Upgrade advice wanted (UK)

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim (More info?)

"Syke" <h.macguire@virgin.net> wrote in message
news:3f6q3hF69aavU1@individual.net...
> At present my system is:
>
> Athlon 900
> Asus A7V M/B
> PSU 300W
> Win 98se
> 512 RAM
> DirectX 9.0
> Crucial Radeon 9200se
>
> This works just fine for most of my needs, except games, mainly flight
> sims,
> (FB, IL-2, Lock-on etc) I realize that the CPU is probably the bottleneck
> at the moment, so I want to upgrade to get a reasonable performance
> increase, so that when there's more than two or three aircraft around, I
> don't get a slide show!
>
> Could anybody suggest a M/B, CPU, video card combination which would suit
> this set up without breaking the bank? I'm probably hoping to spend about
> £150 -£200 and I don't really want to change the OS or the PSU.
>
> Regards and thanks in advance
>
> P J Macguire
>
>

Seems you can get a P4 3.0 cpu for 100 and a good MB for 120. I only looked
at one site so you can probably find cheaper.
My best advice is simply get the quickest you can afford.
I would be a bit worried about your psu if you plan on getting a new vid
card in future.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.flight-sim (More info?)

I dont have an ASUS motherboard but poking around the ASUS site it seems
like the fastest CPU your motherboard will take is an ATHLON 1400. In order
to take that CPU you must have bios 1008 which, if you dont have it you can
get that the ASUS site. It MIGHT be that your board could take a faster CPU
if you tweak it the right way but that is information you can best get over
at the ASUS newsgroup:

alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus

Any upgrade much more than that will likely require a new motherboard. Even
if you stay with 32bit gear any new motherboard you are likely to find will
take DDR memory and not the SDRAM you have so you will need new memory as
well.

One thing to keep in mind. Almost ny upgrades you buy for any 32bit system
is spending money on a dead-end. The entire industry is in the middle of a
transition from the old 32 bit to the new 64 bit. Video cards are moving
from AGP to PCIExpress. Take a look at the new 64bit boards. Anything you
buy now that will not fit on a 64bit board is something you will have to buy
again when you finally go 64bit.