Upgrade Help Please

[blaholdings]

I'm playing in some new game betas and I'm beginning to think my CPU and MB are becoming a major bottleneck in my system. I need a recommendation for an upgrade path if there is smart one right now, or whether I should hold out. One thing to keep in mind is that I am a stark Intel fan and it'll be hard to convince me to go with an AMD chipset.

Here is my current specs:
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Asus P4S533 MB (supports up to 2.53ghz)
Intel P4 2.26Ghz
1.5 Gigs Crucial 400Mhz DDR
ATI Radeon X800 Pro (AGP)
ATA100 Harddrives...


I've had multiple people tell me that I'm not even touching the capabilities of the X800 because of my CPU / MB, so I'd like to upgrade that minimally but not to something that will be extinct within a year. I'd prefer to stick with Intel unless its just stupid - as I've had too many problems in the past with AMD systems crapping out.

Recommendations?

 

[raanemaan]

Go with an Athlon 64 3000+ and a Asus K8V motherboard. From what I have been reading this is a good setup. Somebody else may have a better reccomendation for a motherboard. It would help if you listed how much money you wanted to spend. I have always used Intel but I am seriously looking at putting an AMD combination together.

 

[yankeesfan]

why not AMD?

 

[ArcticChill]

Your CPU is fine, right now its worthless to upgrade, I suggest you wait until dual core comes out.

 

[pookie69]

If you want to upgrade, i seriously do believe that a P4 S478 is the best price-to-performance upgrade at the moment.

Something along the lines of a 3.0C/3.2C >>> all are good upgrade options along with a mobo like Abit's IC7-MAX2. I would avoid P4 Prescotts - Intel's 90nm tech leaves much to be desired. Besides which the Northwoods pretty much perform on par with their Prescott cousins on a Ghz-to-Ghz basis. Prescotts don't yet have the opportunity to shine at current operating frequencies.

You can setup a system that you can o/c pretty well and get alotta performance outta especially when matched up with some low latency PC3200 memory.

I really do believe that an upgrade to a S478 makes alotta sense right now. They offer solid performance, a huge scope for o/c'ing with great support from great DDR memory and will bridge the gap between the technology of today and the future as being shaped by DDR2 and PCIe.

You could also take the A64 route, although it'll be a little more pricey, and despite what some ppl say, doesn't offer a huge performance gain over P4s and is definitely NOT the only decent CPU out there. Not as things stand right now anyways.

 

[pookie69]

Originally posted by: blaholdings


I've had multiple people tell me that I'm not even touching the capabilities of the X800 because of my CPU / MB, so I'd like to upgrade that minimally but not to something that will be extinct within a year.

Recommendations?

Yea, said multiple ppl are probably right. These new gfx cards need decent headroom from the cpu/mem to fully shine. An upgrade wouldn't be a bad idea given you have a nice gfx card.

 

[stevty2889]

A 3.0c or 3.2c would be a good upgrade for you, with a nice motherboard such as this one: Gigabyte 8IK1100 You'll be able to use your current 1.5Gig of ram as well. As pookie said I would avoid the prescott (such as 3.0E) for now as they have no advanatage until 3.6ghz or higher. How much do you want to spend on your upgrade?