4 more years for £400?

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28 Dec 2005
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515
OK, so I'm a cheapskate, I admit it. Last time I did an upgrade of the basics was 4 years ago to a mighty XP2200/512mb ram/Geforce 3, so I'm looking to upgrade CPU, Memory, Motherboard, Graphics card, PSU for the money.
I was thinking along the lines of an Athlon 64 3200, 1gb Geil value RAM dualchannel kit, not sure about which graphics card to get and which nforce4 motherboard would be best (although I know I won't be needing SLI) and I was thinking about getting one of Enermax's cheaper ATX2 models.

So basically does:
AMD Athlon 64 3200 skt939 retail £112
1gb Geil Value Dual Channel Kit £58
ATI X800GTO £105 / X1600Pro £105 / X800GTO16 £123 / nVidia 6800GS £135
Asus A8N5X £61 / Gigabyte K8N £65 / MSI K8N Neo4F £68
Enermax Noisetaker 370W £41 (is this powerful enough considering its a good brand and won't be doing any SLI, or would I need 400w+?)

Sound like a good plan? Which graphics card is the best option - I know that the X800s don't have Pixel Shader 3, but is the X1600Pro quick enough and is the 6800GS worth the extra money over the rest?
 
Yeah, the priceyness sucks - I spent £100 on a Geforce 3 and its only really toward the end of last year it couldn't keep up and now everything seems to have got even quicker in terms of how fast its out of date.
Still though, I think for me personally now is the right time to buy, as I don't think I'll have the cash to spare in the future. With that in mind, do you think those would be good purchases in the short to medium term, rather than long-term?
 
That does sound rather tempting, except for one thing - I've gone over my money again and I've managed to sort out an extra £100 that I can spend on it without starving. Would a 7800GT be worth the extra money?
 
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