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What to upgrade next? Help Please :)

HookeyStreet

HookeyStreet

Eat, sleep, game!
Joined
Aug 29, 2004
Messages
7,122 (0.94/day)
Location
Great Yarmouth, England
Ive just upgraded from a Jetway GeForce FX 5200 128MB to an ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB (with Arctic Cooling VGA Silencer Rev.3 and o/c'ed from 378.00 / 337.50 to 457.20 / 378.00)

Ive also upgraded my CPU & motherboard from Athlon XP 2000+ / ECS Elitegroup K7VMM+ 3.1 to P4 3.20E Prescott / Gigabyte GA-8S655FXL

Im still using my old IDE HDD's (1x 40GB 5400rpm Maxtor, 1x 40GB 5400rpm Samsung) and 1gig of memory (2x 512mb PC2100 DDR266)

I would like to upgrade further (and cheaply by the way) but Im unsure of what to do??????? Would a 7200rpm SATA HDD be better than a standard IDE 7200rpm HDD? and would I notice a big differance by using 2x 512mb PC3200 DDR400 as my new mb supports this.

Any advice/comments would be great :)

Best regards,

Daz

PS: My 3DMarks score was 5976 with my old cpu/mb and new ati card but is now 6594 with the new cpu/mb and same ati card, is this a good result increase?
 
There will be virtually no performance difference between the SATA and non-SATA version of the same hard drive.

I would definitely upgrade the RAM, your PC2100 is seriously holding back the rest of your system.
 
I agree with cram, altough a new 7200rpm HD, no matter if S-ATA or IDE, can also boost your sys-performance: but this is more for important for file-transfer applications (Video-encoding, large Picture editing, program-launch-speed and Boot-Speed of your OS), it's not very important for actual games.
 
You might as well go for the 1 gig. They come with heatspreaders. Does your mobo support dual channel mem? If it does, sweeeeettttt... btw, nice OC on your video card...i've been struggling getting even to XT speeds with mine :)

BTW, wats your PSU? there might be a need to upgrade there as you've made a big jump in CPU and graphics card. Better cooling wont hurt either.
 
nightelf84 said:
You might as well go for the 1 gig. They come with heatspreaders. Does your mobo support dual channel mem? If it does, sweeeeettttt... btw, nice OC on your video card...i've been struggling getting even to XT speeds with mine :)

BTW, wats your PSU? there might be a need to upgrade there as you've made a big jump in CPU and graphics card. Better cooling wont hurt either.
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Yes m8, it supports Dual Channel Memory :D My PSU is only 300W I think :( (Mercury P4 compatible) do you think this will be a problem???
 
a 300W is just about borderline i would say.... maybe you can consider a 400W antec smartpower or higher? Will definitely give you more room for future upgrades and give you that added stability if you ever plan to OC. Antec and enermax PSUs will be a tad more expensive than other brands, but the extra money is worth it.
 
nightelf84 said:
a 300W is just about borderline i would say.... maybe you can consider a 400W antec smartpower or higher? Will definitely give you more room for future upgrades and give you that added stability if you ever plan to OC. Antec and enermax PSUs will be a tad more expensive than other brands, but the extra money is worth it.
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Thanks for the info m8 :D
 
no it will slow your system down i think these parts would be better in my machine :-P
 
Freddy23 said:
Good decision(s)!
You'll have a perfectly balanced system soon. But keep an eye on your PSU.
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Aopen 350 with 12 cm vent or fortron with 12 cm vent will do the job perfectly. Very quiet and quality psu.
 
pablofrogo said:
I have this PSU, it's awesome. Very quite, and very powerful.
Click to expand...

Very nice m8 :D I will have to creep round the wife (again) ;)
 
Freddy23 said:
Good decision(s)!
You'll have a perfectly balanced system soon. But keep an eye on your PSU.
Click to expand...

Ive just blown my PSU :( , oh well better get a new one :D
 
crazy fool pity the fool i aint getting on no plane
 
pablofrogo said:
Lol, that's one way around the wife ;)
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Got a new PSU, a nice 600W one :D The wifes good to me..............lol
 
Where from?? Ebuyer? Their 600W one is actually only a 280W PSU....

I probably shouldn't say ebuyer, but who cares.
 
my 350w nexus power supply started playing silly buggers on my setup (manifested itself by causing my sound card to not work!)

bought an antec neopower 480w PSU and never looked back... top notch. very quiet into the bargain.



a lot of those high rated psu's are misleading - they tend to be rated at very low temps or rated at peak power... their true output in a real life rig is much lower. with PSU's you definately get what you pay for
 
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