Aging P4 Machine - Spec Me Upgrade!

[Nucleo]

Hi all

Right, here is my current spec of my computers

Gaming Comp - Some full system build from a big computer retailer
Pentium 4 3.0Ghz with H/t
1GB Geil PC3200 Ram
250GB HD 7200RPM IDE
Geforce 6800NU
DVD-RW
Some Generic Motherboard

Render Rig
2x Intel Xeon 2.4ghz - OC'd to 3.0Ghz
2GB PC3200 Ram
80GB 7200RPM HD
ATI 9200se
CD-Rom
Asus NCCH-DL

Okay, im a student at college, going to uni next year. I play a lot of CSS, my gaming comp just doesn't seem to cope at all anymore. I do a lot of 3d graphic design and rendering, so i put the render comp together for about £500 last year.

What I want to do is upgrade my Gaming comp to cope with CSS and future games, but I dont want to break the bank

So, What i have planned is something like this:
- get a new motherboard with PCI-E
- new CPU... what type, god knows, good for gaming and general windows use
- Use the existing RAM for now
- Sort out some SATA drives
- Maybe a new vid card, I know the 6800 can play CSS nicely, but it is the cpu holding it back.
- Will need a new PSU - the generic POS in the gaming comp will probably die.
- New case

okay, can anyone spec me a nice upgrade?

keeping it on the cheap too.... any other suggestions on what i should do would be nice... Thanks all

 

[Nucleo]

I was considering just getting a new agp graphics card, but my 6800 isn't the bottleneck in CSS.

I have the graphics on Low and it runs the same as having them on medium.

 

[Nucleo]

ouch... something really is wrong then

I have recently got a new hard drive

I took the 2gb of ram out of my server and stuck it in my pc last week, didn't make much difference. Mind i didn't disable the pagefile, will give that a go in a min.

One thing about CSS, often when in game, i alt+tab out and see that steam is using 50% of the cpu. I often have to close the game, restart steam and it drops back to 1%. this is a bug in steam which a lot of people know about. CSS is noticibly slower when steam is acting up, when its not, performace still isn't amazing.

im glad you have said something about the p4 being up 2 scratch. Could it be onboard sound?

I dont see it wrecking performance, but it 'could' be that. I can nick My Soundblaster Live card from my dad's pc and run sound from that.

 

[Nucleo]

right, just restarted and stuck the extra 2 gb of ram in, gonna give it a test run on css.

gonna wip the sblive card out tonight.

you may have just saved me a lot of money my friend

 

[Nucleo]

yeh, i've heard

i just want to run CSS lol.

with a total of 3gb of RAM there was still slowdowns and stutters when a few people were on screen. Still sucks.

I rekon it is the audio, When i first get into the game and fire a gun, there is a slight stutter when the gunshot is fired.

Ripping the 7.1 sblive card out tonight lol