What to upgrade?

[The Terminator]

Ok, I have an aging computer and have some money coming in from my part time job. I wanna know what to upgrade on my PC and why. I just wanna spend the money as wisely as possible.

My current computer:

AMD Athlon 1.7 GHz
1024 meg DDR 266 MHz RAM
NVidia 64 meg Geforce 4 mx 440 se
20 Gig HDD
Soundblaster live! 5.1
Logitech 5.1 speakers
Logitech mx 700 optical wireless mouse
Asus ak77-333 mobo

please tell me what to upgarde, why and any brands/other reccomendations. Thanks in advance.

 

[Asus]

Honestly...If you upgrade your video card to at least a ATI 9600 Pro 128mb (150$ USD) and add another harddrive for more space, I would think you are set.

Sure you can spend money to buy a new motherboard, CPU and RAM but that system is good to go except for the Harddrive/Videocard.

I would save for next year or so, down the road whenever it would be best to buy a new PC.
The whole thing at the sametime. No old parts dragged over.

 

[The Terminator]

Im gettin a 9600 for christmas from parents prolly. not sure about pro or not, but 128 mb Im sure. So I guess Ill buy a hard drive and take it form there after christmas. any advice for a hard drive and how to install em?

 

[Noodlygod]

I'd just get whatever size you think you'll need. If you haven't run into any space troubles with the twenty gig then I'd just get a 40. But if you continually find yourself deleting things then an 80 or 120 gig would probably be better. As far as installing them goes you just have to change the jumpers on the drive (main drive to master, second to slave) plug the second one in (ide and power) and mount it and you're good to go.

 

[RandomPING]

Your system looks good to go to run HL2 definately once you have the 9600 Pro in there.

I mean you could have some faster ram, but considering the ammount you have, it's not going to be a big deal. And processors can always be faster. Your sound is pretty damn good, i've heard of problems with compatability on the Live! models, but i'm runnning one in my second system and never had a problem.

Pretty much you're good to go, those things i mentioned are just like if you had a couple extra hundred you HAD to spend on hardware, but truth be told, you'd probably be better off spending the money on games to run on your good system.

 

[hyenolie]

be smart like me. plan out ur upgrade, each hardware at a time untill april dont upgrade anything, sit back wait till april, save up more money, keep updating ur hardware list, keep the chirstmas money and realy go all out for hl2, i mean cmon u can handle ur piece of crap rig for another 4 months, the taste of headcrabs and zombies will be much sweeter the longer u wait.

thats what im doing. oh ya, plus if u do upgrade ur mobo, no mobo these days support the crapy ram and cpu u have, this means u have to upgrade ram and cpu too. soo.. i suggest, u save up your money, and build urself some good shit,

my last word of advice, i dont have a job (poor college student in LA) and if i can save up money, trust me, someone witha part time job can definitly save up to 1000 by april.

ohh ya and if u flip burgers at an innout, i might come visit u if u in my area. =D

 

[The Terminator]

Thanks guys, I think Im just gonna upgrade to a 80 gig HDD then save untill summer-ish for a new pc. Take the best of both ur plans! Peace.