upgrade old pc or buy new 1?

[lastsaneaussie]

hi

I'm in a delema atm and cant decide wat to go with
I want to make a decent gaming machine, I hardly know anything about pc's so I thought id ask for help.the following pc aint to bad but I'm looking for somthing with a lil more GRUNT

I currently have the following pc

CPU - intell p4 2.8g (pc3200) hyper wateva technoligy

Memory - 512 (2x 256) pc3200 ram

vid card - nvidia gefore fx5200

sound card - audigy 2

asus sis648 (p4s800)

well their the main components



now the thing is if i keep this and just buy a new 1 straight up this pc would make a decent experimental pc as i want to get into computers a lil more.
But If i upgrade this 1 slightly I will save alot of money.Which im not too worried about

I am thinking of buying the following

vid card - nvidia geforce 6800 ultra (weneva it arrives in stores)

sound card - the latest creative sound blaster ?

intel p4 3.2g (pc3200) with h/t technoligy (never used any other brands eg. amd )

memory - 2x 512 (pc3200)

Case - not too sure on this nor power supply or wat fans

motherboard not to sure either.

hard drives arnt too hard nor is cd rom/burner



If I buy another pc it will be only my second eva pc and the 1st 1 i bought like 12-16months ago (somewhere around there).

I would like any help at all I can get, no one I know knows anything about pc's and if I ask the pc stores I'm guessing they'll recommend anything they have in stock.

Thanks pplz and I look forward to ur opinions / critisism

[Jawadali]

Just upgrade your first one. MAybe add some more RAM and upgrade the video card.

[hawkman_jack]

Your PC is fine as is with the exception of the vid card. If you are sticking with Intel then just upgrade your video and add a stick of RAM and call it good.

On the other hand, if you want to do an extreme upgrade then you need to get away from Intel and get an AMD 64. Intel cannot even come CLOSE to comparing. I used to be a die hard Pentium guy but until Intel comes out with a 64 bit processor they are dead in the water.

Not only that you spend half as much to get a better processor. This also allows you to get a motherboard using NVidia's NForce3 chipset which again smokes the nearest competition allowing you to run dual channel for much faster memory access.

Your sound card is pretty much the best one out there... unless you want to upgrade to an Audigy2 Platinum. About the biggest difference you will see, however, is double the cost.

Ok, back to the video card. You can either get an FX9050 (cost is coming down fast) or if you have about $600 to spend on a video card you can get one of the new Ultra's that were just released. Personally, I would either get the 9050 which is a great card or wait about 6 months till the next generation video card prices come down a couple hundred.

Hope this helps,

Jack Alan Naugle

[EXreaction]

I would say you could use a new vid card and everything else is fine, but instead of the 6800 ultra look at the Bgf 6800 GT OC, it is $100 cheaper and if you overclock you can get the same or higher clock speeds than the 6800 ultra.