I'm always a little reluctant to upgrade bits of my pc because I normally start off a new pc with reasonably well balanced components and upgrading just one or two tends to mean that the really good (and expensive...) component is being under-utilised by the rest of the system.
At the moment I'm running:
mobo: Sparkle nForce 2 400 (don't think it's an ultra, but I could be wrong)
cpu : Athlon XP 2400
ram : 512mb pc2700 (cold be 2100, I forget :) )
gfx : geforce fx 5600 128mb
hdd : Western Dig 120Gb, 7200rpm, 8mb cache
disp: 19" iiyama VM454pro
It's comfortable running halflife2 at 800x600 with medium type settings (~65fps on the inbuilt HL2/CSS video stress test with relative default settings) and could go up to 1024 if was willing to accept the framerate drop, but 800x600 looks good enough for now!
I figured the two main upgrades it could use after watching my slow slow load speeds at a recent LAN would be more and better ram (1Gb pc3200) and/or a new spangly gfx card, though both those items are quite pricey and I'm wondering whether it wouldn't be better to wait a while longer until I need to redo the whole pc...
:rolleyes:
No one bothered to reply? Shame on you ;)
It's all a matter of budget and preference.
Everything seems to be well balanced at the moment. However we're at that point where a major upgrade would mean moving away from AGP to PCI X. This will require a new mobo, CPU, RAM and grahics card. A fairly major upgrade! It's up to you but I'd go for one more smallish upgrade and then move to PCI X when the prices are a bit more sensible. (I also hear rumour of a new case spec that will supercede ATX?)
I'd get a gig of ram (just adding another stick of PC 2700 wouldn't be a bad move), then a new graphics card (ATI 9800 Pro 128mb is about £150.00) and then a CPU upgrade to XP2800 or XP3000 if you feel rich enough. That should keep you ticking over till the middle of next year when the new PCI X kit should be cheaper.
:withstupid:
New motherboard format is called........ BTX.
They basically include repositioning of certain componenets to aid cooling and will also include latest technology ie pci express etc. New cases will be required. <_<