[Scuddie]

...But right now is arguably the worst time to get one.  With Socket AM2 just around the corner, Socket 939A is due to be retired in less than a year.  However, the first generation AM2 chipsets, just like every first generation chipset, is sure to be garbage.  With the technology in a state of evolution as it is now, I am unsure whether or not buying a new PC would be a wise decision.  My current PC is quite dated, but I still get by, albeit at a slower pace.

What I have:
MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR (Arguably the best SKT A board on the planet)
AMD Athlon 2600+ T-Bred
2x512MB PC2700 2-3-3-6 Samsung DIMMs (1GB Dual Channel Kit)
Samsung 160GB ATA100 Hard Drive
Generic 430w PSU (+12v 12A, +3.3v 20A, +5v 40A)
MSI GeForce4 Ti4200 8x...  In PCI mode...
Unbranded CRT monitor made in Korea in 1999, and the colors are going out

So yeah, this system needs retirement.  But at this stage, would I be better off waiting until Socket AM2 matures?

[Flipside]

I think it's never a good time to buy a new computer, theres always something just around the corner. I'd say personally, when you can afford it, go for it, if you wait for Socket AM2 then there'll be something else 'coming soon' etc etc.

[Shade]

You can always go for the middle road and upgrade that system a bit to make it last until M2 is established. I believe that mobo does have an AGPx8 slot, so you've got some pretty good, pretty cheap, and very major upgrade options for that GF4. The memory is fine, 1 GB will last several years yet. And to be honest, the processor is probably fine too for the time being as long as you get that video card changed.

As for the screen, well, that's not really related to the rest of the system (and certainly doesn't care whether it's attached to a system with an M2 cpu socket) so might as well get that replaced now. Can just save the money for a screen later when you do get a completely new system then.

[Taristin]

Nothing wrong with the 2600+. It's only slightly slower than my 2800+ and that CPU is a beast. Upgrade the vid card, yeah... if you want to speed things up quite a bit, get an SATA 7200rpm HDD, if your mobo supports it (otherwise you'll need an SATA card) and that should be it.

Though I think part of the reason my 2800= is good is because it's got a 333 Mhz FSB... as opposed to the 266 (I think) that were on previous chips... :/

[CP5670]

But at this stage, would I be better off waiting until Socket AM2 matures?

There isn't a whole lot known about it other than that it's coming around June. The switch seems to be due to the fact that the memory manufacturing industry is moving to the cheaper DDR2 stuff rather than for any performance reasons. I personally wouldn't wait for it, but I think it's definitely worth waiting a month for the G71 cards.

[Sandwich]

Back when I was thinking that my CPU had burnt out (about 2 weeks ago; you may have noticed a decided lack of Sandwichness around the boards...), I was researching CPU options. I ended up deciding that I'd upgrade to either an AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Deigo, or the AMD Athlon X2 3800+ (dual-core) - both Socket 939. The single-core chip blew away the dual-cores in current gaming, but the dual-core flew past in multitasking.

Now, turns out my CPU (AMD Athlon XP 3000+ / Socket A) is perfectly fine, but if I were to upgrade, wouldn't getting either of those chips be worthwhile, despite them being socket 939?

[CP5670]

There is very little difference between those two in games at settings that you would normally play at. The 3800 is a very good choice for the money, while the 3700 is less so; the cheaper 3200 and 3500 are almost as fast.

The best thing is to get a cheap opteron 144, 146 or 165 and overclock it. These provide excellent value on 939 at the moment.

Sandwichness

[Sandwich]

There is very little difference between those two in games at settings that you would normally play at.

You'd be surprised. I've run into a number of games that have widescreen aspect issues. They don't support widescreen very well, so they'll do only 1280x600 or 1920x1200. The problem is that for some bizarre reason, sometimes my screen displays a 1280x600 resolution game (which is what my Radeon 9800 Pro prefers when given the choice) at a 1:1 pixel scaling, so it's a small picture in the middle of my screen, surrounded by blank screen real estate. This despite my having told the screen to scale up any non-native resolutions as much as possible while preserving the aspect ratio. It's a strange problem.

Anyway, the point of all this is, oftentimes I'm "forced" to play a game at the full 1920x1200 resolution, which can be quite taxing.

[Scuddie]

Thanks for all the feedback, but I figure I may have forgotten to explain a few things...

The video card is running in PCI mode for a reason.  That reason is one of the voltage regulators or capacitors on the motherboard failed, and it doesn't supply enough voltage to work under AGP 3.0.  So essentially, I'm running this card at 33MHz and at 1.8 AGP volts.  In a manner of speaking, upgrading the video card is not an option.  And I dont feel like shelling out $600 for G71/G72 cards .

The 2600+ is the T-Bred B core, runs natively at 166MHz BUS and 2083MHz.  This is precisely why I bought the memory as 333MHz, as I wanted syncronization.  I am well aware that the CPU itself is good for now, as is the memory capacity, but systemwide performance is the key factor, I think.  nForce2 was great for its time, but it's showing its age.  Due to the circumstances of my current PC, upgrading doesn't really help.  It's either all or nothing.

Also, I am wondering...  The opteron 144 is two dollars more for 512k more of cache and 400MHz less than a A64 3500+, so I'm wondering, does the extra cache justify for the lower clockspeed and extra two bucks, or is there something else I should know about?  And how does my PSU look for bringing over?  I hear 12A is not enough for the +12v line for a current PC.

[CP5670]

Anyway, the point of all this is, oftentimes I'm "forced" to play a game at the full 1920x1200 resolution, which can be quite taxing.

