help with upgrade

[piggeh]

my friend has asked me to get some parts for his PC and give it an upgrade before he goes to uni. He wants a new motherboard, ram, and videocard. motherboard needs to have firewire, IDE ports, and usb2.0 socket to connect the front usb ports on the case (is this standard these days?), socket 478.

He has a budget of £200. At the moment, I've got the following lined up at present:

Sapphire ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 256MB graphics card £68
Gigabyte 8S655FX-L £42
2x 512MB 184Pin DIMM PC3200 CL2.5 ^ http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/comp...G?refererid=t5
£52 (as posted in the bargains section!)

which comes to £162 (without delivery costs).

I was wondering where this could be improved further, and what the thoughts are on the graphics card? I am tempted at the moment to advise him to spend a tad over £200 in total and go for a 9800 Pro (£111 atm), but was wondering if there were any decent enough cards within his budget.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[Nick F]

I would go for the 9800 pro for sure, well worth paying that little extra so he can get DirectX9 support.

[Hans Voralberg]

Go with the 9800, but isn't 9600 has DX9 support too ??

[piggeh]

well, it will have to last 3-4 years as he's doing a phd and cant afford during that time to upgrade the machine much further, so the graphics card should be good enough for 3 or 4 years.

[Ceefer]

Definitely go with the 9800 pro which can be bought from lots of places for a little over £100 - I just got mine from Microdirect for £109 - which will take him over the £200 mark in total, but not by much.

[ed^chigliak]

Savastore have a 9800pro at £92inc

Product Ref: 10280845

[owen1978]

Find a good mobo here

Mobo

Go with the IC7-G

[piggeh]

9800 pro is it then.

I tend to stay away from overclockers, given the feedback some people have given them.

thanks for the posts.