Future upgrade

[Col_M]

I'm pretty much out of the hardware loop since i made my computer 2 years ago and i'm looking to upgrade in the next 6 months to improve the performance. Photo editing and gaming are the main two resource hungry things i do. These are the main components i'm packing at the moment...

AMD Athlon64 3500+ Winchester
Gigabyte K8NXP-SLI
1GB Corsair XMS
OcUK 7800GT (PCI-express)

I'm thinking about an upgrade to dual core, with this in mind I defo think i'll upgrade to 2GB of RAM (replacing with DDR2 if i have to), keep my graphics card for the time being, which just leaves me my mobo and processor to upgrade.

I've always liked the performance and price of AMD chips but i'm seriously tempted by the latest generation of Intel chips as they seem to be the best bet for the next few years.

What do you think will be the best route for me to upgrade in the late autumn? considering that i'll probably keep the computer for 2 years again.

Budget wise, probably £600 for the mobo, ram and processor, i know you won't know the exact future prices in the autum but your best guess where the prices/technology will be.

 

[semi-pro waster]

Unless your Ram is one stick at the moment I'd be suggesting changing it for 2x1gb sticks to get the 2gb anyway so DDR2 is the way forwards whatever you are going to do since you are changing platform(either AM2 or socket 775).

From what seems to be the best at the moment I'd probably be suggest a Conroe 6600, 2gb DDR2 and a good clocking motherboard which will probably cost the best part of £400-450 so you might also want to upgrade your PSU and/or get a second 7800gt or maybe a totally new graphics card and sell off the 7800gt.

 

[Col_M]

Ideal thanks for the reply

What you suggested for ram is exactly what i was looking at doing, i have 2x512Mb sticks atm, i'll probably sell them on and get 2x1Gb DDR2 sticks.

The conroe 6600 is pretty much what i was looking at too, i'll just hold tight and see what the prices are in a few months time.

The mobo is just something i'll have to hang about in the mobo section on here and see what people are saying.