New Bits of PC needed (Advice Please)

[Jono]

Righto,

I used to build PCs for myself all the time, but for the past few years I just couldn't be bothered. Anyway, I have a Dell Dimension 8300 PoS.. which has served me well for a couple of years.

The only upgrades it's had are graphics card and a bit of extra memory.

I reckon I'll have about £1000-1200 to play with. Is there anything I can salvage from:

P4 3ghz 800mhz jobbie thing
2gb DDR3200 memory
nV 6600GT gfx
SB Audigy 2
CDRW/DVD R drives

What I'd like to do is upgrade the graphics bigtime, but it's only got an AGP slot - I know there's some pretty high end AGP cards just come out, but I think PCI-E would be better (?)

So... I'll be upgrading the Motherboard too... but that means getting a new case (probably, although I suppose I could use my ancient GW802 that's full of holes if all else fails). I don't need silly speeds - so if possible i'd like to use my existing memory - shouldn't slow things down THAT much should it?

CPU - is it worth upgrading that? Maybe an athlon 64 or something like that perhaps, how much faster than a 3ghz p4 would it be...

I would like the (almost) best graphics card(s) I could buy. But i'm not made of money...

I don't need a full system in that I can live with my current optical drives/monitor/keyboard/mouse.. maybe a new sound card would be good too...

Soo....

Mobo, CPU, Memory(???), Graphics Card(s SLI looks nice if affordable) and perhaps case and suitable cooling for it - I'd like quietness. I don't want to overclock, but it has to be able to keep everything cool at fairly warm room temperatures in a room with next to no air circulation around the pc case.

£1200 would be an absolute upper limit - the cheaper the better but I'd like good quality stuff. It's gonna be used for games.

Thanks in advance for your recommendations

 

[Admiral Huddy]

Firstly you system looks fine. I’m assuming that your system is an AGP system then you can upgrade to maybe a Geforce 7800gs to speed up your 3d performance and will enable you to play all the latest games at good frame rates. So personally, I don’t see the need for you to make a massive leap in technology for little gain.

If you do opt for SLi then you are indeed looking at a new motherboard, CPU, PSU, and Graphics card because the SLi runs on the Nforce 4 platfom which uses PCI_E. The only thing I can see you can salvage is the memory, SB and DVD.

Save money, go for the 7800gs until such time you really need to make that jump.

 

[semi-pro waster]

If you wanted the upgrade then you could save your Ram, soundcard and optical drive quite easily.

If you are generally happy with the system but want a bit of an improvement on the graphics card front then you are probably best going with Mr Huddy's advice and getting the 7800gs which is about equivalent to a 6800ultra.