**Help Wanted** System Upgrade/Complete Refit!!

[MrComplex]

Hello Everybody!!
After spending 2 days searching the internet, looking at hardware,prices, reviews, charts,forums etc etc. I eventually found this great site and i hope you can help me....

My current system is :-
CPU---------AMD Athlon 2500+ Barton
GRAPHICS---ATI Radeon 9800 pro 128mb
MEMORY----2x 512mb DDR 333 PC2700 (1Gb)
MOBO-------Gigabyte GA-7N400
SOUND------Sound Blaster Audigy 2

As you can see from the above my system is a little dated to say the least. I have £400(UK pounds) to spend and my aim is to beable to create a system to run upcomming games like COD4, Crysis and GTA4...hopefully with your help!!

The site i use when buying pc stuff is ebuyer.com, does anyone now of any ulternative UK based online store that offer competative prices??

Thanks in advance.
MrC.

 

[MrComplex]

Can anyone help me? Even just a suggestion on procesor or graphics card would be appretiated.

Thanks

 

[akhilles]

400 quids are quite a lot. You could sell this old pc & put the money towards the new build. Your mobo uses AGP? It's dated. You're just prolonging the inevitable.

 

[skywalker9952]

Just did a quick mini build on ebuyer (not the best site) here is what I came up with:
Mobo GigaByte nForce 570 SLI ATX
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/113844 - 52
Proc AMD 6000+
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/128510 - 92
graphics card evga 8800 GTS (320)
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/125117 - 178
Memory Corsair DDR2 800 4-4-4-12
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/111439 - 59
Power Supply 500W
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/99137 - 59
If you need extra power for an upgrade (SLI, 8800 Ultra, an ATI card) for an extra 9 its not a bad option, keeps your future options open. 650W
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130951 - 68

Total: 449 with the cheaper PSU.
You should be able to keep you HDD and cd / dvd drives, if not those are cheap upgrades for later. The motherboard only has one IDE channel, as such you can only have 2 IDE devices ie 1 HDD and 1 dvd drive, the rest have to be sata. So if you want two cd / dvd drives one will have to be sata or you should get a sata HDD (should be 20 - 30). What case do you have, does it support full ATX mbs (I am assuming it does)? I am in America and have a $ instead of a £ key so your prices aren't labeled. All costs are after VAT. What is VAT? Why does it show you two prices? I checked out a few things on newegg (like you PSU 12V rail amperages) I would recommend them if you want reviews / more tech specs than ebuyer. Without the VAT you will come in well below you 400 budget. You could do an intel build as well, but your budget limits you to the middle of the market, and AMD is the best value there. If you really need to cut some $$$ off of the build you can get a slightly worse motherboard, processor (I would get nothing worse then a 5200+), and RAM to save. I would keep the 8800 GTS as video cards are so important for the games you listed. Do some research, its your build and your money, this is my advice from about 20 minutes of surfing ebuyer. Maybe look at some benchmarks on THG, put together some prospective builds and post them on this forum and ask people for their thoughts. If you want to get the most for your money don't rush your upgrade. Just my thoughts, good luck on the build.