Super hard upgrade challenge for all the experts...

[bfar]

I'm running a 2+ year old system -

Socket 754 Athlon 64 3400+ Clawhammer (Overclocked as far as i can)
2gb 3200 DDR half-decent dimms
Geforce 6800 Ultra (425,1200)
Tagen 480w

I'm looking at doing a full on, full budget upgrade after Dx10 cards go though their 1st revison, which will probably be end of summer 2007. (I don't game much when the days are long )

In the meantime I have a budget of about £350 to pull out a bit more performance for this winter.

The biggest problem is that my memory is really the only component i can hold on to. The rest of my current spec is seriously out-of-date - I'm not even sure if my psu would survive a new mobo

I'm thinking I could either get an AGP 7800 GS+ Gainward (£234.99) for the sake of saving hassle, or do a bit more work like this (a quick browse)...

MB-129-AS Asus A8R-MVP Crossfire (Socket 939) PCI-Express Motherboard (MB-129-AS) 1
£54.99 £54.99
CP-150-AM AMD Athlon 64 3700+ San Diego (Socket 939) - OEM (CP-150-AM) 1
£53.49 £53.49
FG-000-AR Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro CPU Cooler (Socket 754/939/940) (FG-000-AR) 1
£9.99 £9.99
GX-053-CO Connect3D ATI Radeon X1900 XT 256MB GDDR3 AVIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-053-CO) 1
£139.99 £139.99
Subtotal £258.46
Shipping (Parcelforce Euro 48) £22.00
VAT £49.09
Total £329.55

Any suggestions would be seriously welcome....

just a quick edit - I game happily at 1280x960

 

[syke]

Thats a nice spec, although a X1800XT will probably do the job and save money. Although if you dont want to get a DX10 card later on, that will do the job.

You could probably JUST fit in a X2 3800 if you get the X1800XT..not sure though..


s-

 

[pastymuncher]

If i was you i would hold on with what you have and save up a bit more and go for a Conroe rig. There's no point going over to 939 as it's dead and you will have no future upgrade path and the next time you want to upgrade you will have to do a new build anyway.

Your psu is a good one and should be able to handle an upgrade. The agp 7800gs is a serious waste of money and is overpriced. It is not as good as it's pci-e counterparts as it has an agp bridge which robs it of performance. Also i think it is lower specced than a pci-e version too.

Out of interest, how far have you been able to clock your 3400+ as the one i used to have would not budge past 2.4ghz. This 3700+ i have now on the other hand, is quite good and will almost hit 2.8ghz (2.795) but i cannot give it more than an extra 0.5v due to the motherboard.

 

[GhostRider]

Have you seen this thread

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17610938

if you can get your hands on this motherboard then you could keep your memory and get core 2

 

[bfar]

If i was you i would hold on with what you have and save up a bit more and go for a Conroe rig. There's no point going over to 939 as it's dead and you will have no future upgrade path and the next time you want to upgrade you will have to do a new build anyway.

Thanks for the advice, its worth thinking about. I don't see 939 as a dead route for me if i'm buying a cpu at the low end of the scale. It still leaves me the option of picking up a faster 939 before they disapear - and they'll probably be cheap too. I'll also be able to look at PCI-E cards in the future, and stagger my upgrades.

I'll be building a decent rig next year, and from experiance I'd rather buy technology after its been through a review. Right NOW I have £350 to spend on an upgrade that could potentially last longer than a year.

Your psu is a good one and should be able to handle an upgrade. The agp 7800gs is a serious waste of money and is overpriced. It is not as good as it's pci-e counterparts as it has an agp bridge which robs it of performance. Also i think it is lower specced than a pci-e version too.

The 7800 gs+ is actually an underclocked 7900GT. Its quite a nippy card - you can check tomshardware. Although expensive for one piece, it would be my cheapest and easiest option.

Out of interest, how far have you been able to clock your 3400+ as the one i used to have would not budge past 2.4ghz. This 3700+ i have now on the other hand, is quite good and will almost hit 2.8ghz (2.795) but i cannot give it more than an extra 0.5v due to the motherboard.

2.4 too!! Although my cooler isn't great - I had to scale it back a bit in the summer.