Mick

iTrader: (1)

Hi - just wondering if there are any 'must do' mods to my system with prices dropping on last gen stuff - or am I as well changing to a more modern board & cpu?

AN7 Mobo
Athlon XP2400+
512 MB RAM
NVidia FX5700
Maxtor 200Gb SATA HD

I don't play much in the way of games, but have been surprised to see the graphics struggling to generate the screen image at times - also struggled to play cleanly a HD camera video - & the guy who filmed it commented about the 'low spec' of my machine

Is there an obvious bottleneck - or is it all just a few generations old now?

Any advice much appreciated.

Cheers

Mick

Scooby Dooby Blue

There doesn't look to be a clear 'bottleneck' with your system as the components are pretty well matched (for it's age).

You'll never fall out with more RAM but if you're thinking of upgrading, it may well be worth biting the bullit and doing the Mobo/CPU/RAM in one go, particularly as CPU's are now so cheap and DDR2 memory's set to fall significantly next week.

If your budget's tight:

ASRock 939-NF4G-VSTA motherboard (integrated GF6100 graphics and PCI-e slot for future VGA upgrade) - approx £45
AMD Athlon64 4000+ (Retail) - £77.50 at Overclockers this week!
512MB DDR (to double up what you have) - £30

So just over £150 would give you a significant performance hike.


If you can push the boat out a bit and want a few years from your new rig:

ASUS M2N/E board - £60ish
AMD Athlon X2 4600+ (Retail) - £140
2GB Dual Channel DDR800 - £140
GeForce 7900GT - £160

£500 for quite a lot of machine


....or you could just double up the RAM in your current system for a quick-fix but that'd be like painting over the cracks

Mick

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for that SDB...

Is the onboard graphics on the ASRock really better than my olf FX5700LE How things move on...

I had been tempted by those price drop Athlons... I guess that Mobo would be the cheapest way of getting one into my machine...

Although painting over the cracks for a while might help - could nick my 2nd 512 MB RAM stick back out of the kids 'Duron 1200' computer.

Cheers

Mick

Scooby Dooby Blue

Not by much (it also 'borrows' 128MB of your system RAM to run itself), but it would allow you to use the system as-is and put your pennies away to save up for a nice PCI-e card as it has the 16x expansion slot y'see.

For me, it's the sensible option for anyone that doesn't want to throw a wad at their system in one go.

Mick

iTrader: (1)

Thanks - time & advice much appreciated