Upgrade, do I have the right parts and price?

[Wyoming]

I am upgrading my old PC to the following specification (existing parts are in blue, new parts have their prices (including shipping) and suppliers).

Coolermaster Centurion 5
52x CD-ROM Drive
1.44" Floppy Drive
120mm Akasa Blue Fan
80mm Akasa Blue Fan
512MB DDR400 Matrix RAM
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice - Novatech £82.22
128Mb Connect 3D PCI-E X700 Tv/DVI - Scan £68.80
Gigabyte K8NMF-9 - K8 - Scan £52.88
425W Hiper Power Dual Fan PSU - Scan £35.12
Socket 939 AK-855-BL CPU Fan - PC World £12.99

I will be running a stock system (the possibility of overclocking does not exist). Are these components good enough to play games released recently at lower settings? Have I got the best prices for these components? Comments appreciated.

[Merlin4458]

venice is a good choice m8. everything else seems fine. Although i would splash maybe another 30 quid and get a 6600GT.

[sgoaty]

Looks good but you might want to add a DVD drive as alot of games are coming in that format these days
Scott

[Dark Horse]

I agree with merlin, a vanilla 6800 or 6600gt would be a much better bet as the x700 is a pretty underpowered card these days.

[Wyoming]

I forgot to mention, but I play strategy games with only a few retro first person shooters. I was under the impression that the CPU was more important than the graphics. I had not allocated much money to the graphics card for that reason. I will research some options due to those comments though. I am not a die hard fan of Nvidia or ATI, however I lean towards ATI. What (in terms of cost) is the best ATI card for the cost of the 6600GT?

[zulander]

If your going to try and match the 660gt then u may as well get the one of the new x800gt cards. They are getting rave reviews for the performance they give and you can pick one up for around a £100. This one is actually £111

http://www.microdirect.co.uk/Product...79&GroupID=339
but im sure ive seen them cheaper

[Wyoming]

If I am going to be spending on more on a graphics card. Would I get more performance (in strategy games) from upgrading to say, an Athlon 64 3200+ instead of an Nvidia 6600GT or 6800? Can anyone find any benchmarks for games like Rome Total War, Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War or similar? On a different note, could I play Battlefield 2 comfortably on the original system posted?

Thanks for the comments so far.

[Xaneden]

For games like Rome: TW, a higher end graphics card is advised. Believe it or not, modern RTS games can be almost as taxing on a PC as their FPS counterparts.

Don't slack on a graphics card, you'll regret it later

[Dougal]

I'd say get more RAM, 512MB is OK for the Older games. But current games are beginning to go into 2GB territory.

Get another 512MB really

[Wyoming]

I have plans to buy another stick this Christmas, so yeah that is already planned. I will also be buying a Dual Layer DVD-RW and then a SATA 80GB HDD with Windows XP Home. This is just an upgrade to make way for other upgrades.

I forgot to mention in the first post but my HDD and Operating System are:

40GB Seagate ATA33 HDD
Windows ME

[skuzgib]

You'll get more of a boost from a faster graphics card than a marginally faster CPU.

Any A64 will be great.

You'll want to ditch ME in favour of XP as well, for compatibility.3

[Wyoming]

You'll want to ditch ME in favour of XP as well, for compatibility.

Will I be able to run the upgrades on ME for 1-2 months before going to XP?
I hate the limits of very little money...

[skuzgib]

Will I be able to run the upgrades on ME for 1-2 months before going to XP?
I hate the limits of very little money...

Yep, I was thinking of software compatibility (games mostly)

[999tigger]

Read the thread and unless your strategy games were turned based hex games, then games like Rome Total War are very graphics intensive.

Definitely go for a 939 PCIE set up with a x800gt which as said above is getting great reviews for just over £100. The X700 would probably be struiggling.You can get by on 512mb.

A 3000 vebice will do more or less what you want and even then you can overclock later.

[Svarn]

Scan has a venice 3000+ oem for around 75 quid in the Today Only section. Seems like a better deal.

[kempez]

I would get XP Home OEM (£50). ME is a POS (had it for a while, crashed more times than I care to say).

Get a nice x800GT will help in gaming.

AMD 3000+ + Cheap NF4 gigabyte board should be good