How To Best Spend $250 on Upgrading Your Rig

Test Setup Details

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Test System
CPUAMD 2000+
FSB266 MHz
MotherboardDFI LANParty NFII Ultra B
MemoryGeneric at 166 MHz 512 MB PC2700 @ PC21001 GB - 2x Kingston HyperX at 200 MHz 512 MB
HDDWestern Digital 7,200rpm 80 GB SATA (8 MB)
Power SupplyFortron Source 300W
CPU CoolerSpeeze
Drivers & Configuration
GraphicsATI Catalyst v5.6NVIDIA v77.62
ChipsetnForce 2 Ultra
OSWindows XP Prof. SP2
DirectXDirectX 9.0c
Graphic cards used in this article
ATIRadeon 9800 Pro 256 (ATI)
NVIDIAGeForce 4 Ti4200 (Gainward)
Benchmarks
Doom3Timedemo: Demo1
Half-Life 2Custom Demo: MW_Coast1
UT2004Custom Demo: Assult-Fallen City

Note:

We used Kingston HyperX modules because we had the redily available in the LAB. They are more expensive but when running at slower clock speeds you should be able to get similar results compared to what cheaper RAM components offer. You should go with a value RAM solution and obtain similar results.

Regarding the graphics card, you could use a 128 MB version of the card and get similar results. You can choose an NVIDIA GeForce 6 series AGP card. You can get similar results for about the same price. You can go with either, the choice is yours, however, it is necessary to make sure that the memory interface is 256-bit and not anything narrower unless you go with 6600GTs which are 128-bit but are still just as fast.