hows this set up

[isaacual69]

msi k8n neo4-f mainboard
amd athlon 64 3500+
1.5 gigs of kingston ddr pc3200
msi nx6600le pci e
memorex dl dvd writer
windows xp professional
2 x 80g ata hard drives
1 x 120g hard drive
250w psu (i know i need to upgrade)
case

i bought this from a store in town all for about $700, i think i paid too much, what do you think, should i order from the internet...and what about the motherboard, cpu and graphics card?...good products or should i return the mainboard and graphics card which would come to about $300, and get maybe this other board i can get for about $110, it has pci e and agp and i already have an ati all in wonder 9600 agp card,and maybe get a sata drive with the extra money, or put it toward an amd x2 cpu?.....thanks for the opinions

 

[vonbismarck]

msi k8n neo4-f mainboard
amd athlon 64 3500+
1.5 gigs of kingston ddr pc3200
msi nx6600le pci e
memorex dl dvd writer
windows xp professional
2 x 80g ata hard drives
1 x 120g hard drive
250w psu (i know i need to upgrade)
case

i bought this from a store in town all for about $700, i think i paid too much, what do you think, should i order from the internet...and what about the motherboard, cpu and graphics card?...good products or should i return the mainboard and graphics card which would come to about $300, and get maybe this other board i can get for about $110, it has pci e and agp and i already have an ati all in wonder 9600 agp card,and maybe get a sata drive with the extra money, or put it toward an amd x2 cpu?.....thanks for the opinions

May I ask what you want to use the computer for? Is it just going to be used for office work (word processing, internet, etc.), a gaming machine, photo/video editing or something else?

 

[isaacual69]

May I ask what you want to use the computer for? Is it just going to be used for office work (word processing, internet, etc.), a gaming machine, photo/video editing or something else?

im using it to recode dvds and run the net rip music download files and maybe us design software or autocad, absolutly no games

 

[vonbismarck]

im using it to recode dvds and run the net rip music download files and maybe us design software or autocad, absolutly no games

If you only plan on doing one thing at a time then that might be enough for you. Obviously the faster processor you have, the faster the task will be done but I am not sure how much you can spend. For the recoding, time would also depend on what format you are encoding it to and the quality settings. I have had it take over 12 hours sometimes (I have a 3200+ with 1GB of ram) for 2+hour movies with highest quality settings.

If you want to do two things at once, like recoding and autocad, then I would say go for a dual core if you can. That would speed things up greatly.

You have more than enough ram, the only thing you might want to look at are the timings for it as that can have some effect.

If you are going to do a lot of autocad or think that you are going to, you might want to think of getting a workstation video card. Low-end ones can cost around $200 while the mid-range ones can go as high as $600. Nvidia usually has the better cards but it depends on what software you use.

Also, if you can, you might want to turn those two 80GB HDDs into a RAID0. That will speed things up too.