Where To Go Next With My Pc

[Cookieman123]

With the cash I got this Christmas I have about $600 to spend. My current rig has a Pentium 4 3.0, 512MB RAM, Radeon 9800 PRO...pretty much basic stuff. So now i'm wondering where I should go with $600. I want to be able to play Oblivion on decent graphics when it comes out next year, but if I wanted to buy a video card (upgrade to PCI-E from AGP)then I would need a new motherboard...CPU (I would buy AMD)...PSU...and so on. So if anyone has any good ideas of how to spend this cash on my PC I would appreciate it. :thumbs-up:

Edited December 26, 2005 by Cookieman123

[spazmire11]

i would suggest getting some ram, maybe a gig or so should be good. ask around for what would be good.

course a psu upgrade wouldent be a bad path eather.

[BTSchnarfy]

I agree that better RAM would help you out. Despite what many will say, the 3.0 P4 will still run games decently (I can still play newer games on my 2.0 P4 for craps sake). I'd get some of this with one of these. Once that stuff comes in, grab the newest BIOS for your mobo, and OC the crap outta that chip and GPU. That should get you by for a few more months, at which point you can buy the mobo/CPU/GPU combo of your dreams with the money you saved.

[hardnrg]

this is what i'd do:

 

buy - a64/opteron, nf4 board, decent ~500w psu, crappy pci graphics card (always handy to have anyway), decent cpu hs/f

use - single stick of 512mb ram you already have (assuming it's ddr not sdram)

sell - p4, 9800 pro, p4 mobo

buy - pci-e 7800gt/x1800xl, 2x512 or 2x1 of decent ram

buy - zalman vf700/vf770 or w/e it is...

[romeo55]

I agree that better RAM would help you out.  Despite what many will say, the 3.0 P4 will still run games decently (I can still play newer games on my 2.0 P4 for craps sake).  I'd get some of this with one of these.  Once that stuff comes in, grab the newest BIOS for your mobo, and OC the crap outta that chip and GPU.  That should get you by for a few more months, at which point you can buy the mobo/CPU/GPU combo of your dreams with the money you saved.

605576[/snapback]

 

Most of the people who say intel sucks at gaming have never tried one... p4 3.0s will definitly keep up (tho not as wel as a a64 tho)

 

I agree with hardnrg tho, if you invest in the current cpu you'll be screwed, most manufactuers arn't coming out with anything new on the agp/ socket 478 anymore(tips, learn from me, DO NOT INVEST IN SOCKET 478 lol, otherwise you'll be stucks with older hardware

[Cookieman123]

this is what i'd do:

 

buy - a64/opteron, nf4 board, decent ~500w psu, crappy pci graphics card (always handy to have anyway), decent cpu hs/f

use - single stick of 512mb ram you already have (assuming it's ddr not sdram)

sell - p4, 9800 pro, p4 mobo

buy - pci-e 7800gt/x1800xl, 2x512 or 2x1 of decent ram

buy - zalman vf700/vf770 or w/e it is...

605580[/snapback]

You know what...that sounds like a really good idea. How much money do you think i'll be able to get from a Northwood P4 3.0, ATI Radeon 9800PRO, and an ASUS P4P800SE? Do you think it'll be enough to get a video card and RAM?

[hardnrg]

not really enough for both unless you get really lucky... i was thinking that you'd either have some left over from the first purchases, or you'd get some more money in between

[martymcfly]

I have an AGP x850xt pe for sale. I used it with a 3.0c and it was GREAT. Check out the link in my sig for info.

[ady1989]

ok heres the deal- with that kind of money, dont bother getting a new pci-e system. the mobo would be 150$ ish, the cpu 200$, the psu 125$, etc... it wouldent live up to your expectations since you wouldent have a video card to start with. so my opinion, just get 1gb ocz pc4000 ram (200$), then a BFG 6600GT OC video card (around 200$). save the rest of the money.