Desktop PC: A time to upgrade?

S

Schnerlz

New Member
Hopefully I'm posting in the right section. Give me a swift kick in the right direction if it's not. :)

I have the 'I Want to Upgrade My System' bug. I built my own PC two years ago and currently have the following parts:

AMD Athlon XP (Barton 3000+) I have it running around 2.2 ghz
1.5GIG of RAM
256MB ATI X700 Pro Video Card (AGP)
HD space doesn't matter for this application

I've been browsing TigerDirect and Newegg, and these are some parts I really want to upgrade to:

Athlon 64 FX-60
(Mobo to accompany it- any first-hand suggestions?)
I want to take advantage of SLI dual video cards, probably NVIDIA but I've always used ATI. Any suggestions for both brands? I've been out of the loop the past two years.

Overall I have a budget of $700-maybe $800, and I think I can squeeze this together with currently having a case, HD and RAM for the system.

I'd just like some of your thoughts about it. Should I upgrade? I develop websites and 3d modeling so programs are beginning to lag on my current setup. Will I notice a huge performance change, or is $700 a waste of resources?

Thanks in advance everyone! :)
 
Honestly, you'd probably be much better off getting a Core 2 duo processor and a single high-end card. Also, with the 8600 series coming out soon, I'd hold off until they come out.
 
Good stuff. Thanks for the quick reply, I'll look into what you mentioned. If anyone else has any suggestions, just post away and let me know. :)
 
as said above, go with a core 2 duo. Currently they are easily out performing the AMD range and come at a cracking price too. Even an E6300 would see drastic improvement over what you currently have.

Again said above is go with a single high end card. Yes SLI is useful but most often the cost of dual cards is higher than the cost of a sinlge more powerful card that will out perform the two in tandem :)

one thing to note is that you may need to replace the RAM unless you go for a socket 939 AMD (which is currently towards the bottom end of the performance scales at the moment). You currently have DDR ram i would guess and AMD socket AM2 and intels sockets will require DDR2

$800 should get you an E6300, Gigabyte DS3 mobo, 1GB DDR2 RAM and an 8800GTS video card.

:)
 
I'd wait until you get some more money, At least until you get around $1500 and also, I'd say wait until after april, the core 2 duo processors should go way down in price.

Also, maybe you should be thinking about waiting until ATI's new cards come out. It might be a while, but probably very worth it. And maybe a possible upgrade to vista? By the time ATI's cards come out, Vista should have a lot more drivers out and everything should run better.

I'm just trying to throw some different ideas out, I don't mind if you don't like mine.
 
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Yeah I've since abandoned AMD through some cost cutting. I mean why buy something that's less of a product, for more? I'm going with the E6400 for sure. Glad you guys opened my eyes to that.

I can always add a second video card if I had to, so I'll go high end. Still looking at those. I upgraded to Vista recently, and has been a small motivation to upgrade the PC. The system is stable, but as soon as I open multiple design programs things start to get a bit slow.

Real bummer about the ram. Well looks like I'll have two PCs at this rate. :D

Thanks for all the suggestions!
 
well on the flip side you can still sell off the pieces you have on ebay or something to try and get some of that money back :)

It might be worth a slight wait as mentioned as ATI are about to bring out a competitor to Nvidias 88XX series. this should see a change in the prices and hopefully make things a little more cost effective for you :)
 
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