Which Should I Upgrade First?

Lews

Desert Nomad

Join Date: Mar 2005

Seattle, Washington

R/E

Spent 30 bucks on a 512 mb stick of ram. 2700
Spent 50 bucks on a Ati 9200

80 dollars US, not sure how much in C-land.

prissv

prissv

Frost Gate Guardian

Join Date: May 2005

Out in the sticks.

N/Me

max budget and was this pc costume build or did you buy from store, dell, etc?

Lunarbunny

Lunarbunny

Lion's Arch Merchant

Join Date: Apr 2005

Seattle, WA, USA [PST | GMT -8]

Ready and Willing [RAWR]

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html
Download the utility, install and run, and copy/paste all under:
Operating System
System Model
Processor
Main Circuit Board
Memory Modules
I know that we already have the basics on a couple of these stats, but there are a few quirks that I'd like to see. Try to organize what you paste; check it in preview first. Otherwise it's near impossible to interpret.

MetalX: Yes, 5200s aren't great. GeForce 2? Hyperbole. They fall around the lower end of the 4s. EDIT: Oops! Did I put you on my ignore list?

Although I generally use nVidia cards, I think in the price range of a 5200, the ATI cards are better. I'm no expert with ATI, but as I've seen I believe that a high-end model of the 9600 might do well for the price range. Make sure when searching for budget cards that you get at least a 128bit card! The 64bit pipelines will severely cut performance for any card!

Last, but not least, do you have a dollar amount for how much you can spend?

MetalX

Ascalonian Squire

Join Date: Jun 2005

Atlanta, Ga

N/W

5200 is on par with a GF3 at best: http://www.overclockercafe.com/Revie...X5200/pg_4.htm

Barely touches a GF4MX(yet another of nVidia's glorified GF2s) here:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.c...id=1381&page=8

I stand by my original comment.

Loviatar

Underworld Spelunker

Join Date: Feb 2005

[QUOTE=Vertical_Zer0]And another thing - CPU/motherboard do not have to be the most expensive route. In fact, he could get a good 2500+ and a good motherboard for about $130 total. Cheaper than most decent video cards. But you wouldn't know that, since you have no idea what you're talking about.

QUOTE]

considering i am putting together a 2500+ Barton core and Asus budget dual channel as we speak it is wonderful that you picked those

along with the 6600GT this will be all the upgrades for at least 2 years as i have a very tight budget as well

got them at newegg.com of course and it was about 160 for both

since he stressed extremely tight one or the other not well i can squeeze both in if i really want to i didnt think he was looking for a new mb/cpu price point which would still leave him short on the ram and vc