Is this upgrade worth it?

Founder_film

Founder_film

Founder_film

Associate
Joined
5 Dec 2003
Posts
561
Location
Bristol
Hi

I am thinking of upgrading from my current system (Athlon XP 2500+ at 3200+ speeds, 512Mb RAM, 80Gb IDE HD and Radeon 9600Pro). I can get the following components for £92.90:

AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz Skt754
Abit KV8 PRO Skt754 K8T800PRO 800FSB
Seagate 80Gb Sata HD

So my question is, is it a worth while upgrade keeping in mind that I would overclock the CPU as most seem to do at least 2.0GHz on the stock cooler? As you can tell I am on a very tight budget! I would also like to upgrade the graphics card in the future to either a 6600GT or X800GTO, would the system play some of the older games such as Half Life 2 ok (my current systems plays it very dogishly)?

Thanks in advance.
 
I'd call the switch to the Sempron a jump sideways at best really. I'd suggest this as being of more benefit although it does cost ~£45 more and it allows an awful lot more potential to upgrade.

MB-002-AK Asrock 939Dual-SATA2 (Socket 939 & Upgradable to AM2) AGP & PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-002-AK)
£36.95 £36.95
CP-117-AM AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Venice (Socket 939) - Retail (ADA3000BPBOX) (CP-117-AM)
£52.95 £52.95
HD-023-SA Samsung SpinPoint P HD080HJ 80GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-023-SA)
£26.95 £26.95
Subtotal £116.85
VAT £20.45
Total £137.30
 
To simply answer the question, the answer would be not really, although the hardware is better, its likely the improvement will be marginable.

Plus you never know how much life 2nd hand goods have left in them. If you have £90 odd to spend on parts, just save it and invest in something just after or around the conroe launch.
 
Semi-Pro waster has a good idea there. However go for just the A64 3000 and the Asrock motherboard. You already have an 80GB hard drive. That way your in budget and should see a good improvement even before you overclock it.

Your next upgrade should then be another 512MB of RAM then a PCI-E graphics card (7300GT 8 pipe cards are a good choice currently although everything could change by the time you come to upgrade that element of your PC).
 
Thanks for your replies, the Asrock motherboard seems like a good choice as it has AGP and PCI-E, I will look into it a bit more.

The only thing was I was hoping to get a SATA drive too, would I see much of a speed boost uprading from IDE to SATA later on?
 
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