Upgrade time, help with spec please....

[R.O.S.S.I]

Hi all, basically i've not upgraded my PC for about 4 years now. Its currently running on an Athlon 64 3700, 2gb ddr400 ram, and about 750gbs of hard drive space.

Basically, I want to upgrade my CPU (which I know will require a new motherboard), and obviously with the new motherboard comes new RAM (dunno whether to go DDR2 or DDR3). Graphics wise, i'm not a hardcore gamer as such, I play a few bits and bobs but nothing massively taxing on the old gfx. I've currently got a Geforce 7800GTX 512mb. Which is struggling with games that I chuck at when I play in 1440x900, plus i'll most likely be going up to a 22/24inch monitor, so the native res i'll be playing in is 1680x1050 or whatever it is.
So something modest which can handle games at that res should I wish to play them.

I'll be keeping my case (black lian li) as I assume it wont need to changed, and my hard drives etc will be coming with me, unless there is some blindingly good new technology available now (not counting SSD as I think thats a bit OTT for what I need).

Oh yeh, I mainly run music editing software (Ableton, Acid Pro, Traktor, etc) so I'm guessing 4gb or 6gb of RAM is the way to go with this one, and also i'm guessing quad core, so any help much appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Sorry, my fault, should have mentioned that in the OP! Around £500, £600 max.

Essentially what I am after is a new cpu, mobo, ram and gfx.

Is it worth going for DDR3 and triple channel now etc, will that work with the quad core q6600, or is that all the new stuff for working with the i7? I take it i'm better to stick with ddr2 dual channel as the i7 and triple channel stuff costs mega wedge?

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

I've just had a look on the site.....

Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - Retail

Abit IP35 Pro XE Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard

Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX (2x2GB)

Asus ATI Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

Just found them, comes to about £400 alltogether (I said I could spend upto £500-£600 but if I can sort it for cheaper then I would like to). Seems to be allright for £400, should all fit into my current tower, only thing I'm going to need to add is a DVD RW drive, but does that look OK to people? I'm not interested in overclocking etc.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Why the E8400 rather than the Q6600? And why the IP45 over the IP35?

I'm not criticizing, just curious.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

Graphics is at the bottom of my priorites to be honest so Crossfire really doesnt appeal to me or matter for that fact! Afaik Ableton et al take advantage of quad cores etc, and I have Vista HP already. I think that spec I did fits the bill nicely bang-4-buck wise anyway!