System Upgrade Advice Needed

[Starman]

Evening all - Right here is the deal I would like to upgrade my system (Don't laugh).

Current System

AMD Athlon 1.2Ghz
Abit KT7A
512mb SDRAM
Radeon 9800 128MB
Creative SoundBlaster Audigy
Maxtor, and Seagate IDE 133 hard drives
Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-106D, and an old GoldStar CD-RW


Now really I would only like to upgrade my CPU, Motherboard, and RAM. But the real kicker is I have only for maximum of around £350 to spend so I am looking for good value and performance. I would ideally prefer a P4 based system with 1GB Ram but am more than open to suggestions.

So if its not too much trouble please start giving me your ideas, I know others have already given me their advise (This means you Jupitus, and CptDoom) but I thought it would be a good idea to open this up to a larger audience

Thanks in advance for any advise!

 

[TdC]

hey matey.

um

flog the Athlon, mobo, ram and Audigy on ebay. throw away the goldstar. get an amd shuttle, a nice athlon like a 3200+ and a gig's worth of ddr. build in your left over kit. boot and play.

 

[Xavier]

Let me guess Starman, a certain Beta isn't quite cutting it on that spec?

I'd go for a cheap nforce3 250 / athlon64 with the 939 pin socket, plenty of upgrade potential and all the base specs you'll need to make 'it' run quick

 

[smurkin]

tbh, 939 is prohibitively expensive (unless Xav knows otherwise ) and doesnt give bang per buck. At least a recent review over on anandtech suggested so. (http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2206&p=13). 754 will probably be relegated to the budget sector eventually...which might mean theres mucho life left in this socket.

iirc, todays shuttles are nforce 3 150s...which are a tad limited for o/c and a lil behind for performance....250s are preferable...

I recently upgraded thus:

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 3200 (2310 MHz o/c) £140
Mem: 2x512 GeIL Value Dual Channel PC3200 400MHz DDR @ 210MHz (o/c) £100 2.5,3,3,6 (stock)
GA-K8NS Pro (nForce3 250 Chipset) FSB 210 MHz £70

Those are my favoured overclocks, btw.

In your price range. Tbh, the Gigabyte mobo has been fine for me...tho there have been alot of complaints from other forums. You could have a look at anandtech's lineup.

 

[Xavier]

Slower 939 chips are due soon with prices kicking off around £100.

It makes much more sense to go the 939 route than 754 - AMD are trying to kill off the old 754 and 940 pin sockets asap, plus 939 allows you to run either Athlon64 or Athlon64FX with a way better underlying chipset (nForce3-250).


Xav

 

[Starman]

Thanks for the advise guys. Just thought I'd share with you what I decided on, it might not be the best but I thought it provided good performance and valve for money but I am sure some will disagree

Intel Lacrosse BL D865GLCL i865G, OEM, uATX, DDDR400, 10/100 Lan, USB 2.0, 6Ch Audio, SATA £63.74
3.0GHz Intel Pentium® 4 CPU "Prescott" (800FSB) HT 1MB Cache *Retail* £128.43
x2 512Mb PC3200 (PC400) DDR Memory (Major) Retail £100.93
Total: £301.33 (VAT £44.88, and £7 Carriage charge)

 

[Xavier]

That should shift the bottleneck squarely back onto your 9800 Pro, heh. The prescott is an interesting call imho, it's slower than the northwood 3Ghz and costs more from a lot of places. There still aren't a lot of people using SSE-3 either.

Whatever you go for mate, it's still going to jitter like crazy running through Queynos and Freeport

 

[Starman]

heh I don't know what you are talking about

 

[Xavier]

Ah, ok, just convenient timing then

 

[Cyradix]

Whatever you go for mate, it's still going to jitter like crazy running through Queynos and Freeport

There is a thread on the beta boards about tweaking the display settings.

 

[Gengi]

ok please be terribly circumspect.

P4 3.2 gig, 1 gig pc 3200 ram, XFX 6800gt, Abit AS8 mobo, jittery ?
as above with xfx 5900xt runable ?


a nods as good as a wink to a blind horse.

Later

 

[Cyradix]

ok please be terribly circumspect.

P4 3.2 gig, 1 gig pc 3200 ram, XFX 6800gt, Abit AS8 mobo, jittery ?
as above with xfx 5900xt runable ?


a nods as good as a wink to a blind horse.

Later

I have a P4 2.8 gig, 1 gig ram, 5900 ultra.....
It runs just fine at 1280x1024 if you turn off shadows etc cause they are a bit bugged....


Ofcourse I still don't know what you guys are talking about...