Hi, I've had my system for about two years now and was wondering if it was time I upgrade. I do just about everything on my computer game, encode, ect. Here are my specs:

CPU Type: Intel Pentium 4 630, 3000 MHz (15 x 200)

Motherboard Name: Asus P5GPL-X (3 PCI, 1 PCI-E x1, 1 PCI-E x16, 2 DDR DIMM, Audio, Gigabit LAN)

System Memory: 1024 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)

Video Adapter: PCI NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT (128 MB)

Optical Drive: TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S182M

Audio Adapter: IC Ensemble Envy24 Audio Controller

Power Supply: APEVIA ATX-CW500WP4 ATX 500W

Speakers: Logitech X-530 70 Watts 5.1 Speaker

How big is your budget?

Around $600.

I have that same CPU and RAM in this computer and it meets most of my needs pretty well ... but I'm not a gamer.

For $600 you could improve your display adapter and RAM.

Last month I built a computer with an Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe MOBO, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ CPU, and 2GB OCZ DDR2 PC2-6400. Those parts alone were $585.

Why even spend that much when you can get another Gig of PC3200 RAM & an X1950Pro for something in the neighborhood of just $200.

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Your PC is pretty much a perfect example of a midrange (Or what should be midrange) computer now days. I agree with Doctor1954 and Sabertooth, upgrading your RAM and Video card is a good idea.

You also may want to look at hard drives with faster read/write speeds. If your current drive is a bit slow, getting a newer faster one can make a difference in booting up time and load times. Although to make it worth while you need to do some homework so you get the right one.

Mattwizz3 : )

Sempron 2600+ @ 2.2GHz
1Gb DDR400
Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe
200GB SATA
2X 80Gb IDE
256Mb MSI 6800 Ultra

steven01 doesn't mention his HDD.

From what I've read, unless you want to pony up to a 10,000 RPM Raptor, you won't get much bang for your buck:

http://www17.tomshardware.com/2005/...