, the more expensive the card, the more powerful the GPU)
Also, I would reccomend a memory upgrade. Given your processor, I judge that your 256MB is PC133 SDR memory. getting any DDR would obviously entail getting a whole new computer. Personally, I don't reccomend having less than 512MB, it is enough to run everything today (up to and including Doom3), and is a perfect ammount for something like UT2k4. If you're going to have the money for a whole new computer, 1GB would be even better, though not neccessary. As you stand though, 256MB is enough for a 1.33 Ghz machine.
This summer, I built myself a new computer, partially re-usuing old components. Here's what I got:
- CPU: AMD Athlon64 2800+ (Runs at 1.8Ghz) ($190/£106)
- Motherboard: Soyo CK8 Dragon Plus: NForce 3 Chipset, Integrated 100Mb ethernet, 5.1 Audio, 8x AGP, 6 PCI slots ($80/£45)
- Memory: 512MB PC 3100 DDR 400Mhz memory ($75/£42)
- Hark Disk Drive: Hitachi Deskstar 90GB ($60/£34) (Seagate/Western Digital drives are better deals for the 120GB-200GB range)
- Generic Case, cooling fan, CD-RW ($70/£39)
- Video Card: Radeon 7000 ganked from old 500Mhz computer (card to be replaced with newer card, possibly an X800 XT, later)
- Floppy Disk Drive: permanently borrowed from an old machine (we have plenty of those lying arround at my home)
- TOTAL: $475/£265
Not bad for an entire system, that does quite nicely: It can do UT2k4's ONS-Torlan at maximum settings, 640x480, and get well over 30fps. Once I upgrade the video, I'll be able to get 60fps at 1024x768 or higher, AND turn on anti-aliasing at x6, and x16 anisotropic filtering (currently, I'm using x4 Anisotropic Filtering, as the card can't do anything more, and the AA kills performance)
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I know there's got to be some sort of mathematical equation for this sort of thing, but I prefer trial and error. It's one of the advantages of having a socialized health care system."
[This message has been edited by nottheking (edited September 01, 2004).]
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