Actually as you increase the resolution, the CPU makes less and less of a difference and the video card becomes completely dominant. Most of the CPU benchmarks you can find are at low resolutions with high end video cards, so that the CPU differences show up, but nobody actually plays at those settings. The differences beyond a 3200 are very small in most games at normal settings. Xbit has a nice article showing this.

For the resolution issue, I think there are some programs like Powerstrip out there that can do the scaling in software. The Nvidia drivers also have scaling options in them that some people say work better than the monitors' own interpolation.

The 2600+ is the T-Bred B core, runs natively at 166MHz BUS and 2083MHz.  This is precisely why I bought the memory as 333MHz, as I wanted syncronization.  I am well aware that the CPU itself is good for now, as is the memory capacity, but systemwide performance is the key factor, I think.  nForce2 was great for its time, but it's showing its age.  Due to the circumstances of my current PC, upgrading doesn't really help.  It's either all or nothing.

Also, I am wondering...  The opteron 144 is two dollars more for 512k more of cache and 400MHz less than a A64 3500+, so I'm wondering, does the extra cache justify for the lower clockspeed and extra two bucks, or is there something else I should know about?  And how does my PSU look for bringing over?  I hear 12A is not enough for the +12v line for a current PC.

I guess you might as well upgrade everything if you're stuck on PCI mode. Although if it wasn't for that, you could still have gotten a large boost with just a new video card.

The extra cache helps a little, maybe 100-200mhz depending on the program, but the 3500 will pretty much always be faster at stock speeds. The 144 should be considerably cheaper though and can in most cases reach higher overclocks than the 3500 can. Monarch sells the 144 for $167 and the 3500 for $201 (both retail).

As for the power supply, you'll almost certainly need a new one. The XPs run off the 5V line so a low 12V is okay there but all modern CPUs and video cards use the 12V line. If you need something cheap and reliable, the Fortron 400W or 450W models on Newegg are very good choices for $40 or $50 respectively.

The G71 release may be worth waiting for just because it could drive down the prices of current cards, particularly the 7800 GTXs that are currently way overpriced.

[Shade]

The extra 400MHz is definitely preferable over an extra 512kb cache.

[Roanoke]

A weak cpu wil compromise a video card though, to some degree (at least that's what a group test I read in Computer Shopper concluded).

[Descenterace]

Anything slower than an Athlon 64 3000 is probably going to cripple an X800/GF7x00.

[CP5670]

It depends on the game. Although there certainly aren't any major improvements over a 3200 in almost anything these days. I always recommend getting a cheap CPU and a powerful video card for this reason. Even if there is a slight bottleneck, a Sempron 3100 / 7800 GT combination for example will destroy an equivalently priced A64 3500 / 6800nu system in games.

Actually, subjectively speaking, I can't see any significant difference between my 146 at its stock 2ghz speed and the 3ghz speed I have it at, in most modern games at the settings I actually play at. There are a handful of games that benefit quite immensely (UT2004 and believe it or not, the original Deus Ex) and it makes a world of difference in emulators and Mathematica calculations (along with 3dmark, for what it's worth), but in many newer games like SCCT or FEAR, I can hardly even distinguish between the processor speeds. Since that's with two 7800 GTs, you would need either a low resolution monitor or one of the absolute best SLI/XFire setups to have any serious CPU bottleneck in modern games with a 3200 or something similar.

[GodisanAtheist]

Think about it this way:

You're using a processor that is a good 3 generations behind the current processor core from the same company, and a video card that is 3 generations behind the most recent version of that card (in PCI mode as well)... and you're now thinking of upgrading it.

I think you'll be just fine if you want to upgrade right now, or whenever.

[Nix]

Hey man, my upgrade path throughout my life with my personal systems was
Pentium 75 - Pentium II 350Mhz Deschutes - Athlon XP 1700 - Athlon 64 3000+
Respective bus speeds
66mhz, 66Mhz, 266(DDR), 800(DDR HT)
I can personally say that making the jump from a 266Mhz bus to the 800 mhz bus shows a BIG difference alone.  The backbone upgrade you'll be doing will hold out for quite some time.  I even went the miserly route and bought a Socket 754 board, and it's been in use for about a solid year now, and it's running just fine.  The videocard I have though could stand to be swapped out for a 6600 or higher, but I'll say that upgrading to Socket 939, or hell, if you're not concerned about cache and 64Bit operability, grab a nice, inexpensive Sempron chip, and stick with 754.  Of course, if you go the 754 route now, you're pretty limited in motherboard choices, as they're all kinda low end.  I got lucky and got a K8V SE DLX, the cute Black PCB Asus board that runs 754 chips.  939 Boards seem to be of better quality, and you can also get into the VIA K8t800 Pro chipset, if you're a VIA guy like me.

Of course though if you want to be able to upgrade for the future, make sure you're getting into a PCI-X board, I went looking for AGP cards and it's getting reallllly scary for whats available.  Either you gotta shell out a ****load of dough, or you get some nerfed card that's not worth the money you spend.  (at least that's how I see it.. heh)

[Roanoke]

IIRC a decent Athlon set-up with an 1800Xl scored better than a 7800GTX with an unremakable P4, though they did say the whole set up (an NEC IIRC) wasn't suitable for the such a huge card.

[CP5670]

Might have been a 3dmark score. 3dmark really hates P4s and generally likes ATI cards for their shader power. Games don't quite reflect that to the same degree.

Of course, if you go the 754 route now, you're pretty limited in motherboard choices, as they're all kinda low end.

There is one nice 754 PCIE board out there, the Epox 8NPA-SLI. It's cheap, overclocks very well and has nice onboard features.

AGP should be avoided for any new builds. The situation for AGP has become pretty hopeless at this point, both in terms of what cards are available and what they're being priced at.