What to get?

[Garfield360]

Hey, I have a AMD Athlon 64 3000+ with an ATI x400 128 mb pci-e , 1 gig ram, and a 40 gig hard disk. I have £200ish to spend so am wandering what to upgrade to play the latest games at a decent rate or is the above okay for the task :confused:

Many thanks

[azzey]

Welcome to the forum.

A new higher-end video card would break some new life into your machine. What kind of RAM and hard drive are you using?

[saphalline]

A 40GB hard drive? :eek: Are you living in the year 2000? :p

Get yourself a SATA 300 hard drive in the 160-320GB range! Transfer your main partition over to the SATA hard drive and watch your boot time and loading screens diminish!

[Garfield360]

My ram is DDR , 2 x 512 mb , not sure what speed it is but its around the lower speeds lol. Haha my 40 gig hard disk ive had for years. I dont really want to spend £200 on a graphics card mind but i could stretch the budget a little if there is more future proof products. But then again if the pc can play the latest generation games then would it be worth it :confused:

[saphalline]

The hard drive is a concern for loading times and boot performance (and at this point reliability since it's so old) but the vid card is holding you back the most. You don't necessarily need to spend your entire £200 budget on a vid card, though. Look into a factory OC'ed GeForce 7600 GT. That should give you a tremendous gaming boost without breaking the bank.

You can deal with the hard drive and RAM another day.

[Garfield360]

what sort or ram and hard disk should i look at :confused:
thanks for the replys so far :)

[Garfield360]

anyone :confused:

[PatioFurniture]

Sorry no one replied....

but here is my hd suggestion.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822136009

[fixn granys cpu]

Hey man what socket is your mother board? 939?
If so you definately need a few upgrades to play todays games decently.
First and formost, I would like to agree with the previous posters... get you a nice pci-e vid card. In my opinion you should not go all out but you should go a little higher than the 7600gt. I would go with:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102007
$200 US

You are definately going to need at least 1 more gig of ram, I would recomend DDR 400 PC 3200 Dual kit 2x512, if you want to spend around $100 US.
OR 2x1GB DDR 400 PC 3200 Dual Kit, if you want to spend around $200

Lastly you need to get you a hard drive that will
1. Have enough room for the Big new games.
2. Load them a hella lot faster than what you have, the recomendation from Patio Furnature is an excellent budget buy.

I hope this helps

[saphalline]

Ehh... that's a bit outdated. The X1800's are last year's news. Right now, ATI's offering should be a Radeon X1900 GT (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102022) or higher. On NVidia's side of the fence, the GeForce 7900 GT (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150150) should be considered.

[fixn granys cpu]

Ehh... that's a bit outdated. The X1800's are last year's news. Right now, ATI's offering should be a Radeon X1900 GT (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102022) or higher. On NVidia's side of the fence, the GeForce 7900 GT (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814150150) should be considered.

Yes you are right about that, I purchased the x1900xt, but in his case, working with a budget and he specifically said he didnt want to spend it all on a vid card. And this card will definately meet his requirements of "playing the latest games at a decent rate". And also leave enough $$ to update his rig.

[saphalline]

The X1800's won't play the latest games nearly as well, though, because they lack shader power. Just like the old GeForce 7800's. You'll notice the X1800 XT has only 16 pixel shaders, while the X1900 GT has 36. And the current ATI and NVidia top-dogs are sitting nicely at 48 pixel shaders. Considering that the latest A-list title games rely heavily on shaders, recommending an old shader-impaired vid card is not wise.

[fixn granys cpu]

The X1800's won't play the latest games nearly as well, though, because they lack shader power. Just like the old GeForce 7800's. You'll notice the X1800 XT has only 16 pixel shaders, while the X1900 GT has 36. And the current ATI and NVidia top-dogs are sitting nicely at 48 pixel shaders. Considering that the latest A-list title games rely heavily on shaders, recommending an old shader-impaired vid card is not wise.

I agree with everything you just said 100%
With that being said, looking at his requirements and funds, what changes do you suggest and in what order?

[fixn granys cpu]

The hard drive is a concern for loading times and boot performance (and at this point reliability since it's so old) but the vid card is holding you back the most. You don't necessarily need to spend your entire £200 budget on a vid card, though. Look into a factory OC'ed GeForce 7600 GT. That should give you a tremendous gaming boost without breaking the bank.

You can deal with the hard drive and RAM another day.

Hold up a second hehe does this look familiar? How can you tell me not to suggest a x1800xt when you suggested a 7600gt?!?! The suggestion of the x1800 fits a budget that IMO would optimize his system overall w/o going over his budget...

[saphalline]

It depends on when Garfield360 thinks he/she can gather up more money for upgrades later. If this is one of those situations where the current £200 budget for computer upgrades is a rare thing, then I'd recommend fixing the vid card and hard drive in one fell swoop. A GeForce 7600 GT plus a cheap 160GB SATA hard drive (SATA 150 or SATA 300 - it doesn't matter at this point).

If, however, Garfield360 is likely to see another £200 go towards computer upgrades within the next 9-12 months, then I'd say spend it all on a vid card now and do the hard drive and RAM later. Get a 7900 GT or X1900 GT right now. The hard drive can wait - cross your fingers it doesn't die in that time. ;) The RAM is of little concern. Even if it's DDR266 or DDR333, there's still 1GB of it, and it's being used on a K8-based CPU. The performance detriment due to the slow RAM speed doesn't matter nearly as much. What matters is that there's 1GB of it, and that's good enough for now.

[fixn granys cpu]

Sorry I think my conversions were off, I thought he could swing a decent sized 150gb hard drive and a x1800 with 200 pound. What is the conversion rate anyhow?

[saphalline]

Well, right now, £200 is roughly $400 USD. But hardware prices in Europe are about 15-40% higher, not to mention VAT (value-added tax) that is very high and added to everything over in the UK (excluding food and stuff like that, of course).

That's why a few of the UK members have actually taken a trip here to the US (business, family, whatever) and used that time to buy hardware here. :D

[fixn granys cpu]

Shyt.. Learn something new every day.
**note to self, dont move to europe**

[Garfield360]

Thanks for the suggestions, I am unsure what I will do as I dont really want to spend £200 on a graphics card as they usually go out of date within a few weeks/months so its alot of money to spend on it. I think i'll have a look around but at UK sites as i don't like to import things.

[Garfield360]

I would have more money coming in but really dont want to spend it all on the computer. I have seen a Asus Extreme 7600GT 256MB DDR3, PCI-E, Dual DVI, HDTV Out, Retail for £110 and can get a 1 gig ram ddr stick, 200 GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus10 SATA2 7200rpm 8MB Cache oem for £43.36 on special offer, it all comes to around £200, what do you think :confused:

[saphalline]

If you can get everything for £200, then yeah! I'd question the quality of the RAM at that point, but the vid card and hard drive are excellent choices. I guess at that point, the RAM is practically free! And if it's free, you can't be too picky about it.