Hi,

Currently, my system consists of: AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (32-bit), 1024mb PC3200, ABIT NF7-s (Nforce2) motherboard,Nvidia Geforce Ti4200 128MB, 250GB western Digital Caviar SATA II Hdd (Currently running as a regular SATA drive, obviously) Enermax Noisetaker 485W, Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS 7.1 THX

As can be seen, it's looking a little dated. I've been managing to play games on it on medium settings for a while, and I wanted to hold off any upgrades until my ststem was just incapable of playing any game that I really want to play. I just couldn't justify upgrading for the sake of it.

Then came along Test Drive Unlimited...

I'm looking to upgrade now, but I have set myself the challenge of upgrading for less than the price of an Xbox 360 premium. My boss is an ex-PC gamer who thinks that I am mad and that I should just bite the bullet and buy a 360. I've never liked consoles, and I am not about to turn to the dark side.

I was considering either a 939 or an AM2 chip. If I use a 939, I can use my old memory, instead of buying DDR2 saving some money

I've been looking at:

AMD Athlon 3800+ 64-bit X2 (939) - £86.90
Foxconn 939, SLI, SATA2 NF4 mobo - £44.95
Inno3D Geforce 7600GT 256mb PCIe - £74.95

= £206.80 inc. vat and free delivery
An XBox 360 Premium costs around £279.99

In your opinion, would the proposed upgrades be worthwhile for todays games (bearing in mind the budget)?

Should I wait for the geforce 8600 series?

I don't know if it would be worthwhile, but have you considered breathing some new life into that system?

The PC3200 is being wasted on a 266FSB (133MHz) CPU & depending on your BIOS settings, you may actually be losing performance. What about selling the AXP 2200+ & Ti4200 and replacing them with a CPU capable of 200MHz (400FSB) & mid-range video card?

I have considered this, I was looking at either a used 9800pro, X800pro, 6800GT on eBay, but the prices of the 9800 were reaching £25-£40 + p&p. By most sites, the X800 and 6800 are regarded as mid-range at the moment. These were selling for £50+ without any guarantee of them working.

I could spend £50-£60 on an used 6800/X800 or an extra £15 on a brand new 7600GT

I have also looked at processors, again, I would be looking at either a 3200+ or a 2500+ mobile, but both of these chips have failed to drop significantly in price or are very difficult to find new.

A 3000+ 32-bit Sempron (Socket A) is reasonably priced at around £35, but a mere £10 more buys a 3700+ 64-bit and you can get dual-core for less that £90

939 motherboards are fairly cheap at the moment.

My concern with spending £90-£100 on components now would be that when I want to play games like Ghost Recon 2, Assasin's Creed etc, I will need to shell out more money to be able to play on medium-high settings.

It would be nice to see Test Drive Unlimited on the highest graphics settings.

I could spend £100 on upgrades which would last me 6-months to a year or £200 on a system that would last a lot longer.

I could sell the Ti4200, but it would only be worth around £4 on eBay. The same would go for the processor.

Using an SLI motherboard, I could also consider buying a 2nd 7600GT in the future.

I'm considering whether to skip the Dx9 cards all together and go from Dx8.1 to Dx10 when the mid-range 8600 comes out next month.

With the current state of things & the price vs performace outlook on both AMD & Intel CPUs and your loyalty to the longevity of that AXP 2200+, a CPU that is steadily clocking half a decade from release now - I doubt anyone will adamantly oppose a move to a complete system overhaul ;-)

Like your boss, I would recommend biting the bullet too - only not just with a console but a fresh build. Sell your current rig & put the proceeds from the sale towards a faster & more recent machine, prefarable a 939 or 775 based upgrade, but hesistantly an AM2.

Your money is better spent going that route.

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This wouldn't be a bad idea, but since in terms of selling, the processor is often the part of a system that defines it, I doubt that it would be worth much more than £200 as is.

The PSU and sound card are only about a year old and my PC only gets used occasionally on weekends at the moment so they are both like new. For a 939-based system, PC3200 is fine, and I already have a gig of that.

If I sold my system for £200, I would end up spending around £400 on bits for a new system because on top of the motherboard, processor and Video card (£206.80) I would need to add: A case, A HDD, a gig of Memory, A decent PSU, DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, Sound card. It wouldn't have any benefit.

The problem that I have with consoles like the 360 are games that cost £50 a piece compared to £15-£30 for PC games plus the feeling that you are tied-in as far as add-ons and peripherals go. Console games come as they are with no way of modifying or tweaking the game and XBOX Live is subscription only!!

For around £200 It would go from:

AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (32-bit),
1024mb PC3200,
ABIT NF7-s (Nforce2) motherboard,
Nvidia Geforce Ti4200 128MB,
250GB Western Digital Caviar SATA II Hdd Enermax Noisetaker 485W, Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS 7.1 THX

To:

AMD Athlon 3800+ Dual-Core (64-bit),
1024mb PC3200,
FoxConn SLI, SATAII (Nforce4) motherboard,
Nvidia Geforce 7600GT 256MB,
250GB Western Digital Caviar SATA II Hdd Enermax Noisetaker 485W, Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS 7.1 THX

Bad idea to go to the 3800. Go for the 4400 or the Opteron 165 or 170. Any of those have double the cache the 3800 has.

I also wouldn't recommend going with a FoxConn mobo. Not the best quality board around.

Any of these chips OC well, so the DFI LanParty if it's not outlandishly priced would be a good way to go.

Other good brands I'd recommend would be MSI and Gigabyte. Make sure you get either an NForce4 Ultra or SLI board. Don't go with a plain NForce4 chipset.

The downside of doing this though is you "only" have 1GB of RAM. Won't be too long before you need 2GB. Once you factor in money for that, you have to at least consider that for the price of a 2M cache AMD dual core, you can get a Core 2 Duo Intel chip that beats the pants off it. Granted, you'd need DDR2 for that, but if you have to get RAM to go 2GB, you were gonna be buying RAM anyway.

In my case, I recently had to make a decision about my virtual server, which already had 2GB of PC3200 DDR in it, so it made sense to go AMD, but had I not had that amount of memory, I'd have gone Core 2 Duo.

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