Eenie Meenie...

[Karl|Neo]

Right, I know this seems a little early but I like to be prepared With christmas coming up I'll have a bit of spare cash, and as such, something in this system will be replaced, I just don't know what. As always I'm sure you knowledgeable people will, so here's my system, what is the weakest link?

P4 2.4C
MSI Neo-2 Mobo
Radeon 9800

Also, I have a stock HSF on my CPU, would it be worth upgrading? It handles 250 atm so I'm not sure whether it's worth the money for an extra 10MHz.

[Edit: Would it be worth upgrading the case? I was thinking of an Antec P180, but my Alu Chieftec Dragon with 5 fans isn't that loud, and keeps everything pretty cool anyway, just isn't quite as good as a p180 ]

Thanks in advance,

Karl

[Karl|Neo]

[Shameless Bump] Anyone have any input?

[dawson]

Well, what do you use your computer for mainly?

[Karl|Neo]

Gaming mainly,and a bit of Uni work ever now and then ofc .

[Thorsson]

For gaming your weakest link is the Radeon, with the P4 running second. The case isn't going to make it go faster...

[icq3800846]

Yep the Radeon definitely is the weakest, the problem is, you're on a S478 board with an AGP slot. This means you can't really buy the latest and greatest graphics cards that are PCI-E only.

Even if you did buy a 6800 GT your performance might be throttled by your mid range P4, and it's not worth upgrading that to a 3.2 Northwood or Prescott really as you're running it at 2.8GHz anyway.

I am afraid to say that perhaps you might have to consider a motherboard upgrade to get good value for money.

If you're money isn't unlimited, (and who's is?) perhaps you could think about a 915 based board?

It's a generation old now, but the benefits are that if you buy the right one you can keep your memory AND your graphics card as some of them have AGP AND PCI-E slots along with DDR and DDRII memory slots.

FoxConn do one that has the old and new graphics and memory slots for about 70 quid. It is obviously an LGA775 board, which will take 800MHz FSB chips, so you will need to buy a processor too. You can pick up a 3.0GHz LGA775 P4 for about 100 quid.

This leaves a staggered upgrade path available, where you can at a later date buy a PCI-E graphics card and maybe some DDRII memory, then when all that's done you can make a jump to a 945 or 955 chipset.

I only really know about the Intel path, someone else might be able to make a similar suggestion for an AMD platform that could allow you to use your AGP card and memory until you can afford to upgrade that too.

The downfall of the 915 boards, as mentioned, are that they are a generation old now, you only get 2 DDR slots, and 2 DDRII slots, so you can't simply whack more sticks in as they won't run DDR and DDRII simultaneously, and they don't run dual core or some Pentium Extreme Editions. Then again, if you can afford an Extreme Edition then you can disregard the whole of my post and maybe lend me two quid for some chips and cheese.

Richard P

[Nox]

For gaming your weakest link is the Radeon, with the P4 running second. The case isn't going to make it go faster...

nope, but it will make it look faster

Nox

[Thorsson]

nope, but it will make it look faster

Can't argue with that!