What to upgrade next.

[oldagerocker]

right, i have a shuttle and i cant afford a new mobo/case/psu combo complete upgrade, so i want to make this rig as good as it can be.

I recently upgraded it (it's agp) to a x800XT (Psu limits me buying the newer agp cards), and im not sure whats best to upgrade next to get the most out of the machine.
Currently, its got

3000+ Athlon64
1gb Corsair 3-3-5-3 timing ram (i know that's slow, didn't know the timings when i bought it, anyway i can change that?)
Seagate Sata 70gb hdd (i can only have one hdd because my x800xt takes another molex and i dont want to overload the cpu, i have external drives though for media)

Now, ofcourse my options are to get what are now cheap 939ping cpu, 2gig Ram or something like a raptor... if it doesnt take too much power.

What'll get me the most bang for my buck? I got about 1500 or so in 3dmark06.

 

[3ssence]

Well, an amd64 3700+ can be had for the moment at around 60 pounds, from a number of uk sites, my personal preference would be scan. Or you could try and get hold of a dual core 939 cpu, although they are started to become more rare, the 4600+ being the only i see in stock on a regular basis on most uk sites.

Is your ram a matched pair of 2 x 512 sticks ? If so you could get another pair of 2 x 512 sticks. However, i guess being a shuttle, it may only have 2 ram slots ? Otherwise you could go for a 2gb matched pair of corsair XMS with 2-3-3-6 latency timings (amd64's like low latency ddr) for around 160 pounds. Also available at scan.

On the HD front, probably not worth getting a raptor if you are looking at bang for buck. A number of 250gb drives from seagate, hitachi etc are not that far short on performance and are a much more reasonable price. It's up to you really.

 

[Asus]

-Considering Source and a number of other games/engines support or plan to support multiple threads (dual core/quad core) then why not take a look at the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ or X2 4200+.
-The X1950pro is the only card that comes to mind that would be a good upgrade from an X800XT on AGP. The X1950pro probably isn't out on AGP just yet but it's coming.
-A WD Raptor would be nice although if you are limited on budget I'd keep your same harddrive and put that money toward the CPU, Video or Ram.

FYI 3Dmark really only measures video card performance so don't be surprised if it does not go up if you just get a new CPU or more Ram.. Obviously games will be better from CPU/Ram upgrades though.

 

[oldagerocker]

Thanks for the advice.

I cant get a new card up above the x800xt because the psu is only 230v and won't power the newer cards, i got this card recently because my 9800 pro died and i knew from a friend that the x800xt worked a charm.

Im interested in upgrading the cpu and ram, it'd cost me £320 which isn't that bad... but with the Ram, am i better off getting a pc4200 or so ram or a pc3200 with just better (higher) timings?

 

[3ssence]

Unless you are planning on doing a decent bit of overclocking you'd probably see better gains by getting some low latency sticks (lower timings, i.e. 2-3-3-6 as opposed to 3-4-4-8 etc). As long as they are quality sticks then you may well have some overclocking headroom at those latencies anyway.

If you're interested, here's a link to the sticks i would consider:

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=156701

Hope that is of some help.

 

[oldagerocker]

Yeah, it is thanks. Just what i was looking at too.

I'm not into overclocking at all, considering it's a shuttle heat builds up quite high anyway so im not looking to create more.

 

[3ssence]

That's a good point

:E

In which case, low latency ddr is definitely the way to go.

 

[hungryduck]

I'd try and snag an AMD 3800+ X2