Oh my.. it's a bright future for me... in 6-8 weeks I'll be getting $65 from a mail in rebate, and it's my birthday (sweet 16) early February so some cash will be flowing in So I think to myself, "My PC isn't very leet, most everyone else here at Bit-Tech is leet.. I want to be leet... but what would make my PC leet?!" With that question in mind, what to get? I expect having a $150 to spend total, and am hoping for a 19" monitor as a gift (been hinting for ages). But what to get?! A car? Nah 150 wont do much, for a car a job is the way to go. PC upgrade time? Now you're talking. I've thought of some things, but what would help the most for OCing, gaming, and also some video editing/playback? Some things I've thought of are in the poll, if you have other ideas please say so, and thanks for the input! Yes, this does only reflect what you want but I'm indecisive...
I'd think your biggest performance boost would be with the ram. It will definitely help with the gaming and video. That's a no brainer for me. Your mileage may vary.
I really think it's memory that you'll feel the most with a low-budget upgrade. After that, I'd be looking into grabbing a 7900 or 7950 GT, if you can find one for cheap. But then, another GB of good DDR2 will run you in the territory of $100, so you'd probably need quite a bit extra to grab a new video card too.
I agree that ram is important, but I think for general performance you need a motherboard upgrade. The nForce 570 should be a good upgrade. Go with a good brand like Asus and you should be set. That will get you SLI capability and should be a decent overclocker.
I've looked through prices and have seen some DDR2 for 91.. pqi is a good brand correct? But still pretty pricey. The video card I'm fine with, my little 76GT pulls along well at 12x10 resolutions on games for now, so it'd work well with a new TFT
also, instead of getting a new VGA cooler, have you thought about simply cable tying down and 80mm fan or the like to near the HSF ?? it usually works a treat and costs baerly nothing.
The only car I can get for 150 is a '68 Mustang with no paint, engine, or seats...(actually the ad wanted 350 but I could haggle) I've got $1000+ saved away for a car, no need to worry about that
hmmmmm 68 stang for 300? whats the body work like? id buy it and ship it here MMMMMMMMMMMM BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
get a $150 t-bill....then, in ten years, you could upgrade your video card to a 7900 gt...on a serious note, i dunno much about am2 boards, but if your board isn't much of a performance board or lacks sli, id do that. otherwise, ram...
Overclocking is not going to net you as much peformance as more ram, that would be my first choice of upgrade. Since you don't want a new videocard, SLI motherboards shouldn't matter. I wouldn't but a VGA cooler or CPU cooler, those temps aren't terrible, just put an 80mm near the VGA like Manks_91 suggested. You want the ram you buy to run at the same timings as your current ram, and the best idea is to get 2 matching sticks to insure they can both put out the same power.
Do you need to save for a professional CAD program? You can get perfectly good ones for animation, etc for free. like blender. Id go with the RAM too, or an extra hard drive (in addition to your current one) and an extra 512mb RAM if you want to do video editing seriously, it can use a lot of space if you're working with raw avi.
I voted "Other." As in "save your money." Seriously, if you're honestly disappointed with your performance you should think about doing some cleanup or reformatting instead of throwing money at the problem. I don't know what you use your computer for, but I'm guessing you do some gaming. And I don't know what settings you usually run your games at, or what games you play, but think about the monitor - if you get that 19" LCD you're limited to 1280x1024 and if the setup you have can't play just about any modern game at just about full quality at that resolution, it's not the hardware's fault. I've got a GB of RAM and while more is good for bragging rights, that's about it - I don't think I've ever maxed out my RAM. So save your money in case something more worthy comes up. You could get your car sooner, or maybe you'll stumble across a girlfriend and spend money that way. Or just hang on to it as spending money, which is always nice to have. Now, I realize you're asking what to buy, not what to do with some cash, so I'll add this to clarify my standpoint: Your current system is a beast. It's fast enough to suit almost any purposes for a while yet. Eventually, you'll want to do a big upgrade like a Core2 or whatever else might be king at the time. But right now, there are better uses for your $150 than the few percent performance boost it'll give your computer.
I don't understand Blender... I know a CAD program (Rhinoceros) that have a couple years experience in and is only 380 dollars (student license ) nor am I into animations, just conceptual sketches drawn to scale and cleanly. (Sketch-up is not very in depth to me). I'd love to get AutoCAD but hehe, that's WAY to pricey. And one guy saying something about Conroe, my initial investments into this PC were not great enough to get one, nor were they made yet, a month away still and would have been even more then for one... @crazybob, this is why I ask here. Input like yours always helps though at the moment I'm still just trying to fend off my crazy ex g/f It may be able to run plenty of things, yes, but I have seen a need for more RAM every once in awhile. I dunno, maybe I just like your praise of my system but I'll give saving a though... Maybe save up for a quad core AMD chip, I hear they'll make them for AM2 still
