upgrade help

[dmorr]

I have an old homebuilt system that I'd like to upgrade into something that can play modern games (ie Elder Scrolls: Oblivion).

Current specs:

Pentium 4 1.5 ghz
ABIT SR7-8X mobo
GeForce4 Ti 4400
1500 MB RAM

along with various peripherals, cd R+W and dvd rom drives, Cooler Master case, hard drives and so on.

Since I'm a) cheap, and b) don't want to reinstall lots of software and copy tons of stuff over, I'm thinking about just buying a new mobo and cpu.

Is this a good idea? Any opinions about what I should get? I'm thinking something along the lines of:

Motherboard:
MSI K8N Diamond Plus Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI X16 ATX AMD Motherboard - (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16813130037)

Processor:
AMD Athlon 64 FX55 San Diego 1GHz HT 1MB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor

But I basically picked those out of a hat. Any thoughts?

 

[doolittle]

a) you are not cheap if you are getting that newegg combo deal
b) I would definitly reinstall from scratch if upgrading from p4

Only thing you would need is a killer power supply and gpu to match... sounds like you are off to a good start.

 

[maxxum]

For someone that is cheap, those two are pretty expensive. I’m cheap so in my case I would go with a budget board under 100 (there are many very good ones out there) and use the extra 100 on upgrading memory too.

And you are going to have to re-install.

 

[mdd1963]

The FX55 is a fine cpu, but still rather expensive compared to the 4000+ model, which is only 200 MHz slower, and still plenty for gaming...

You will of course need a new video card, as your old Ti4200 is AGP, and would not be recommended even if you had a dual AGP/PCI-e Asrock variant; I'd begin with looking at a PCI-e version of a 6800GS, or even a newer 7600GT...: and if you have $299 to burn on a video card, look no farther than a 7900GT....

(For that matter, you will likely need a new ATX12v spec PSU, preferably a quality unit around the 500 watt range, and new 184 pin DDR RAM as well; shoot for a 2 x 1gb dual channel combo from OCZ or Corsair)

 

[oenomel]

To start with.....get the Opteron 148 and OC it......save 500 bucks or so.....and yer gonna have to reinstall the OS