Big Computer Upgrade
BlueTorpeedo
Join Date: 2003-03-10 Member: 14359Members
Join Date: 2003-03-10 Member: 14359Members
in Off-Topic
<div class="IPBDescription">need people's opinions.....</div> I plan on upgrading my PC either in January during vacation OR waiting until May when college gets out. I would like to know how you guys would spend the $$, and if you would do the upgrade now (Jan $750) or wait (May $1200+).
I assume that by mid January I can have approximatly $700-$800. In May I would have approx $1200. I use my computer for alot of gaming, infact Im upgrading more or less so I can play HL2 & Doom3 at full FX.
What I have:
ATX Full Tower case
4 x 4.25 drive bays (2 used)
2 x 3.5 "floppy" bays (1 used)
4 x 3.5 HDD bays (1 used)
4 x 90CM (?) case fan "slots" (2 used)
ATX dual fan 330 watt Power supply (rated for Pentuim4 PCs)
AMD Athlon XP 1800 (1.5 Ghz) w/ a really nice thermaltake fan on it
ABIT KR7A (no raid)
266Mhz fsb
4 x DDR slots (2 used)
AGP 4x slot (used)
6 PCI slots (2 used)
2 IDE UltraDMA 133 controllers (supports 4 drives, 3 drives used)
4 USB (I think they are 2.0)
2 x 256MB Micron DDR 2100
ATI Radeon 8500 OEM 64MB running at 250Mhz (retail runs at 275Mhz) @ 4xAGP
16x IDE Liteon DVD-ROM
40x IDE Liteon CDwriter
UDMA 133 7200rpm 80Gig Maxtor HDD w/ a fan on it
Floppy <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Creative Audigy X-gamer PCI
Linksys 100baseT PCI NIC
What I want to do:
Case:
Case is good, has alot of room, its a $100 server chassis. The Power supply probably cannot handle the new hardware though, so Ill have to get a new one, cant decide what wattage to get (400?). Also, I want to get 2 more fans for this case.
MoBo:
Definately need a new Mobo! I want something that runs AMD & DDR, and I would prefer that the board has both SATA and IDE controllers on it so I can use the drives I already have and leave room for upgrades. I dont want onbourd sound, I want to use my Audigy. Onbourd NIC is OK, but I have a PCI NIC so whatever. I really like ABIT, ASUS, and Gigabyte brands BTW. I dont know wether I should go AGP/PCI or PCI-Express; I really need help deciding.
Processor:
I have a XP 1800 (1.5Ghz), and my rule for upgrades is "double it", so I would want to by something approximately around 3Ghz, maybe alittle slower, maybe alittle faster. I also cant decide on "Type"; should I get a 64bit processor or what? Theres like 3-4 types of AMD processors in common use right now. The processor type has a huge impact on price AND the Mobo's that I can choose from.
RAM:
I definatly want at least 1 GIG or memory, but probably no more then that. If I find i need more I can upgrade it easily anyway. Im having trouble deciding the speed however. 333 or 400 or what? Is Micron still a good brand?
Graphics card:
I cant decide on AGP 8x or PIC-Express, The card and the Mobo go hand in hand here. I prefer ATI. I stayed with ATI since the first Radeons came out. I want a card with 128 MB ram minimum. Probably a 9800Pro or better. I might try an invidia card, but i doubt it. I need something that can handle games for a while, I dont get to upgrade too often. I dont want my card to seem obsolete 6 months down the road. I probably wont upgrade again for 1-2 years BTW.
Drives:
My floppy, DVD , and CDR are staying. I see no reason to upgrade them. I dont forsee needing a DVDburner. My HDD on the other hand might need work. It runs great, and was a good buy, but I think I want to try a SATA setup, maybe with raid. If I upgrade in Jan I WONT get a new HDD. Ill save getting a better HDD(s) for the summer. My HDD is a minor bottleneck. 80 Gig inst enough anymore.
Sound:
Ill keep my Audigy.
Network:
If the mobo has integtrated NIC then good, if it doesnt, I have a PCI NIC.
BTW, I plan on running XP Professional, and maybe a dual boot with linux or win98 or whatever...
So this is where it comes down to you guys. When would you upgrade? Jan with $750 or May with $1200? And what would you buy?
