http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/0 [...] index.html

The time for an upgrade may be now. Next-generation platforms are still a year away, and in the meantime, upgrading certain components can help to limber up your two-year old system for another year.

Hm.... wow. This is almost exactly what I was looking at. xD

I have a 939 3500+ (Albeit a venice core, so the power savings would be null) and was actually looking at the X2 4200 and a 320GB hard drive for a cheap upgrade. The video card is good for a while longer, as I have an x1900xt, and 2 gigs of RAM already.

Seems like a good idea to me, at least, to upgrade. >>

Nice article - I enjoyed it.

FYI - The article mentions using the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500 GB SATA hard drive for all three upgrades, but the test setup and benchmarks also show the WD7500AAKS.

Also under test setup, "Graphics Card II" lists the 8600 GTS but I think the GPU and RAM are incorrect.

I actually did this recently, getting an x2 and a 2nd gb of ram for my aging system.

I did run into a problem though, and its important to mention to those who plan to do the same thing. The new ram that I bought was incompatible with the ram I already had, despite the same speed and timings. Either set of ram worked fine on its own, just not together. So either buy 2x512 of what you had before, or take your chances and try to match every spec (speed, timings, voltage).

I had a little question would the 8600 GTS be good enough for 16x10 resolution?

Wow, this is almost exactly what I had going on...But I already had a 74GB raptor with my 3500+ and had (and still have) a 6800GT in my main computer.

I can certainly vouch for the improved performance just moving up from a 3500+ to an 4200 X2. I was going to get a new card from this years mid-range, but the 8600 series and the HD2600 just don't have enough power to justify really moving up from an old 6800GT.

Oh, and BTW, I had to ditch the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe board because it was the worst board I had ever had to deal with...finally, I made the mistake of leaving it on overnight and the chipset fan died and fried the Northbridge...Terrible board, just terrible. I recommend if you have that board I would think about abandoning S939 altogether when upgrading.

You got everything except mainboard & processor & Vista Ultimate. Seriously 6400+ BlackBox is THE bargin or await integrated 4 core penryn, barc may be best inst set? certainly 690 minmum, better 790, there are few or X38, also few. Or await penryns need for new bios chip & grab that you cann't go high enough & higherU GO more you'll know few weeks make real display dif no matter useage.

SignedHYSICIAN THOMAS STEWART VON DRASHEK M.D.

I can't even bash the authors for this one, something with tests and purpose! Wow.

Seriously, though. You should've included something that used the 2GB RAM option, maybe X2 4200+, 2GB RAM, 8600GTS. Sounds about the best option. Looks like your Seagate gained ~20% over the 250GB. Let's assume the user doesn't need 250GB and is happy with those transfer rates. How would that setup compare?

Oh, and instead of running the single threaded version of LAME on a dual core then saying "There is a multi-core version available," why not actually use the mult-core version? Maybe there is only a 10% boost from the SMP version, maybe it's the full 100%. I'd like to know.

What do you think should I upgrade my system now, or wait for the new Phenom processors.? (socket A, Agp, Sempron 2600+, 9550)

Socket A? Thats far too old for upgrading in a cost efficient way. I'd build a new system now while prices are low. New stuff may be on the way by the time next year rolls around but it probably won't be very affordable until much later.

Good article

@ Peet - Thats alittle too old to upgrade, but when u build a new one in the future you have something to play with linux(if thats your thing, or u want to learn) and fold on

A good article. With short-term upgrade fixes.

I especially liked the following statement:

"I personally don't like the idea of spending so much money on upgrades, as an entirely new system (motherboard, RAM, processor, graphics card, hard drive) is not much more expensive."

Amen. I could not agree more. I generally do not upgrade an existing PC system, with perhaps exception of a graphics card upgrade. I generally upgrade the motherboard, processor, memory and graphics card together. That is because every 2-3 years you can rather inexpensively upgrade to a system with double performance for the same cost and power draw as the old system. But to realize this gain, you have to upgrade all major components.

I strictly follow the rule: I will not upgrade my PC system until it is more than 2 years old, components are available that have (at least) double the performance at the same (or less) cost and power draw of the replaced component.

The secret to a really effective, economical upgrade is to be proactive, carefully research and invest in a upgrade motherboard that has all the features you need or want. I found this to be crucial because if you wait for the high performance processors to achieve a discount sufficient to the cost goal, the good motherboards for it are gone, or available at much higher cost. Motherboards are not deeply discounted as CPU's, memory and graphics cards are, so its worth investing. Once you have motherboard in hand, then wait for suitable CPU's, memory and graphics cards to become sufficiently discounted (and rebated) when "better" products have been introduced.

Benchmark your PC with PCMark2005 and 3DMark2005 for scores on your existing CPU and graphics card. Then go to the THG VGA and CPU charts (which often does not have your existing CPU and graphics card because its obsolete) to identify candidates that have at least double performance. Use an online power calculator to find out what the componet power requirements are (such as http://www.extreme.outervision.com [...] rlite.jsp), then decide and wait. Memory upgrade is simple. If you have DDR-400, upgrade to DDR2-800, which has (at least) double bandwidth. Stick with low-voltage, mainstream memory systems and avoid high-voltage enthusiast memory.

