[SuperCoolAl]

OK as a little compromise instead of buying a whole new system my dad has agreed to shell out roughly £200 to upgrade my current one.

My current specs:

P4 1.7Ghz
512MB PC133 SDRAM
GF4 Ti4200 128MB
60Gb 7200rpm HDD
Creative SB Live! Sound Card

I think I will augment my system with another 512MB of Crucial PC133 RAM ( From here  ) and a Radeon 9800 PRO ( From here )

Is this the best option or do you reckon there's a better way? Im trying to aim for decent HL2 performance. I dont think ill be able to upgrade my cpu (too expensive) and i doubt 700Mhz will make too much difference with the card and RAM I'll have (see CS-S preferred specs).

[Fury]

I can see several bottlenecks even after a upgrade. If I were you. I'd try to save for a whole new computer.

First of, speed of CPU is not too decent, quite close to an older 1,4 GHz Athlon Thunderbird. Secondly, SDRAM is quite slow for later games, although if you have 1 GB of it, it really helps.

Since HL2 is not yet out, it's difficult to say what real performance would be with your upgraded system since we don't yet have nothing to compare against. (at least not to my knowledge)

You might want to wait till HL2 is out and then upgrade to a system which can run HL2 with decent speed.

[SuperCoolAl]

Taken from http://www.steampowered.com/?area=css_b1

What will the system requirements be for Counter-Strike: Source?

Min:
  1.2 GHz Processor
  256MB RAM
  DirectX 7 graphics card
  Windows 2000/XP/ME/98
  Mouse
  Keyboard


Preferred:
  2.4 GHz ProcessorB   512MB RAM
  DirectX 9 graphics card
  Windows 2000/XP
  Mouse
  Keyboard

I think it would balance out for the preferred requirements. Saving for a new system isn't really an option. If anyone can justify a better upgrade for an extra £100 I'm sure i could persuade Dad (bear in mind this is a compromise from getting a new system).

[Taristin]

Bah! He's bashing your CPU, but I still run on a first generation Duron 600!

[IceFire]

LOL first gen Duron!

My advice is that now is a bad time to upgrad your computer.  Unless you want to jump into the Athlon 64's.  My feeling is that the big changes are going to occur over the next year and that will define the standards set for the next generation of computers.

New bios types, new types of processors, new ram (DDR II), SATA, PCI-Express, etc.

[SuperCoolAl]

I understand what u are saying but there has to be a point where you say OK nows the time because there will always be new technologies to look forward to. What I'm basically asking is the best way to spend this £200-300.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by SuperCoolAl
I understand what u are saying but there has to be a point where you say OK nows the time because there will always be new technologies to look forward to. What I'm basically asking is the best way to spend this £200-300.

Yes I'm quite familar with that and I'd say that you stick with what you have for at least another year since you can get decent performance from it for the most part.  If you have limited funds, save them and use them at the end of next year (if you can wait).  There are large changes happening...once they settle a bit (like the current generation of computers have been settled for about 5 years) then go for it.  Just my advice...

[Fury]

I agree, a small upgrade rarely pays it off if it leaves bottlenecks to the system. It really is wiser to save more and then go for a larger upgrade and pump up performance for every aspect of the system.

Different games have different stress on system, others use more GPU/VPU and others CPU, some needs more RAM rather than pure performance. OK, if you upgrade your system for a particular game, then it is better to wait until that game has been released and you know exactly what you need to upgrade in order to get it to run with decent speed.

If you however play a variety of games, then you seriously risk leaving bad bottlenecks to your system. What good is top-notch graphics card if CPU cannot pump enough data to it? What good is lots of RAM if the memory speed cannot keep up? Not to mention bus bandwidth for memory, CPU and graphics cards which depends on system chipsets on the motherboard...

You don't need best of the best, just a balanced system which puts all the components on the same line and not leaving some behind.

Difficult? It always is with more than slightly outdated systems if you are low on budget.

[IceFire]

Yup...

The problem is that you have PC133 RAM.  Yes upgrading to 1GB will be nicer but its probably not worth it if you are looking at Half Life 2 performance.  The RAM is too slow bandwidth and has too much latency.  Then there is the fact that you toss in a Radeon 9800Pro and you aren't going to see much in the way of a FPS gain.  A image quality upgrade yes (but you could get that with any ATI card VS the Ti 4200 in my opinion).  The CPU, ram, and motherboard chipset are your bottlenecks with the upgrades and levels of performance you are trying to achieve.

