Hey guys, got some serious money coming in over the next few weeks (well, a lot for lil' old me anyway). What should I upgrade?! Here's my current system: MSI KT3 Ultra Athlon XP 1800+ 256meg Samsung PC2700 PNY GeForce4 Ti4200 64meg (faster ram than 128meg ones) 40gig Quantum Fireball AS Plus Altec Lansing 5100 speakers Iiyama 19" Vision Master 1451 Lian-Li PC-6087A case Generic 32X CD-ROM drive Philips 4x4x16 CD-RW Visioneer OneTouch 9000 USB2 scanner Belkin 2-port USB2 PCI card By the way, don't tell me to upgrade the CD-writer, I only ever use it as a second CD drive Just use my dad's 32X Lite-On instead
How about another 256mb RAM A second monitor and PCI graphics card TV tuner card Faster CD burner A DVD player LCD
More RAM is something I was thinking about yeah, Photoshop likes 512meg more Second monitor is a great idea too, but I really don't have the desk space It'd seriously kick ass if I did, but nevermind I've been looking into TV tuners as well Looking at the Hauppauge Nova-T models which would allow me to watch digital Freeview channels and record them in MPEG2 (to be converted to DivX and burned to CD), would be great for films More suggestions pls
Personally I'd go with more ram first and foremost What sound card are you using atm? Not the AC97 I hope (eugh!) Otherwise I'd spend it on something other than the PC, if it does all you want now, or maybe some peripherals if you must (new mouse and keyboard, a func pad perhaps?). I doubt you'd notice much real world change with any large hardware changes tbh, so anything like a new motherboard or cpu would be a waste in my opinion.
Okay, yes, I'm using the onboard audio Just don't bully me! I'm not really much of an audiophile (well, at all) so I'm not sure whether to bother spending a decent amount on a new soundcard. Whilst we're on the subject, what good 5.1 cards are there at the moment with analogue outputs (front, back and centre/sub jacks)? I know there's the Audiwank from Creative, but that's pretty sucky from what I've heard. Maybe a Hercules?
The only thing with the 64 MB video card is that it may be faster but doesnt have as much power! Also, with that mass amount of money you should get intel junk due to faster FSB for your cheddar. Oh BTW I hate the idea of nihilism. ... Not an attack on you :
True, there's a trade-off with the graphics card. Games with less textures or lower quality ones run faster, but ones with higher quality ones run slower. But hey, it was an Xmas present and it's so amazingly better than my GeForce2 MX that I had before, so I'm as happy as this --> Hmmm, yeah, Intel is tempting due to the intense speed, but the priceerformance compared to AMD just sucks. Don't really wanna go spending ALL my money or anything
True.... Prices goood LOL. From the looks of it though, you got a pretty solid rig. I guess you could add more RAM. DDR is frickin awesome in regards to speed and fast HDD's are always nice too. You could always invest in a massive sound system of death. I personally like to FEEL the sounds of the game im playing.
Haha, yeah, DDR is the mother of all coolness. I'm pretty happy with the way my system's performing at the moment, I just wanna buy something expensive since I don't get this kind of money all the time (like, umm, EVER). My current speakers aren't too shabby. Look cool too. SATA RAID-5 would be nice
That kind of money could get you the ultimate case! LOL Now Im sorta new to Raid controllers and whatnot. Thats where you have all you hard drives plugged into an expansion card on the Mobo correct? This makes it so it looks like one giant hard drive? Does this require scsi drives? Sorry to harass you guys
Can't really sum it up better than that It's nice to see IDE drives penetrating the server market too now with RAID-5 controllers available for cheap (compared to SCSI versions) along with the cheap disks (again, relative) and the ever-increasing reliability from companies such as Maxtor and Western Digital.
Ja I realize that now. I bought some (2x IBM 7200RPM deskstars) for my beast and now one of em is not working and it happened to be one one with the system junk on it. At least the one with all my mp3s didnt get hurt....yet Had I known IBM drives are crappy I wouldve stuck with maxtor. I just thought with all the technology and stuff IBM puts out, at least their drives would be solid.
Yeah, it sucks that IBM have put out so many poor quality hard drives recently since it's totally destroyed their reputation amongst computing fanatics such as ourselves Okay, the current plan for my cash is to ditch my current RAM and get 512meg of nice Corsair XMS/OCZ/GeIL or something And maybe a digital TV card to build up my DivX collection with a few films Of course, S-ATA RAID is amazingly tempting
I'd hold on to the money till Q2 -- with that kinda cash you could be the first person on your block to have an Athlon 64
Thats of course if the Athlon 64 is worth the money. It strikes me as a marketing managers dream, just about everyone on here is drooling over it (why its just a CPU?) and scrimping and saving to own one. The thing is, apart from the 100% useless (presently) 64bit extensions, it will probably be slower and less reliable, not to mention vastly more expensive than a fast Athlon XP. What to do with that cash? 1. Don't buy a TV Card they are awful, I know I own one (Hauppauge Win TV/Radio). Freeview is pointless and crappy, plus there is no way on the digital models to say connect to the pay channels on say Sky+. 2. 512-768MB of memory is worth it for performance. 3. Large hi res monitors (I got a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070SB to replace my 15" and its great) are well worth it. You'd get a great LCD for that kinda cash. 4. Current crop of top end CD-RWs are excellent, especially the Yamaha CRW-F1 (I'm biased as I own one, just got it to replace broken old CD-RW, its superb), plus it comes in black (with blue LEDs that go purple when you burn, looks great!). 5. Rodents! I hear good things about the Logitech MX700. 6. Sounds! Good things are being said about the new Hercules 7.1 cards. Plus you can pick up a decent set of speakers for £100-£200. 7. New case if you're into making these look good. 8. New HDD, RAID a couple o 7200RPM HDDs together for awesome IO performance. Probably need new mobo, check out NForce2 offerings.
Thanks for the replies. I doubt I'll be selling my KT3 or XP1800+. I've had a Hauppauge TV card too, but the analogue ones are far worse than the digital models. I already have a nice mouse/case and speakers and as I said don't really need a new CD-RW. Hopefully getting me 512meg Corsair XMS3000 to replace my current Samsung stuff Got a 19" Iiyama monitor too, so that's cool
definitely moh ram, and the speaker system is also a good idea as you ain't gonna notice that much of a performance increase if you upgrade to let's say an XP2400, and r9700pro, whereas if you bought a 22incher, or great speakaz, you'd get to enjoy the luxury for years to come, not just til gffx comes out. the price on displays doesn't depreciate that fast. i'd say spend the monneh on something a bit more permanent, maybe a new tv to watch your movies on, or soming like that. as for this ac'97 dissing, i'd say the ac97 on my frv is pretty good, i ain't got any complaints about the sound quality even though i do have a pretty good 5,1 surround speaker system. that's just my opinion though and i don't see many ball mouse users complaining about how their mouse ain't sensitive enough til they've had an optical for a while.
Yeah, more RAM seems to be the general idea that people are coming up with, so that's pretty much a definate choice. I'm happy with my 19" Iiyama and Altec Lansing surround speakers for now, they're much improved over my old generic 15" and stereo speakers Might look into saving up for a car
