wow, everyone here seems to have very powerful sys

The only time you ever need to upgrade is when your computer no longer does what you want, or if for some reason you need to do it faster.

I think U definitely need an upgrade. Not that your PC isn't good enough for what U use it, but if one day U see a newer game that U like, U might be surprised that it may not work on your sys. It goes the same for programes, etc.

As long as your system is doing what you need it to do, then you really don't need an upgrade, but if you're considering upgrading, check out the pricedrops that are now available to you, from the newer CPU's hitting the market.

If you are considering an upgrade take a serious look at the AMD XP line (preferably Barton Core with the larger L2 cache) or the established P4 line, (2.6 to 3.0Ghz), but my advice for now is to stay away from the 64bit CPU's, until the software catches up.




<A HREF="http://forums.btvillarin.com/index.php?act=ST&f=41&t=2541" target="_new">My Rig</A>

Everyone PRETEND to have a KICK-ASS sytem!

My system :
Athlon 1800+ (OC to 2.0GHz - 2400+)
Asus A7N8X (non-deluxe)
2x256 Megs of Kingston DDR333 (2.5-3-3-7)
Radeon 8500LE 128 Megs (OC to GPU:275MHz and MEM:290MHz)
IBM DeskStar DTLA307030 (30 Gigs - primary HDD)
Western Digital WD600 (60 Gig - sec. HDD)

--
Would you buy a GPS enabled soap bar?

I had an Athlon 1600 standard system till COD came out. Thats when I upgraded and when I upgraded I go gold.

Barton 2500+ @ 2200mhz (10x220 vcore @ 1.8)
Asus A7N8X Dlx 440 FSB
1gb Geil GD pc3500 Dual Channel (2-3-3-6)
Segata 80gb SATA 8.5ms seek
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro(420/720)

He's afraid of typing. dUh.

<A HREF="http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=610166081" target="_new">http://arc.aquamark3.com/arc/arc_view.php?run=610166081</A>
Figured i'd do it too..reality my ass.

I'm using a system that's roughly like that and it's dog slow compared to my system at home. I only notice the difference though since this HD is really old and I'm running at ATA66. That's what's really killing me.

It does the job of basic office tasks and I just had a great couple of hours playing UT, but if you really want to get stuff done and you want to play new games you need more memory, a better graphics card, and a 2Ghz or faster CPU.

From what you wrote you really don't need to upgrade. I'd only upgrade if you want to play newer games. Office tasks will fly on your machine. More memory couldn't hurt if you're using winXP though.

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<b><A HREF="http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?dhlucke" target="_new">Wiggidy Wack!!!!</A></b>

Lacking something in another department would be time for me. I hate waiting hours for a movie to encode, especially when I need my PC for 3D modeling.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

Since you have a crappy mobo, then you will surly benefit from the stability of nForce2 mobos. And you can easily overclock your CPU without unlocking multiplier in nForce2 mobo, because AGP/PCI bus is locked. PC133 to DDR/nForce2 will give good performance increase. So without upgrding CPU, you can get some performance increase if you go for nForce2. I recommend ABIT NF7-S v2.0. If you need extra features (better nForce APU+SoundStorm audio, S-ATA, RAID, Firewire), then consider buying ABIT NF7-S v2.0

512 MB RAM will be good. You can get 2 x 256 MB Kingston ValueRAM PC2700 CL2.5 for pretty cheap. You can sell your PC133. They sell at good price currently because they're harder to find.

If you have some money, then AXP 2400+ (retail) will be a good upgrade from T-bird 950.

If you need to upgrade graphics card, Radeon 9600 PRO/XT is available at $130/$150 and they're very good price/perfromance card.

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<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A></b>

<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig & 3DMark score</A></b>

tbirdXPlus, you can upgrade for the pleasure of a learning experience or to see some benchmarks increase, but I give my vote to continue with your config. As you say, it still works ok for what you are doing with it.

And as everybody says, upgrade when you buy some game/app that need more power (side note: what they say is recomended is in fact minimum setings, believe me!)

Oh, by the way: mine is an XP 1700+ with GF3, 512Mb DDR, Epox 8KHA+ (KT266A), about 2 years old. But before I was running with a K62+ 500, a lot more slower than yours!


Still looking for a <b>good online retailer</b> in Spain