Upgrade or new PC

I would very much welcome some advice from those of you who have hands-on with both older and newer systems. I would like to play games at a higher resolution than the 1280*1024 default of my current monitor. I am thinking of upgrading to a 1680*1050 monitor and an 8800GT or 9600GT graphics card.

My PC is based on an Asus 8N-SLI Deluxe socket 939 motherboard, Athlon64*2 4200 CPU, 2gb DDR RAM, 7800GT, 250Gb 7200 16MB hard drive and a 550watt power supply. I am using XP SP2 and have no real desire to go with Vista.

Do you think the monitor and graphics card upgrades will suffice, or should I now be looking to buy a new rig?

Thanks.

~Sticks~

I think a TFT and card would be great. Does your mobo have PCI-e? If so, go for it.

Make sure your PSU is a decent brand rather than generic, but since you're running a 7800gt already then I suspect it's already a solid psu.

I think a new mon and gpu would be worthwhile upgrades although you could consider selling your current parts and get a cheap core2 system.

You can build a cheap core2 system nowadays, but the GC and Monitor would be worth it.

aye... get 2 9600GTs /8800GTs and a decent monitor, and you'll be laughing. best of all, you can reuse them when you go for a better build

Thanks for your help. I bought a Samsung 2232BW and an MSI Zilent 8800GT - its just like a new PC - no need to change anything else - yet.........

~Sticks~

Sounds good. Have you overclocked your x2? I used to have the exact same chip you've got and had it running 2.8Ghz 24/7 and could bench at 3Ghz - it gave a nice boost when paired with a high end vga card.

Dont get the zilent!!!!!!!!!

get an BFG 8800GT OC its cheaper and just as quiet, the zilent is a bit of a fail...

Don't know where you heard bad news about the Zilent card -- it really is silent, overclocked and looks a quality board. It has certainly made a huge difference to my rig and I'll be keeping this 'as is' until nehalem is out and tested in the real world. I haven't had any performance or noise issues since I upgraded and the new screen is brilliant - it'll do me anyway.

~sticks~