"Upgrade" my "old" system?

[TechnicalFreak]

What's Newegg? Never heard of it before.. Sapphire Radeon HD2900pro? Can only find the 2900XT (and that one is too expensive!)

 

[PaulieG]

Try these guys. They have reasonable prices, and they ship worldwide. Oh, and within your budget, I would get a e2160 or e2180, or an e4500 matched with a 8800GT.

http://www.ncix.com/

 

[TechnicalFreak]

TechnicalFreak, it might be cheaper to go AMD, cheapo AM2 motherboard and a 6000+ X2, that way you can put the money saved in a better graphics cards such as the 3850 or 3870. Forget the geforce 8600 series. But it depends what you want the system for, gaming or office work?

Ok , a system with that parts would look like this:
Mobo : Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 nForce 570 SLI MCP.
Memory : Kingston 2x1024Mb (2Gb, real low price..).
CPU : AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+.
Graphicscard : PowerColor Radeon HD3870 512MB DDR4.
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 160GB (SATA2).
PSU : Xion AXP 630W ATX 2.2.

Total : 5373:-SEK / 565€uros / 827US$ / 413£.

 

[Darren]

Ok , a system with that parts would look like this:
Mobo : Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 nForce 570 SLI MCP.
Memory : Kingston 2x1024Mb (2Gb, real low price..).
CPU : AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual-Core 6000+.
Graphicscard : PowerColor Radeon HD3870 512MB DDR4.
HDD : Seagate Barracuda 160GB (SATA2).
PSU : Xion AXP 630W ATX 2.2.

Total : 5373:-SEK / 565€uros / 827US$ / 413£.

Looks good so far. Athlon 6000+/6400 x2 if your running stock. Or Black Edition 5000+/6400+ x2 if you plan to over clock. Personally I'd get the non Black Edition as a stable overclock is never guaranteed especially on a budget motherboard. Secondly If you have enough money left over, I'd seriously invest in 4GB DDR2 ram opposed to 2GB as ram is at its cheapest and its one less hassle when operating systems go all 64bit.

 

[TechnicalFreak]

Looks good so far. Athlon 6000+/6400 x2 if your running stock. Or Black Edition 5000+/6400+ x2 if you plan to over clock. Personally I'd get the non Black Edition as a stable overclock is never guaranteed especially on a budget motherboard. Secondly If you have enough money left over, I'd seriously invest in 4GB DDR2 ram opposed to 2GB as ram is at its cheapest and its one less hassle when operating systems go all 64bit.

Yes , that is true. Ram modules are very cheap indeed (even here). But then I have to save up some money. Perhaps then I could maybe even go RAID (found some disks that are cheap aswell). I have had a RAID system earlier, and had it so 2 disks were "mirrored" and 2 disks for "speed".

I am not so sure about this 64bit OS , I already have XP Pro (Original + license) and I thought that one was expensive..

 

[TechnicalFreak]

I saw something from ATi called "Crossfire" is this similar to nVidia's SLI, and must I have a special mobo just for that??

 

[Darren]

I saw something from ATi called "Crossfire" is this similar to nVidia's SLI, and must I have a special mobo just for that??

Crossfire is ATI's attempt at SLI. Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 nForce 570 SLI MCP supports SLI so if you want to run dual cards they have to be NVIDIA cards.

The best crossfire deal at the moment is two ATI 3850's because when crossfired they are faster than the 8800GT/GTS and almost as fast as the GTX - one 8800GTX is between 210-270 UK pounds, where as two 3850's are 200 UK pounds and perform almost as fast when utilizing crossfire.

Interesting 3850 crossfire reviews:
http://reviews.cnet.com/graphics-cards/ati-radeon-hd-3850/4505-8902_7-32745241.html
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/diamond_viper_hd3850_crossfire/11.htm (FEAR and NFS benchmark in particular)

I had a more recent review which showed the 3850 crossfire in a better light but I can't find it now! But honestly if you go the crossfire route I think your better off getting the 3870 and sticking another 3870 a year.