Time for an upgrade

Hey all you major geekers,

I'd just like to say I'm amazed by this e-community and the amount of support you put out for each other. I hope I can learn enough to help others here over time.

i'm new.

So I would really like to try some of these new FPS games but i'm running a "slightly" out-of-date system so I ran belarc and hopefully you can suggest a single(small budget 50-150 CAN) upgrade I can increase my performance significantly with. If not for gaming then how about suggesting a really primo hard drive because i'm running outta space.


Drives
342.99 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
37.12 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST CD-RW GCE-8525B [CD-ROM drive]
PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 [CD-ROM drive]
RW1490N PUM602S SCSI CdRom Device [CD-ROM drive]
SCSIVAX DVD/CD-ROM SCSI CdRom Device

DMI WD1600BB-55GUC0 USB Device [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) -- drive 2
MAXTOR 6L060J3 [Hard drive] (60.04 GB) -- drive 1
Maxtor 6Y120L0 [Hard drive] (122.94 GB) -- drive 0

Memory Modules c,d
1024 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot '0' has 512 MB
Slot '1' has 512 MB
Slot '2' is Empty

Motherboard

Board: MSI MS-6702 1.0
Bus Clock: 200 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. Version 07.00T 04/02/01

Processor a
1.80 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64
128 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache


Operating System System Model
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600) MSI MS-6702 1.0

 

well, you have an MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R motherboard and a socket 754 AMD64 @1.8ghz (assuming its a 3000+?) with 1GB of RAM (hopefully pc3200 or better)

Your system seems pretty decent. What kind of Video Card do you currently have? Thats the main thing missing from your list.

Your motehrboard accepts AGP video cards, so depending on what you have now, a high end AGP card would certainly raise your performance.

Let us know what you have know, and we'll start on what to possibly upgrade to.

 

Haha,
For some reason i was sure I put that in.

GF4 Ti 4600

 

you would certiainly get a large performance boost form a modern video card then. You just have to decide if spending money on an AGP card that would not move with you to your next system is worthwhile.


The king of all AGP cards is the GeForce 7800gs.

Slightly below it is the ATi X850XT PE (slightly faster than the X850XT). This used to be the best bang for the buck, unfortunately its not easy to find a cheap AGP version anymore. I wouldnt pay more than $190 or so for this card. (used to be found for $150 on a good deal)

Below those would be the X850PRO, X800GTO, and GeForce 6800 series. (6800Ultra > 6800GS > 6800GT > 6800XT > 6800).

If you're looking for a nice, but not extravagant performance increase, the GeForce 6600GT is ideal

Once again, make sure if you search on your own you only look at AGP cards. PCI-Express cards would require you upgrade your motherboard and CPU to either Socket 939 or the new Socket AM2 (and AM2 would also require DDR2 RAM).

 

Thanks for the detailed response!

Unfortunately the cards you suggested are well over my maximum for cost.
I am looking at spending 50-150 Canadian and that 150 is absolute tops.

So right now i'm looking at this card
http://www.atic.ca/index.php?page=LongDesc&sku=26224

what's the different between that and a fx5200(same price)?

 

thats a crap card. and don't buy anything that has FX stamped on it.

With your budget I would aim for a 6600GT or better.

This is in your budget: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814170082

Thats if you actually want to play games and see some eye candy as well as decent frames per second. Looking over your specs it seems at one time you bought some decent kit. that TI4600 was a top of the line card several years ago. 1GB of ram, a good CPU. All you need is a decent video card. The 6600GT is that. Decent. It performs slightly better than a 9800Pro. It will not play newer games with the visual settings maxed out but it will get you by at medium settings just fine, and at high settings on games that aren't that demanding.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ATI-Radeon-x800...ryZ40158QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sapphire-x850xt...ryZ80190QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

well keep looking then I suppose. The 6600GT is what I'd suggest in your case.

be SURE to run whatever you find by us first-- for example, and FX5200, while technically a newer generation than your Ti4600, would be a DOWNGRADE from your Ti4600. that would be a serious waste of money.

the 6200 might be a slight improvement, but certainly not worth the money. If you're going to upgrade, make sure it will be noticed.

