Upgrade strategy

[CrazyFunkyTown]

My current system is:

Athlon XP 1800+
512 PC2100 RAM
Geforce 3 Ti500
Soyo K7 Dragon+

If I was to pick one of the two below upgrades, which one would be the right type of idea for gaming performance? Are either good? Do they both suck? I don't really know, I'd just like to get disucssion going. These are just rough ideas for the type of upgrade, I can pick specific componenets a little bit later on.

1: NFORCE 2 mobo, Athlon XP 2500+, 512 MB DD400
2: Radeon 9800 Pro

I know that ideally I could do something like both of these upgrades, but I only see something in the price range of one of those two options. What would be a good cource of action? Thanks for the advice in advance.

 

[JBChance]

I just recently went thru a very similar upgrade;

I went from a 1800+ to a 3000+

I also went from 256mb pc2100 to 512mb pc3200 ram and upgraded to a mobo that could handle the 400FSB.
I have a GF4Ti4400 which I decided to keep. It was between the vidcard and CPU/mem for me also.

On suggestion a few people, I went for the CPU/memory. The performance increase for me was about 15% in benchmarks (not so good), but the overall speed of the machine is much faster - something that interests me.

The consensus seemed to be to wait until the new cards from Nvidia/ATi come out, so that some prices might come down a little. That's what I'm doing.

I bet, in your situation, that the vidcard upgrade will show the most gaming increase, altough the GF3Ti500 is a great card.

 

[wake]

you'll be able to play alot more games properly with 2: Radeon 9800 Pro

 

[CrazyFunkyTown]

I've got one vote for #1, and one vote for #2. Both of your reasoning makes sense to me. Would I be able to take reasonable advantage of having such a powerful video card as the 9800 Pro with the processor and RAM that I have? Or would I be better getting the CPU/RAM and have it being held back by the Ti500? Or is there a third good option. This upgrade is primarily for gaming, and I would like the option to "complete" the upgrade later by adding in #1 to #2 or vice-versa, so I don't want to waste money on components that I would only use for a little while if that makes sense. Thanks again for the advice.

 

[Dman877]

If the upgrade is for gaming, I vote for the video card. The 9800 will allow you to play most games at lower settings with that proc imo. Also, can you oc the cpu at all? 1800's often do 2.0+ ghz...

 

[CrazyFunkyTown]

Actually I have had a lot of trouble trying to OC the CPU. I think the mobo is the problem, the system actually had a lot of stability issues in the beginnig (Nov 2001). It is great now, but I don't think I'll be able to OC it. I suspect the mobo or the RAM of being of too low quality. It basically would lock up above 135 FSB . I couldn't really figure out how to get better OCing and gave up after a few weeks. I think the temperatures were pretty good. So is it looking like the video card is a good idea? Heres a question, which of my two upgrade strategies is more likely to be signifigantly cheaper in the future(2 to3 months)? Thanks again for the advice.

 

[Actaeon]

Well, the Radeon route would be cheaper than a new CPU, Motherboard and memory.

Both would give pretty good increases. I think from a gaming standpoint, the Radeon route would be your best bet. But for everyday use, the whole new setup would probally be more reap more benefits.

Laggy games? Go for the Radeon.
Disappointed in desktop/daily performance? Get the mobo/cpu/ram.
Unsatisfied with both? Go for whatever disappoints you the most .

 

[0roo0roo]

oc depends on when the chip was made. my 1800+ runs at 2.4ghz. but ive many other 2000+ etc that can't oc worth sh*t. video card is more important then cpu. upgrade that. if you can get the fastest cpu ur board can take cheap, get that. whats the price of a frys combo these days? those ecs things? they probably bundle a barton with m/b for 99? maybe a 2400+ with ecs for 69? ?? i haven't checked recently so im' not entirely sure. and well lastly, get 512mb more ram for games.... but ram speed itself effects the least. so running at lower mem speed to save money for now isn't too bad.