I assume that by mid January I can have approximatly $700-$800. In May I would have approx $1200. I use my computer for alot of gaming, infact Im upgrading more or less so I can play HL2 & Doom3 at full FX.
What I have:
ATX Full Tower case
4 x 4.25 drive bays (2 used)
2 x 3.5 "floppy" bays (1 used)
4 x 3.5 HDD bays (1 used)
4 x 90CM (?) case fan "slots" (2 used)
ATX dual fan 330 watt Power supply (rated for Pentuim4 PCs)
AMD Athlon XP 1800 (1.5 Ghz) w/ a really nice thermaltake fan on it
ABIT KR7A (no raid)
266Mhz fsb
4 x DDR slots (2 used)
AGP 4x slot (used)
6 PCI slots (2 used)
2 IDE UltraDMA 133 controllers (supports 4 drives, 3 drives used)
4 USB (I think they are 2.0)
2 x 256MB Micron DDR 2100
ATI Radeon 8500 OEM 64MB running at 250Mhz (retail runs at 275Mhz) @ 4xAGP
16x IDE Liteon DVD-ROM
40x IDE Liteon CDwriter
UDMA 133 7200rpm 80Gig Maxtor HDD w/ a fan on it
Floppy <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Creative Audigy X-gamer PCI
Linksys 100baseT PCI NIC
What I want to do:
Case:
Case is good, has alot of room, its a $100 server chassis. The Power supply probably cannot handle the new hardware though, so Ill have to get a new one, cant decide what wattage to get (400?). Also, I want to get 2 more fans for this case.
MoBo:
Definately need a new Mobo! I want something that runs AMD & DDR, and I would prefer that the board has both SATA and IDE controllers on it so I can use the drives I already have and leave room for upgrades. I dont want onbourd sound, I want to use my Audigy. Onbourd NIC is OK, but I have a PCI NIC so whatever. I really like ABIT, ASUS, and Gigabyte brands BTW. I dont know wether I should go AGP/PCI or PCI-Express; I really need help deciding.
Processor:
I have a XP 1800 (1.5Ghz), and my rule for upgrades is "double it", so I would want to by something approximately around 3Ghz, maybe alittle slower, maybe alittle faster. I also cant decide on "Type"; should I get a 64bit processor or what? Theres like 3-4 types of AMD processors in common use right now. The processor type has a huge impact on price AND the Mobo's that I can choose from.
RAM:
I definatly want at least 1 GIG or memory, but probably no more then that. If I find i need more I can upgrade it easily anyway. Im having trouble deciding the speed however. 333 or 400 or what? Is Micron still a good brand?
Graphics card:
I cant decide on AGP 8x or PIC-Express, The card and the Mobo go hand in hand here. I prefer ATI. I stayed with ATI since the first Radeons came out. I want a card with 128 MB ram minimum. Probably a 9800Pro or better. I might try an invidia card, but i doubt it. I need something that can handle games for a while, I dont get to upgrade too often. I dont want my card to seem obsolete 6 months down the road. I probably wont upgrade again for 1-2 years BTW.
Drives:
My floppy, DVD , and CDR are staying. I see no reason to upgrade them. I dont forsee needing a DVDburner. My HDD on the other hand might need work. It runs great, and was a good buy, but I think I want to try a SATA setup, maybe with raid. If I upgrade in Jan I WONT get a new HDD. Ill save getting a better HDD(s) for the summer. My HDD is a minor bottleneck. 80 Gig inst enough anymore.
Sound:
Ill keep my Audigy.
Network:
If the mobo has integtrated NIC then good, if it doesnt, I have a PCI NIC.
BTW, I plan on running XP Professional, and maybe a dual boot with linux or win98 or whatever...
So this is where it comes down to you guys. When would you upgrade? Jan with $750 or May with $1200? And what would you buy?
Comments
As for what hard drives to get, if you want something fast, you'll probably have to go with a Western Digital 74G SATA Raptor. They seem a bit expensive, so buying more than one to set up a RAID 0, or 5 will pretty much eat away at all the money you have to spend.