OK-- did a little bit of searching on some Canadian sites. and came up with these. dont forget shipping rates when thinking about price.

GeForce 6600 256MB DDR $139.99 from TigerDirect (usually suck with shipping, at least to US)

PNY GeForce 6600 256MB DDR $140.65 from NCIX

Asus GeForce 6600 256MB DDR $129.99 from CanadaComputers

Sapphire Radeon X1600 256MB DDR2 $140.01 from NCIX

I would recommend the Asus card, or the Sapphire.

EDIT: if you dont mind buying used from ebay as linked in the above post, that X850XT PE would be SWEET, a killer upgrade for you.

 

Ok,
So I looked over all those and that Asus card for 129 at canadacomputers looks like the best price . It comes to 152 with shipping/tax.

But after hearing from you guy's and what you are saying about my system I'm coming to a point wher ei'm thinking maybe I should wait a month and put in 200-250 dollars and get something solid to rock.

Which of course makes me think maybe I should wait 3 or 4 month's and do a complete system upgrade because is it not a waste to spend 250 dollars and then be out-of-date in 6 month's.

Is there some new type of RAM or Processor coming up that will be common soon?

I'm kinda up-in-the-air and very much out-of-date with the current pc components market.

Thanks so much for your research and advice.
Very thankfull

Sincerely,
Rafael

 

Also i should mentioned if the Video Card upgrade is going to need to wait.
I wanted to possibly add some HD space to my system.

Think I could get some recommendations in that field?
Looking to spend 130(+tax) tops.
I currently have

DMI WD1600BB-55GUC0 USB Device [Hard drive] (160.04 GB) -- drive 2
MAXTOR 6L060J3 [Hard drive] (60.04 GB) -- drive 1
Maxtor 6Y120L0 [Hard drive] (122.94 GB) -- drive 0

And i'm constantly running out of space.

I'm also unsure if my power supply will do.
I am running alot on it.
CPU/GPU/2HD's/Dvd burner/CD-burner
Of course I want to put in a 3rd HD but will I have enough power for it?

It's a 420W
RAIDMAX Model. No : KY - 520ATX

 

Hard drives are CHEAP now. Buy.com has some great deals on big drives.

http://www.buy.com/cat/ata_ide/57325.html (250GB Seagate for $87, WD 250GB for $92.)

Or since your mobo has Serial ATA capability you could get 2 of these WD 160GB SATA drives @$80 each from Best Buy, they're faster both in transfer speed and because they don't have to go through a controller. You'll have a killer storage setup for your next PC too. I'd ditch the 60GB and 122GB, replace with larger one(s), and keep the USB as well.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...CategoryId=pcmcat33200050001&id=1097580128775

As far as whether or not your power supply is adequate, it's hard to tell without knowing how many amps your components are drawing and at what voltage. 420W is most likely more than adequate for your setup, if you had a monster video card I'd recommend going bigger though.

 

2 of these
http://www.atic.ca/index.php?page=LongDesc&sku=20985

or

1 of these http://www.atic.ca/index.php?page=LongDesc&sku=29402

 

Seems to me it's a no-brainer...
1 320Gb drive for $113 would be a better deal than 2 160Gb drives for $146.

Not only is it cheaper, per gigabyte, it will save space on your motherboard for more hard drives.

 

Well the nice thing about having 2 SATA drives is you can RAID 0 them. RAID is Redundant Array of Independent Disks, and what RAID 0 does is read/write half the data to each drive, like this:

Drive 0 Drive 1

Block 0 Block 1
Block 2 Block 3
Block 4 Block 5...

What's nice about this is that the data is read from/written to each drive simultaneously, meaning that it takes half the time to read/write as it would if you only had a single drive of the same speed. So, whether you got the single 320GB or the dual 160GBs you'd have the same storage capacity, but by RAID 0ing 2 160s you'd read/write the data in half the time as you would with the 320, and the smaller drives' 8MB caches would give the same performance as the larger one's 16MB cache. Plus if 1 crapped the bed you'd still have the other LOL (hopefully it wouldn't be your C drive!)

I just put a WD 74GB 10Krpm SATA drive in mine, and when I upgrade my mobo I think I'll get another one and RAID 0 them. 10Krpm and RAID 0, sheeeit I'll be smokin'!