[TrashMan]

I wnat to upgrade my PC a little.. I was going ot buy a new graphics card, but my local store ran out of GForce 6800 GE so now I'm thinking... what to do?

I have:

400W power
Athlon 1900+
K7 Triton 400 motherboard (kt400 chipset)
GForce 4 Ti 4200, 64MB
1GB DDR
ASUS DVD-RW
40 GB + 80 BG HDD

[Polpolion]

replace the 40 gig HD with a bigger one, or get a really small HD for the OS.

[Fineus]

Depends quite what you were hoping to get out of it at the end. The CPU, graphics and RAM could all use upgrading at some stage. The rest you can probably get by on for the time being.

[TrashMan]

I have two HDDs 40+80 GB = 120BG and it's far mroe than I need.  I allways have at least 60GB free...

Memory? 1 GB DDR memory shoud be enough.

CPU, motherboard, graphics card - those are prolyl the sore points.

What I want is to upgrade it enough to be able to play newer games (like BFME2) wihtout having to use lowest settings...

[Fineus]

I wouldn't be so quick to say that 1GB of memory is enough. I have 2GB myself and Battlefield 2 still takes an age to load. Of course once it does it's quite smooth but that's besides the point.

[Mefustae]

I have 2GB myself and Battlefield 2 still takes an age to load.

I'm pretty sure that it's the game, not your hardware, that is at fault. Remember, this is EA software we're talking about here, it's meant to take ages to load.

[BlackDove]

New motherboard, new graphic card, new processor.

That's a start. RAM you already have. HD can always wait. Those are the top three you need to focus on. PCI-E style.

[eagleclaw]

 It is your perferance what you want? Get something over 2 ghz for a processor. The memory is fine. It just what you want to do with it. Games better graphics card; geforce 5 or above.  Have fun upgrading.

[Nix]

Isnt it true that if you plan to run 64 bit windows, 2gb ram in 64 bit = 1gb ram in 32 bit windows?  If so, get the two gigs and you'll be set fer years.

Oh and btw, dont use a small seperate drive for your OS, partition it.  Its easy, and in some cases a more efficient use of space.

[CP5670]

You could use a better video card more than anything else, if you're on a tight budget (6600 GT, basically). Although if you have about $600 to spend, a complete overhaul is the best thing to do.

[Backslash]

Oh and btw, dont use a small seperate drive for your OS, partition it.  Its easy, and in some cases a more efficient use of space.

Eh? Why not?  A separate drive would result in less thrashing back and forth between system files and game files, not to mention the page file.  Unless there's some odd controller limitations involved or the small drive is old and slow, I can't think of why partitioning would be better. Am I missing something?

And I will agree with the better video card idea.  Makes a huge difference these days -- my friend has a slower processor but better video card than I do and his machine just smokes me.  From the type of CPU you have I'm going to guess you don't have PCI Express, correct?  The 6600GS or 6800GS (both AGP) are probably your best bet depending on your budget ($110 and $220 respectively), if you don't have the money for a whole new motherboard/processor.  I'm making a similar upgrade this month.  If local stores don't have things you want in stock, order online.   

[Fineus]

I'm pretty sure that it's the game, not your hardware, that is at fault. Remember, this is EA software we're talking about here, it's meant to take ages to load.

I guess so, it's certainly the impression I get from them. But if Trashman here is going to want to play those games then it's best he's properly equiped.

[Col. Fishguts]

New motherboard, new graphic card, new processor.

Yup, I have the almost identical setup as TrashMan, and the system is pretty well balanced concerning CPU power graphics card and memory.
If you want to upgrade, you should get the whole deal. If you just upgrade one component (like the graphics card), the rest of the system will be the bottleneck.

[TrashMan]

I'm going for the tripple play.

Changing all...later today.

I did mean to buy 6800 GS, but the AGP version is 2400kn, while the PCI version is 1700kn...and since for that price difference I can allmost buy a new motherboard, why not go the whole way?

So I'll get a PCI motherboard, a good graphics card and a decent processsor.

My old config seerved me faithfully for years.. there's not a single game I couldnt' play on medium details quite comfortably ...well...allmost...BFME dragged on medium.

[CP5670]

I did mean to buy 6800 GS, but the AGP version is 2400kn, while the PCI version is 1700kn...and since for that price difference I can allmost buy a new motherboard, why not go the whole way?

There's also the fact that the PCIE version is quite a different card with considerably better specs. Around here the AGP 6800 GS is about $220 while the PCIE 6800 GS is $150 (not to mention the faster PCIE X850XT has also fallen to $150 now), so you have to pay much more for a slower card just for AGP support.

I think on AGP, anything beyond a 6600 GT is practically worthless these days given how much cheaper the equivalent PCIE cards are.

[Nix]

Oh and btw, dont use a small seperate drive for your OS, partition it.  Its easy, and in some cases a more efficient use of space.

Eh? Why not?  A separate drive would result in less thrashing back and forth between system files and game files, not to mention the page file.  Unless there's some odd controller limitations involved or the small drive is old and slow, I can't think of why partitioning would be better. Am I missing something?

I ain't gonna repost my posts I mentioned in another thread, but having a small system drive is absolutely silly, especially if you are running IDE drives.  You only have four slots, and having one of those slots taken up by one tiny drive running your OS, well, that's just a wasted slot IMO.  Besides, I've got none of this thrashing you mentioned because of how I have things setup on my machine.  three hard drives, two in IDE slots and one on the SATA controller.  My OS is sitting on the SATA, as well as two other partitions for games and storage, and a seperate partition for the pagefile, with a tiny one on that drive for crashdumps.  the other two drives are mainly storage drives.  If you have a decently fast system (I'll even go as low as a 266FSB based motherboard withf 512 mb of ram) you shouldn't experience thrashing.  It's also very much simpler to have your OS on it's own partition, this way you don't have to back up all the stored files you need to save on the drive when you have to reformat the C partition.  You can blow away your windows install, and reinstall it back in that partition, and still have all of your files intact without having to back them up.  (BUT YOU SHOULD ANYWAY.)

[TrashMan]

IT IS COMPLETED!!!!

+3Ghz Athlon XP processor
a new motherboard (quility one)
GForce 6800 GS, 256MB

[Scuddie]

Ummm...  AMD never had a 3GHz CPU.  Also, I don't know of ANY SKT462 board that supports PCIe.  Do you mean to tell us that it's really an Athlon64 3200+ with PCIe 6800GS, or is it an AthlonXP 3000+  with AGP 6800GS?

[Sandwich]

Was gonna point you here, but it looks like you already took the leap.

[Nix]

Lets see some specs!