Please Help With Upgrades! £400-500.

[oHUTCHYo]

Hi all,

My head is battered with so many options at my disposal, please please give me your best advice, heres what I can tell you;

Current Components I Need To Replace;
Asus A8N Socket 754 Mobo
AMD 64 3400+
ATI X800 XT PE
3x512MB Corsair 3200 C2 RAM[/COLOR]

I have a budget of approx £400-£500 (including funds from selling the above) to replace the above components, my PC is mainly used for FPS gaming.

Please spec me your best performing package! Ive been looking at Conroes, AMD AM2 X2, AMD S939, all sorts!

I cant decide where to spend the most money to get me the best performance. Hell, was even looking at the 10,000RPM hard drives thinking they may give better performance instead of spending more on faster RAM. My head hurts

Bare in mind Im not an overclocker, I need out of the box performance for games like CS Source, Battlefield 2142, upcoming games like Crysis etc etc

 

[burtie]

MY-034-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC) (MY-034-GL)
£139.99 £139.99
CP-135-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN)
£99.99 £99.99
MB-061-GI Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
£89.99 £89.99
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£119.99 £119.99
Subtotal £449.96
VAT £78.75
Total £528.71

 

[oHUTCHYo]

MY-034-GL GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC5300 667MHz Value DDR2 Dual Channel Kit (GX22GB5300DC) (MY-034-GL)
£139.99 £139.99
CP-135-IN Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) - OEM (CP-135-IN)
£99.99 £99.99
MB-061-GI Gigabyte GA_965P_DS3 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard (MB-061-GI)
£89.99 £89.99
GX-044-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1800 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-044-CO)
£119.99 £119.99
Subtotal £449.96
VAT £78.75
Total £528.71

Thanks a lot burtieb, what Im going to do if you dont mind is ask each poster a few questions so I can try and learn some important lessons here, so can you help with these?

* Does the value RAM have the least significant difference in respect to paying say £200 for lower CAS RAM?
* Is 512MB of memory on a graphics card just marketing BS? I know Ghost recon Advanced Warfighter wont let you even select high textures with only a 256MB card!
* At this price range, is a £200-£250 CPU a waste when only running a sub £200 graphics card?

The latter question is really my main query at present. Thanks again for taking your time to help me

 

[burtie]

Thanks a lot burtieb, what Im going to do if you dont mind is ask each poster a few questions so I can try and learn some important lessons here, so can you help with these?

* Does the value RAM have the least significant difference in respect to paying say £200 for lower CAS RAM?
* Is 512MB of memory on a graphics card just marketing BS? I know Ghost recon Advanced Warfighter wont let you even select high textures with only a 256MB card!
* At this price range, is a £200-£250 CPU a waste when only running a sub £200 graphics card?

The latter question is really my main query at present. Thanks again for taking your time to help me

Does the value RAM have the least significant difference in respect to paying say £200 for lower CAS RAM?

Your not overclocking so no.

* Is 512MB of memory on a graphics card just marketing BS? I know Ghost recon Advanced Warfighter wont let you even select high textures with only a 256MB card!

I don`t know but i`m sure someone told me theres not that much difference

* At this price range, is a £200-£250 CPU a waste when only running a sub £200 graphics card

No always get the best cpu you can it`ll last for another GPU upgrade but you are on a budget mate.