Desktop upgrade help.

[imported_bparks]

I have not upgraded my home computer for 3+ years. I currently have an MSI K7N motherboard with an AMD Athlon XP 2700+ w/333mhz front side bus, 1 gig of PC 3200 dimm memory, a GeForce Ti 4600 graphics card, and my hard drives run off 1st Gen. SATA.

I have not been following technology that closely for a while and am not sure what to upgrade to. I usually replace the motherboard, processor, ram, and graphics card when I upgrade. There are so many reviews it makes things confusing. Is PCI Express better/faster than AGP? Which processor to go with AMD/Intel and what price? I don't overclock so I have little interest in purchasing what works best in an overclocking scenario. What about ram? I hear that Windows Vista is going to be a system hog but I can guarantee you that I will have it and want to be prepared to run it.

 

[NaOH]

Yes PCI-E is definitely faster, about 3.5x more bandwidth. But you probably won't notice the difference with todays games. If you are going to upgrade, it should def. be PCI-E though (AGP slowly getting phased out). AMD is currently kicking Intels butt performance and price wise (although AMDs dualcore CPU are priced sign. higher than Intel but they are also faster so i guess it evens out). 2 gb of pc3200 of ram is good, although 1gb is also pretty sufficient. For windows vista I suggesting having at least 2 gb for smooth operation.

Upgrade your CPU. mobo and GPU and that should be sufficient to run WIndows Vista. What items to upgrade to does depend on what you want out of your system though, besides being able to run Vista.

 

[Bobthelost]

Best way to do this is to put up your budget and your intended use. Or stick your budget into the search bar and then read the tens of other threads on it.

PCIe has better and cheaper cards than AGP. Also the newer designs are almost all PCIe other than possibly a few excessivly expensive token efforts. You should be going PCIe.

 

[NaOH]

Listen to bobthelost. Be happy. There are hella threads about upgrading. One other thing, make sure you get an adequate power supply also. Nothing sucks more than to troubleshoot, only to find out that your powersupply is causing all those crashes.

 

[imported_bparks]

What I am willing to spend. Hmm. I usually don't put a price on these kinds of things because I know getting the newest stuff usually means the most expensive too. I would have to say I would be willing to shell out $150 on a motherboard, $300-$450 on a graphics card, $200-250 on ram, and $300 give or take on a processor. So all together I would top out around $1100.

I really want, well what most people do, more or the most bang for my bucks. I know that in processors there is usually a small price jump until you reach a certain speed and then the price difference is alot. As an example: 1 ghz $100, 1.1ghz $120, and then all of a sudden 1.4 ghz $280. Not real world but I have seen similar trends. The same for ram and other components.

It's not that I can't sift through all the thread's or reviews and figure it out I just think that since I have been away from it for so long that it's better left to just ask for advice from people that are up on what's current and worth buying. I can then narrow it down from there. I am not necessarily pro AMD or Intel nor am I pro Nvidia vs. ATI. So given the dollar figure above maybe you could tell me where you would put it if it were yours to spend.