Which upgrade - CPU or Graphics Card

[ajkiwi]

Ok - yet another "this or that" question.

There's an old Win XP Pro Athlon t-bird (512mb sd-ram) sitting here in the office with a 32mb geforce2 mx in it.

It gets used for work and games, and happily chugs along... until you want to turn up the detail on GTA3, Operation Flashpoint, or UT2003.

SO: limited budget US$500 upgrade (it IS a work machine): should we upgrade the mbd, memory (512 ddr), and CPU (athlon xp 2100+), or slap in a Geforce4 Ti4200 128mb? It's got to last a year before the next major upgrade cycle...

thoughts please!

 

[10GHZ]

if you cut down your specs... say if u get 256mb ddr, xp 1800+ and Ti420064mb... will u be within budget or over?
i live iin australia, so i wouldn't know how much things costs over there in the US.

 

[Raptorz_Wrath]

Most likely your mobo won't support both DDR and SDRAM. Iwould say go for the graphics card. It would be a little bit held back by your processor and your Ram however it'd be a much better boost then.

http://www.intelhate.com

 

[Conehead]

For $500US you could get a decent mobo, cpu, some ram and a video card. You could get:

ASUS A7V333 motherboard ($110)
AMD Athlon XP 2000+ ($96)
512 MB of Samsung PC2700 (333Mhz) DDR ($140$)
MSI Geforce4 ti 4200 128MB version ($160)

Total: $506 (roughly)

Which would give you a pretty decent system!
You could also get a little less if money is too tight...
Lets say 256MB of RAM instead of 512MB
Geforce4 ti 64MB version instead of 128MB
And maybe a motherboard that is not ASUS.

*All prices from NCIX USA (You could probably find better if you shop around a little)


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