To Upgrade or Not

[TonyR]

Trying to decide if I should upgrade new board/ram/cpu/hdd or not. Here is what I have now, someting that will load and play games a little quicker. I am able to play Q4/D3/BF2 but they load slowly. The case and PSU would not be upgraded.

AMD Athlon XP3000+ CPU
Soyo 880 Motherobard
2x512 PNY PC3200 RAM
2x512 Mushkin Cheapo Ram
2x 80GB WesternDigital 8mb 7200RPM in RAID-0
Hiper 600W PSU (Will support PCIX,ATX 2.0, SATA)
ATI X1600 512MB AGP 8x
Antec P160 Case
Coolermaster R120 cpu cooler


Some thoughts were to go with something similar to the CoreDuo setup in the review vs. the core 2 extreme. I'd like to have a something dual core, and if possible mvoe to the Intel side. Not looking to buy the best of the best, just something that will last me a couple years. I'd like to keep the price around $600.

What do you guys think? Keep the current system and find something to upgrade on it, or build something newer?

 

[AlaskaFox]

If it works fine for what you do, then keep it.
might go with just a proc upgrade on yours if you can find one for cheap, but otherwise the only other option is new just about everything for just about any other upgrade you want. example, if you go C2D, that pretty much requires a new mobo, proc, memory, and video card. weigh the cost of upgrading your current rig with the possible performance gains. heck, a X1950pro AGP might be in your future, and still save you some $$. :lol:

 

[flasher702]

for $600 budget I'm thinking you'd be better off wating

for C2D (e4300 or e6300) + mobo + 2gb DDR2 667 you're looking at ~$470 or more

Then you still have to buy a new GFX card. YOu have case and PSU, but your situation with drives is a little complicated (I'm assuming those are WD "JB" IDE HDs). The best solution would be to get a new SATA drive (or array), get rid of one or both the old IDE drives, and keep your optical drive. There are other options (different mobos that will support IDE raid, add-in IDE raid controllers) that might end up being less expensive that you could look into, but not nearly as graceful.

At this point you're looking at ~$680 or more (e4300 + cheap mobo + 2gb ram + couple SATA drives + 7600gs) and you haven't gotten much more performance from replacing your GFX or HDs which makes the cost of the upgrade sting a bit more IMHO.

If it's still running your apps and you're just looking for a little performance boost on a budget I would wait a little longer and look into a doing some mild OCing and some system tweaking if I were you. If you're willing to spend $700 or more I think a new system build might be more worth it. There isn't much hardware left to UG on your current system (nothing that would be cost-effective anyway) so it's either tweaking or big chunk 'o change on a new platform.

(btw: w00t for Soyo Dragon Mobo and Socket A! The must ubiquitos "peoples gaming rig" of it's time. You should be able to clock that up and get a bit more out of it if you haven't already)

 

[flasher702]

oh, and you could, of course, get into a dual-core system for less but it would be a side-grade, not an up-grade as it wouldn't really increase single-threaded performance.

 

[TonyR]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to stick with what I have and give overclocking a try.

Since a new system would require me to get some sata harddrives, and my current mobo will support sata drives, I could get some now and put them to use, then I will have at least that part when the time comes to upgrade...

Think the WesternDigital 150GB 10K RPM drives would be a good investment?

 

[flasher702]

The raptors are some of the fastest drives available for single user applications and not aware of anything that is going to challenge them in the SATA market anytime soon. Your SATA controller is kind of old though; I wouldn't be surprised if it made for slow RAID controller.

AFAIK they won't depreciate much or become obsolete anytime soon so it wouldn't be a waste to buy one or two. They are very spendy though.