You should be able to run HL2 decently and with virtually the same performance without doing the upgrade.  The requirements for the game are going to mean that you're upgrades are going to have small impacts on total performance.  If you are willing to live with that, then ok...go for it.

Again, my feeling is to do the total overhaul later.

My last jump went from:

Pentium III 733
Asus P3V4X
384mb RAM
GeForce 2 GTS 32mb
SB Audigy
20 GB Hard Drive (7200rpm)
CD Burner 10x4x12

To my latest system (which I built last year):
AMD 2700+
Asus A7N8X Deluxe (with Soundstorm!)
Radeon 9700Pro
512mb PC2700 ram
20GB (from old system) + 60GB (7200rpm) Seagate
CD Burner 10x4x12


Thats a huge jump...I expect to make it again in another few years.  But I did salvage as much as possible. Keeping your monitor, speakers, and all your peripherals makes things lots cheaper.

Next time I'll be probably looking at a 64bit Dual Core processor, 1 or 2 GB's of RAM (probably DDR II or III), and whatever suceeds the X800 and 6800 for video card with SATA drives and all that sort of thing.  Thats what I'm guessing will be the best choice in about 2 years time.

[Lonestar]

Why upgrade now? With now RDRAM coming, and PCI Xpress and new Mobo's with new PCI Xpress and other new options.

Wait 2 to 4 months then upgrade, atleast you will upgrade to fugure technology, right now the parts your looking at is about 2nd or third generation right now.

Save your dinars for the future.

[Bobboau]

I'd get a new mobo/prosesor/RAM (no less than 1 gig)

[Lonestar]

Im going to re-iterate. DONT UPGRADE! ITS NOT WORTH THE MONEY AT THIS TIME!

Sorry, i just hate seeing people waste their money cause they are eager for an upgrade.

[Fineus]

The problem with not upgrading right now though - is that it becomes a constant thing. There's always something 6 months down the line that will be worth waiting for simply to drop the price on the current tech.

Fact is that if he wants to upgrade now then more RAM, a 9800 Pro and - if he can stretch to it - a faster processor, would make a really good platform to run DX9 era games from (that is current games like Far Cry, as well as Half Life 2... Doom 3 might chug but I haven't seen that in action since the leaked alpha build.

I'd have to say that of the upgrade options SuperCoolAl has chosen, the 9800 Pro would show the most obvious improvement in current games (example: I played the Far Cry demo on my GF4 4600, it was good but chuggy and I had to drop the details down to medium-low to have anything resembling smooth play... now playing the full game with a 9800 Pro it's a dream - all options can be set to high and it'll be fine in all but the most intense battles).

At the end of the day, upgrade now and you'll have a stable platform for todays games. As Lonestar says you can wait and get the parts for a cheaper price - and given you want it for Half Life 2 which isnt out yet - that might be a good option for you to consider (depends how impatient you get.. I'm terrible at waiting for things myself). Alternatively if you wait a bit longer and save up some money during the period you can probably make a more substantial upgrade that'll set you up for that much longer in the long run with a solid machine.

The call is yours - you're making the right upgrades, the question shouldnt seem to be "what should I upgrade" but "when shall I upgrade".

...also, seeing as youve listed your spending budget in pounds you should check out www.scan.co.uk, a great company in the UK that Ive bought some parts from myself. They have "today only" offers which can list some really attractive offers compared to your average price.... can't complain about that!

Hope this helps

[Sandwich]

I'm a week away from completing a big upgrade...

From:

P3-600Mhz
320Mb PC133 RAM
GeForce 3 ti400
60Gb + 20Gb 7200RPM drives
12x AOpen CD Burner

To:

AMD Athlon XP 3000+
1gb DDR400 PC3200 RAM
ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb
2x 160Gb 7200RPM SATA Hitachi drives in RAID 0
NEC Dual-Layer DVD+/-RW DVD/CD Burner

That should hold me for a bit.

[IceFire]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
The problem with not upgrading right now though - is that it becomes a constant thing. There's always something 6 months down the line that will be worth waiting for simply to drop the price on the current tech.

Thats not exactly why I'm saying wait.  There IS always something in the pipeline yes...a faster processor, a better motherboard, more and faster memory.  No, my point is that significant archetectural changes are coming that are leadng the way for the next generation of computers.

Nothing has really changed in the last 4-5 years of computing. The biggest change during that time was the reversal back to Socket instead of Slot Achitecture but everything else was essentially the same.  You still had IDE, same bios types, SDRAM did change and either went with DDR SDRAM or RAMBUS (which is effectively semi-dead) but that was fairly minor in comparison to whats about to happen.