As for processors, it's probably nicer to get a 64 bit for better future compatability, especillay since a lot of people seem to think that they're much faster than their intel counterparts. But that means you're going have to upgrade to a 64 bit OS to get the best results. (This only matters if you plan on reusing the OS you already have)
Oh, and if you're going to wait until May, you'll probably need to change which parts you're going to get, so keep that in mind.
Power Supply: 400 watts is a good ammount, but for future proofing you might want 450-500w. Make sure it's can supply sufficient voltage though - that is also very important. (I'm not an expert in the area of PSUs - anyone know good brands for PSUs?)
Mobo: I'd actually wait on this untill the NForce4 boards come out if you want the latest and greatest as IIRC they will support both AMD64 & PCI-e. If not, a good Asus board for AMD64 939 pin processors with AGP 8x is the way to go.
Processor: Any AMD64 939-pin processor will do you good, and offer future upgradability. I would personally reccomend the AMD64 3500+, as it offers the best bang for the buck. There is also a cheaper AMD64 3000+ 939 pin IIRC.
Ram: one gig of PC3200 400 Mhz will do nicely, anything slower is a bit behind the times. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Hard drive: A good bet would be a couple of 7200 RPM drives with 8MB caches set in raid 0. More expensive drives would be those with 10,000-15,000 RPMs, or drives that have 16MB caches. What you get is really dependant on what you need.
GFX card: an ATI 9800 pro (128Mb) should be plenty of gaming power for a decent price. I believe that also is Valve's suggested card for HL2. Or, if you want to spend more an X800 would be the way to go.
Processor: Any AMD64 939-pin processor will do you good, and offer future upgradability. I would personally reccomend the AMD64 3500+, as it offers the best bang for the buck. There is also a cheaper AMD64 3000+ 939 pin IIRC.
Ram: one gig of PC3200 400 Mhz will do nicely, anything slower is a bit behind the times. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
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I thought about getting the 939 socket but I went with a 754. The board is an Asus K8N and the chip is an AMD64 3400+. Even with my 9600 pro the PC runs as smooth as silk (apart from the 3D Mark 2005 battlescene(omg that is immense)).
I've seen some 500Mhz RAM in the shops but it's kind of expensive at the moment. You could go with the 400Mhz or wait for the 500Mhz to come down in price.
Id go with PCI express, simply because AGP and DDR are being phased out... know that you WILL have to spend more money this way....
Personally.. ABIT boards are excellent overclockers.. with a decent PSU you might get a 20-50 percent OC increase easy with an ABIT board (check out the new fatality boards coming out... OMG OMG OMG)
Anyways... im all for buying good OCing parts, then OCing the whole comp rather than spending more for faster stock parts....
~Jason
Processor: Any AMD64 939-pin processor will do you good, and offer future upgradability. I would personally reccomend the AMD64 3500+, as it offers the best bang for the buck. There is also a cheaper AMD64 3000+ 939 pin IIRC.
Ram: one gig of PC3200 400 Mhz will do nicely, anything slower is a bit behind the times. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile-fix.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile-fix.gif' /><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I thought about getting the 939 socket but I went with a 754. The board is an Asus K8N and the chip is an AMD64 3400+. Even with my 9600 pro the PC runs as smooth as silk (apart from the 3D Mark 2005 battlescene(omg that is immense)).
I've seen some 500Mhz RAM in the shops but it's kind of expensive at the moment. You could go with the 400Mhz or wait for the 500Mhz to come down in price. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
the 500MHZ ram is worthless unless u OC the processor to a 250FSB(standard is 200FSB, 400MHZ ram), which most Mobo's cant handle..... ASUS probably could though, but ud need a top of the line PSU to achieve it....
~Jason
Otherwise it looks like everything else has been covered.
939 pin in the best avaliable, but very expensive. all boards are DDR these days. SocketA and 754 are both good, with 754 offering faster bus speeds and processors than the now-considered-budget socketA. but in the future, clock speed will not be as important, so socketA should still be good.
if you want this upgrade for HL2 and Doom3, buy sooner (Jan) and go AGP/PCI, because the new pci will still be too expensive. if you are gonna wait till may, get the new pci, because it should have dropped to mainstream pricing.
dont upgrade your harddrive until may, then see if there is the new sata150 spec units avaliable, they should offer much increased bandwidth over the sata100 and ide133 we are using these days.