Hmm, I should upgrade

H

Huan

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 3, 2001
Messages
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I get the feeling I could benefit from an upgrade :) Heres my current specs

AMD Athlon 64 3200 cpu 2.25ghz

2gig Corsair ram (( will have to look into the case to see which exactly, but you get the idea)

Geforce 7600 GS 256 meg AGP Video

Abit KU8 v1.0 motherboard

620 watt Corsair Modular power supply

hard drives are the older 7200 rpm type not sure if worth upgrading to ones with larger cache or not

And I use the onboard realtek sound on the motherboard (( don't stone me to death guys, my SBL took a dump on me ))

Also, I am running windows XP.

I plan to use this rig mostly for World of Warcraft and folding for the most part... Id like it to play the games out there pretty smoothly if it isn't ungodly of a price for upgrades.. Budget? Um, if its a major boost, i'd drop a thousand to pursue this.... But do keep in mind.. ATT and Comcast for some reason still find my area unprofitable, so all i have for net access is isdn... Which some will know, its a 128kbps digital dial up net access ...

So... What do you guys think? ;-P be nice!
 
Keep your hard drives if you are happy with them, replace them if you need more space.

To decide on gfx card performance, we need to know what res you run in.

The PSU should be fine as long as you dont go for a x2 gfx card or SLI/Crossfire.

I recommend a Core 2 CPU that can hit 3GHz minimum.
If you can afford it get one of the new 45nM dual core CPU's, that should easily take you to 3.6GHz+.
Which CPU cooler you can use depends on the chosen motherboard and the case you have.
ie the TRUE 120 is rather big and may need to rotated to fit on the motherboard and may not actually fit inside your case!

Get 4GB Ram (2x2GB), even though you cant use it all in XP32. You need more than 2GB and 3GB requires all 4 memory slots to be used which can cause headaches.
The memory speed minimum is tied to which CPU you buy and how high you intend to overclock.
If you get DDR2-1000 you should cover all your bases but you may be able to get away with DDR2-800 / PC2-6400 with 45nM CPU's or even DDR2 666 / PC2-5200 with 65nM CPUs.
This is due to the different multipliers/FSB speeds the CPU's use.

If you ever intend on using Crossfire, you should get an X38 or X48 motherboard as the P45 and lesser chipsets dont have fast enough dual PCI-E slots to get the most from 2 gfx cards.
If you want SLI ever, you will need an SLI capable NVidia chipset motherboard. These arent highly recommended due to numerous issues.
If you only intend on using a single gfx card, a P45 motherboard presents the best value.

If you are happy with your onboard sound, stick with it until you can afford better.
I'm a big advocate of high quality sound for music, video and games so if you do have spare cash at the end, we can help with your audio system if you wish.

Others will have to help you with US pricing as I am UK based.
 
What sound card do you prefer? Just curious to whats considered good these days... I'm a little rusty atm
 
-On board sound is pretty good these days so dont waste money on it til you try it out.
-
 
Huan said:
What sound card do you prefer? Just curious to whats considered good these days... I'm a little rusty atm
Click to expand...
I'm using the Auzentech Prelude.
This card gives you the best of all worlds but costs a bit more for the privilege.
It isnt the most expensive card though!

Its main features that you may want to consider are:
First class analogue sound quality for Stereo or up to 7.1

This card uses the X-Fi hardware sound processor so has full EAX / OpenAL hardware acceleration like the Creative X-Fi cards, to EAX 5.0.
Soundcards without the X-fi processor are limited to either software EAX 2.0 or a simulated version of EAX which can sound ok but at times doesnt.
(EAX /OpenAL are for environmental game sounds)

It can send all 5.1 sound via a single optical/SPDIF cable to a home cinema hifi Amp.
You may prefer analogue though unless you have a very good amp.
This is because the analogue out is so good, only the more expensive amps / external DACs can match the digital sound conversion quality.
A tough one to decide on because 5.1 via digital is a great feature but the analogue sounds so good!

For even higher quality stereo analogue out, the front pair of speakers output op-amps are replaceable with components that suit your ear, listening environment or hifi better.
Unless you are fussy about your stereo music sound quality, you wont need this feature as the soundcard is already superb!

There are more features but I wont bore you with them.
 
17inch monitor here.. a samsung syncmaster 710N vga analog input
 
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