Morning all, Not been on for a while. Hope some of the regulars (jam, CobraR et al) are doing well. Well its budget upgrade time. Ive had my current setup for around 2 years looking at my last few post, and the P4 is even older at almost 4 years. Its been a solid PC and has handled everything ive thrown at it but its time for a little upgrade and to give the old girl a rest...she deserves it! Im thinking new mobo, cpu and ram but have been out of the loop for a while. First the CPU, something along the lines of a lower end Core2Duo or maybe a budget Quad core? Something to give it some processing umph as the X1900 ive got has never realised its full potential. Just looking for suggestions really, then help with marrying up some ram and a mobo with it. Budget is around £200ish ($350ish) Thanks for looking and cheers with any help. Buz. I REGISTERED WITH COMPUTING.NET AN ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOWSY SIGNATURE!! P4 3.6 Prescott DFI Lanparty UT 915P-T12 2x160GB Samsung SATA 2x 1GB Corsair DDR400 Tagan 600W PSU X1900XTX

Your system is still very respectable. Unless there's something you can't do with it, I see no reason to upgrade/rebuild at this time. Check this thread: http://www.computing.net/answers/ha... "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

jam, Ive been very happy with the system but there are 2 areas where its starting to show cracks. 1- is gaming. I was and still am a Total Annihilation (RTS game) fan and the update of this game, Supreme Commander, is a total CPU hog. The GPU ive got seems to cope ok but ive read the game will benefit from a faster CPU and better ram. Crysis (i know yawn, but ive bought a copy and want to play it the ways its intended to be played) play ok but on low settings. I realise with Crysis its more about the GPU but a CPU upgrade wont hurt. 2- Im going to have my comp hooked up to a 50 inch Panny plasma which will take almost any resolution. I have a aquired a HD/Bluray drive and im wanting to play HD movies in 1080p as they are dirt cheap everywhere at the mo obviously. Playing Spiderman 3 on Bluray it struggles a little with the processing, unsure whether this is to do with the CPU or GPU but an upgrade cant hurt...other than my wallet :) Question, am i right in thinking the 915P Chipset in my DFI mobo will not take Core2Duo processors. The mobo has 2 DDR2 slots and is obviously a Socket 775 board. Cheers. I REGISTERED WITH COMPUTING.NET AN ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOWSY SIGNATURE!! P4 3.6 Prescott DFI Lanparty UT 915P-T12 2x160GB Samsung SATA 2x 1GB Corsair DDR400 Tagan 600W PSU X1900XTX

"I realise with Crysis its more about the GPU but a CPU upgrade wont hurt." Crysis actually requires a pretty fast CPU to perform decently. I'd say the P4 is more of a bottleneck than the X1900XT. "Playing Spiderman 3 on Bluray it struggles a little with the processing, unsure whether this is to do with the CPU or GPU but an upgrade cant hurt...other than my wallet :)" Most Blu-Ray discs are encoded with VC-1 and/or MPEG-4 AVC. These codecs are much harder to decode than MPEG-2 (DVD) and MPEG-2 HD (HDTV). This, coupled with the extremely high bitrate (I've seen PowerDVD report bitrates as high as 48Mbps), is far too much for a single core processor to handle without the help of an HD hardware-accelerated videocard. You can play BDs smoothly on a single-core PC by installing a videocard that supports hardware decoding of the VC1 and AVC video codecs. Videocards with HD video processors: GeForce 8 cards (excluding G80-based cards: GTS 320MB/640MB, GTX, Ultra) All GeForce 9 cards All GeForce GTX 200 cards Radeon HD 2000 cards (excluding the HD 2900XT) All Radeon HD 3000 cards All Radeon HD 4000 cards If you want to keep the x1900, then you'll need a dual-core CPU to play BDs. Unfortunately: "am i right in thinking the 915P Chipset in my DFI mobo will not take Core2Duo processors." you're correct. You're stuck with the P4, as that chipset won't even take a Pentium D. The Quad-Pumped Super P3: Pentium M Dothan @ 2.82GHz (166x17) 3GB PC6400 @ 667MHz 9600GT Blu-Ray Modified PowerMac G4 Quicksilver case Homebuilt 1080p projector Vista SP1

Cheers for the info Jackbomb. Yeah i know the P4 is a bottleneck to the X1900XTX (it bearly kept up with the X850 i had before it! :o) ) I think at the moment im just wanting the CPU upgrade, then in the next couple of months sort out the GPU if necessary. This is obviously the right choice as youve mentioned because of the limitations of the chipset. Now onto Dual Cores, ive heard the E7200 and E8400 are good semi budget upgrade, both less than £100 here. Which is the best chipset to marry up with these? And possibly which mobo would be a good choice to go for? This Gigabyte mobo has cropped up.... http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products... My current DFI mobo specs are as follows which has worked well with all my peripherals... http://www.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_pr... Also what about an AMD Athlon Dual Core? Are they a viable upgrade option?....cheaper? Cheers. I REGISTERED WITH COMPUTING.NET AN ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOWSY SIGNATURE!! P4 3.6 Prescott DFI Lanparty UT 915P-T12 2x160GB Samsung SATA 2x 1GB Corsair DDR400 Tagan 600W PSU X1900XTX