Harddrive upgrades, which double performance (bandwidth) every 7 years, are difficult to justify. I do not upgrade harddrives unless the old drives are incompatable with the motherboard, or they are more than 5 years old, or I really need the capacity upgrade.

My last upgrade:

2005 Upgrade --> 2007 Upgrade
-----------------------------------
Epox 8RDA6 Pro --> Intel DG965WM
Athlon XP-M --> Intel E6600 (Both Operated at 2.4 Ghz)
6800GT 256MB --> 7950GT 512MB
1GB DDR-400 --> 2GB DDR2-800

Same Operating System (Windows XP Home (From Feb2002))
Same Harddrives (2 Seagate 160GB 7200.7 SATA-150 drives.
Adequate. No candidates with 2x performance Avail.)
Same CD & DVD Burners (Plextor Premium & Plextor PX716A)
Same Power Supply (420W Enermax Noisetaker)
Same Case (Lian-Li PC-65)
Same Power Draw (340W at Load)

Upgrade Cost $715 (Less than 2005 Upgrade)

Performance 17010 --> 38150 3DMarks (3DMark2001SE) 2.24x
4870 --> 9955 3DMarks (3DMark2005) 2.04x
3378 --> 6261 PCMarks (PCMark2005) 1.85x
3271 --> 6117 CPU (PCMark2005) 1.90x

The Seagate 7200.7 drives lowered the PCMark2005 scores. I took a 6% performance hit with the DG965WH which is optimized for 3.0G SATA drives. Still, 1.85x is a good performance gain.

For $750, a complete upgrade could be purchased that has nearly double the performance of the 2005 base system of the article. This is a much better long-term solution for the next 3 years than what this article offers.

"A Radeon X850 card still can be considered nice, because it continues to offer acceptable performance. However, this product generation does not support DirectX 9.0c with Shader Model 2 and HDR support."

"The two-year-old graphics card supports DirectX 9.0, but does not support Shader Model 2 (DirectX 9.0c) with support for high dynamic range effects (HDR)."

I thought the X850 did support SM2. I'm sure it doesn't support SM3, maybe that's what they meant?

Must be. I am almost certain the X850 supports SM2+HDR.

Good article btw. I recently went from a AMD3700 to an opteron 175 (socket 939, all that was left). It really helped out my games. Didnt see a bump in my 3dmark scores though due to it not working properly.

Good article, and I'm saying that as someone who's given a lot of advice on the best bang for the buck upgrades. The link to the old fallacious (wrong) article about how the 8800GTX needs the top cpus (it doesn't, since minimum framerate is what's important, and that doesn't require a 3.0Ghz cpu, but rather a strong graphics card (and yes, we know there are 1 or 2 games where the top cpu can actually improve them a little)) -- is kinda strange, as this is about cheap upgrades, not about getting a 8800GTX after all!

The only way I'd improve the article is.....taking out that link. Otherwise it's actually well done. And I don't give out complements to most articles on most sites.

Meh, I'm still using a 160Gb PATA hard drive

For the $500 upgrade, i believe there could have been another test set up, with all new components, while the option of selling the old computer for a new one and using the combined power of both the sale and the upgrade to build a new system was never mentioned.
IMO the computer in the tests did not need an upgrade worth trouble and money.

finally- an article on tom's that is worth reading through! this is the kind of thing that should be written more often. a couple gripes though-

"A 500 GB hard drive is more expensive than two more 512 MB DDR400 DIMMs, but it will last you longer than upgrading into an outdated memory technology." i don't really understand this.. as games will benefit much more from 2gb of ram, especially in the future, than a bigger hard drive. the newer hard drive may have better performance, but that is definetely going to have less impact than twice the ram in games that need it.

also, for gaming, dual core cpus dont have much of an advantage over single cores. the upgrade suggested is the same clock speed, just dual core, so performance in games won't be affected greatly. although, the dual core route would be better in the future.. although that contradicts with toms ditching the 2gb of ram for a bigger hard drive...

Agreed, the HDD vs RAM is stupid but I admit the do have a reasonable basis for that comment. The HDD can be carried over to a new system in the future, the RAM most likely can't. But for a quick performance boost, the RAM is better. I could have upgraded my 160Gb HDD instead of getting another gig of RAM, but I am so glad I didn't, as alt-tabbing is much more responsive and quick to get back in the game and load times are better.

Yep the X800s do.

FACT: X800 family does support HDR and SM2.0 as well as DX9.0b. Not 9c but 9b.
You can easily look that info up anywhere.
I know they say DX9.0c in the article, but I just wanted to specify the version. I am really disappointed with the lack of fact checking in this report, it effected my opinion of Tomshardware as a whole.

Also if anyone was considering upgrading the vid card only from a x800 series, to a 2600xt they would only get SM4.0 and DX10 support, performance wise there would be no improvement, perhaps even a slight step back.