Well, money is really tight and lately so are the things I can still do with my old OC'd ASUS A7N8XDx2.0 and 2800+ Barton. I don't do a lot of gaming anyway (mainly FPS WW2 type games) but when I couldn't play MoH:AA due to my single-core CPU I was very disappointed. I've been racking my brain for the last 3 days doing research and trying to decide what will give me the biggest bang for my scarce bucks. I've realized that as much as I covet a quad-core Phenom or a quad Intel processor, I can't afford bleeding edge, but I'm hoping that with this build I can upgrade a little down the line as the top parts now become mid parts later on.
What I need to upgrade cheaply:
Mobo
CPU
Graphics
Memory
What I hope to reuse:
Antec 1080 Tower Case
X-Connect 500-watt ATX PSU
Ttake Aquarius 3 Exo-cooling with standard water block
Seagate SATA2 500GB drive currently WinXP SP3 32-bit
Seagate ATA 320GB drive (storage)
Liteon DVDR-RW ATA drive
This is my proposal:
MSI K9N2 SLI Platinum $147.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813130161
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ CPU Memory Bundle - Black Edition, OCZ Platinum Revision-2 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 x 1024MB) $79.99 after rebate
http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...pNo=3969587&CatId=2329
I reckon the two above items will give me enough of an upgrade that I can add to in the future. The mobo has integrated 8100 Nvidia graphics which is a bit better than I currently have in my old box with my X800XT and X1650 AGP cards, and I can add a better card as prices go down and my needs change. The mobo supports 1066DDR2 memory and also supports Phenoms so I can update to the faster memory and quad cores in the future after they've come down in price. The CPU appears to be of average strength and a definite step up from my single core 2.2 Ghz Barton so I should see improvement in my older games and even in DVD video editing and since it comes bundled with 2 GB of DDR2 800 of memory, I'm hoping that for $228 plus tax/shipping (around the price of 1 mid-point mobo OR one upper mid-point CPU, I can again have an OK box (about 2X faster than what I currently have) with future upgrade capabilities. What do you think? Do you think I should just get the best AM2+ board I can find but stick with the X2 5000+ CPU and memory bundle, and then add a cheap PCI-e card ? That may raise my budget up another $100 but I'll consider it. Thanks for your input.
Question: Will I have to only use NVidia cards if I want to SLI in the future? And if I just decide to go with a single ATI card in the future will their be driver conflict between the onboard video and the plugin card?
PS Will I need to go to a 64-bit WinXP or Vista, or can I still use my 32-bit WinXP-SP3?
What I need to upgrade cheaply:
Mobo
CPU
Graphics
Memory
What I hope to reuse:
Antec 1080 Tower Case
X-Connect 500-watt ATX PSU
Ttake Aquarius 3 Exo-cooling with standard water block
Seagate SATA2 500GB drive currently WinXP SP3 32-bit
Seagate ATA 320GB drive (storage)
Liteon DVDR-RW ATA drive
This is my proposal:
MSI K9N2 SLI Platinum $147.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813130161
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ CPU Memory Bundle - Black Edition, OCZ Platinum Revision-2 2048MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 x 1024MB) $79.99 after rebate
http://www.tigerdirect.com/app...pNo=3969587&CatId=2329
I reckon the two above items will give me enough of an upgrade that I can add to in the future. The mobo has integrated 8100 Nvidia graphics which is a bit better than I currently have in my old box with my X800XT and X1650 AGP cards, and I can add a better card as prices go down and my needs change. The mobo supports 1066DDR2 memory and also supports Phenoms so I can update to the faster memory and quad cores in the future after they've come down in price. The CPU appears to be of average strength and a definite step up from my single core 2.2 Ghz Barton so I should see improvement in my older games and even in DVD video editing and since it comes bundled with 2 GB of DDR2 800 of memory, I'm hoping that for $228 plus tax/shipping (around the price of 1 mid-point mobo OR one upper mid-point CPU, I can again have an OK box (about 2X faster than what I currently have) with future upgrade capabilities. What do you think? Do you think I should just get the best AM2+ board I can find but stick with the X2 5000+ CPU and memory bundle, and then add a cheap PCI-e card ? That may raise my budget up another $100 but I'll consider it. Thanks for your input.
Question: Will I have to only use NVidia cards if I want to SLI in the future? And if I just decide to go with a single ATI card in the future will their be driver conflict between the onboard video and the plugin card?
PS Will I need to go to a 64-bit WinXP or Vista, or can I still use my 32-bit WinXP-SP3?