We have a ton of new changes that are significant and not just clock speed increases. There are fundamental and sometimes radical changes in the works.  The 64bit computing, introduction of memory management on the chip itself instead of in a bridge, serial ATA (not a huge splash but a change), PCI-Express (which is one of the biggest changes here now or coming soon), coupled with the word from Intel that they are coming with their new 64bit Pentium chips in the near future based on the Centrino design and aimed at being much cooler and more efficient plus apparently we'll be seeing dual core processors within a year or two at the most.  For Intel that will mean dual core + hyperthreading on each core which some are saying will mean that you'll have lots of multithreading.

BIG changes...if you want to take advantage of them...wait.

What Sandwhich is doing however is good too.  Thats a more worthwhile upgrade and should last for another 3-4 years before he jumps into the next gen computing.

If you goal is still to play HL2 and the other big ones you may want to wait.  I just don't think dropping in a fast Radeon 9800 into a system that won't take much advantage of it and dropping some mor RAM in would be the best possible way to upgrade.

[Fury]

Sandwich, you would get more bang for your bucks if you get Athlon 64 instead of Athlon XP. AXP is not that much cheaper when compared to lower end A64.

[JR2000Z]

I have only a P3 1.2 ghz and a lil over 300 meg machine. I'm saving up so I can get :


ASUS "A8V Deluxe Wi-Fi" K8T800 Pro Chipset Motherboard for AMD Socket 939 CPU

and

AMD Athlon 64 FX-53, 1MB L2 Cache, 940-pins, Windows Compatible 64-bit Processor

Hope it works.

[Fury]

I'd take regular A64 instead of FX... Regular costs a lot less and still offers very similar performance, especially socket 939 ones since now they have dual channel support.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Sandwich, you would get more bang for your bucks if you get Athlon 64 instead of Athlon XP. AXP is not that much cheaper when compared to lower end A64.

I was sorely tempted to do just that while reading western world reviews about performance and such, but then I looked at prices here in Israel... if something hasn't become a mainstream item in computers here, it's expensive. So I figured that since I'm upgrading a measly P3-600, the performance leap I'll be getting will suffice for a good while, and I wouldn't be "wasting" money on fairly new technology. I'll wait until the 64-bit line matures a bit more before getting one - probably right when Longhorn comes out, since that'll be the first major thing for me that'll use the 64-bit-ness (AFAIK).

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Kalfireth
The problem with not upgrading right now though - is that it becomes a constant thing. There's always something 6 months down the line that will be worth waiting for simply to drop the price on the current tech.

Fact is that if he wants to upgrade now then more RAM, a 9800 Pro and - if he can stretch to it - a faster processor, would make a really good platform to run DX9 era games from (that is current games like Far Cry, as well as Half Life 2... Doom 3 might chug but I haven't seen that in action since the leaked alpha build.

I'd have to say that of the upgrade options SuperCoolAl has chosen, the 9800 Pro would show the most obvious improvement in current games (example: I played the Far Cry demo on my GF4 4600, it was good but chuggy and I had to drop the details down to medium-low to have anything resembling smooth play... now playing the full game with a 9800 Pro it's a dream - all options can be set to high and it'll be fine in all but the most intense battles).

At the end of the day, upgrade now and you'll have a stable platform for todays games. As Lonestar says you can wait and get the parts for a cheaper price - and given you want it for Half Life 2 which isnt out yet - that might be a good option for you to consider (depends how impatient you get.. I'm terrible at waiting for things myself). Alternatively if you wait a bit longer and save up some money during the period you can probably make a more substantial upgrade that'll set you up for that much longer in the long run with a solid machine.

The call is yours - you're making the right upgrades, the question shouldnt seem to be "what should I upgrade" but "when shall I upgrade".

...also, seeing as youve listed your spending budget in pounds you should check out www.scan.co.uk, a great company in the UK that Ive bought some parts from myself. They have "today only" offers which can list some really attractive offers compared to your average price.... can't complain about that!

Hope this helps

Usually i would agree here, but this is different. Technology is changing so much that if you upgrade now to older generation parts, in 2 years you wont be able to upgrade at all again.

its worth waiting 6 months for the new stuff to be out and for it to become cheap and affordable as the industry is leaning towards making certain parts we use now, obsolete in the next few years.

So spend your money on old technology today and suffer in the future. usually you can get away with it, but computers are changing so much in the next few months its better to wait and see how it pans out.