Give me a BUDGET upgrade/new rig

[abracadabra1a2b]

My rig presently is a

Processor: Pentium 4 1700MHz (L1 cache: 8.00 Kb, L2 cache: 256.0 Kb, L3 cache: 0 Kb)
Motherboard: V.P4MDPT P4M266-8235-6A6LWJ19C-00 (Socket 478) (VIA Technologies, Inc.)
Ram: 128 Mb PC2100
HDD: Seagate 40GB IDE
Video Card: RAGE 128 PRO Ultra GL AGP

Now I need a serious upgrade so as to play some of the latest games like FEAR, Quake 4, NFS Most Wanted, Battlefield 2, Civilization IV. Please do note I prefer for a budget upgrade/new rig. I prefer going for a AMD system over INTEL. Now that there is a serious need for change in the motherboard and support for PCI E technology. Please do suggest a good budget $200 - $500 configuration.

 

[Scout]

For an inexpensive gamer, I would spring for a Semperon 3100+ chip and overclock it (around $100). Add to that a gig of nice Corsair PC3200 DDR ($80) and a Geforce 6600GT ($120) and an Abit NV8 motherboard ($75) and you'd have a nice little gaming rig. Total is about $375.

You may have to also buy a new Power supply depnding on what ya got now and your old 40 gig Hard Drive is pretty small, but you can live in 40 gigs if you have to!

 

[o1die]

Instead of the sempron, I recommend the athlon 64 2800. It's about the same price as the 3100, and with 512 cache and 64 bit operating system support, is worth a few dollars more. Newegg had them refurbished for around $100. It actually runs cooler than my 939 venice.

 

[DuxSyagrius]

Since you mention gaming specifically, Your CPU is not really going to matter if you ramp up the resolution and eye candy. At high settings there is not much of a difference between an FX chip and a sempron. Well, at least not 600 bucks worth!

I would also suggest a sempron 3100. It runs cool and is just a little slower than a venice core 3000. Its 80 bucks.

Biostar has a good S754 board with PCI-e. Its micro atx and has everything built in to include graphics but I dont think you are going to be doing much of anything with it. But at least you can use it should you decide to wait on a graphics card. Its also reportedly a good overclocker. It costs $70

Any DDR 400 RAM with a cas latency of 2.5 will do. Since you cant run the RAM in dual channel mode, you only need to get one stick. getting one stick also seems to improve your chances at getting a higher stable overclock. 80 bucks.

I suggest a 6800 for your graphics solution. It has a 256 bit bus that will allow more room for you to grow in the near future. It runs fairly cool compared to the X800 from ATI and supports all of the latest rendering technologies. It goes for anywhere from 140-170 bucks. The 6800 GS is even better but it costs 200 bucks.

I think this is the best way to get the most bang for your buck.