I have around £200 to spend upgrading my gaming rig. I am always looking for the best bangs-per-buck, as well as keeping the noise down.
Probably the best upgrade I can get would be a new graphics card, however I do not particularly want to spend £200 on a board that will become obsolete in 6 months with the advent of DirectX-10 on Vista.
I was wondering would it be worth upgrading my CPU (A64 3000 Winnie) and getting an Opteron 146, then overclocking it? I run the A64 at about 2200 Hz atm. With this option I could probably afford an extra 1 GB Geil value RAM and maybe a better (quiet) heatsink.
I am thinking that if I do not get compatible components soon, in a few months time I will be facing a complete upgrade of MB, CPU and RAM. Would an Opteron 146 extend the working (useful) life of my MB & RAM?
Current rig is:
Antec Sonata Case (First edition I think with 350W Power Supply)
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Not SLi modded atm but capable of it)
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm (S939) - mildly overclocked
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Dual value Kit (CAS2)
Zalman CNPS7000B-ALCu Cooler
Gigabyte Geforce 6600GT 128MB - GVNX66T128VP
Probably the best upgrade I can get would be a new graphics card, however I do not particularly want to spend £200 on a board that will become obsolete in 6 months with the advent of DirectX-10 on Vista.
I was wondering would it be worth upgrading my CPU (A64 3000 Winnie) and getting an Opteron 146, then overclocking it? I run the A64 at about 2200 Hz atm. With this option I could probably afford an extra 1 GB Geil value RAM and maybe a better (quiet) heatsink.
I am thinking that if I do not get compatible components soon, in a few months time I will be facing a complete upgrade of MB, CPU and RAM. Would an Opteron 146 extend the working (useful) life of my MB & RAM?
Current rig is:
Antec Sonata Case (First edition I think with 350W Power Supply)
DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D (Not SLi modded atm but capable of it)
AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Winchester 90nm (S939) - mildly overclocked
GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) PC3200 Dual value Kit (CAS2)
Zalman CNPS7000B-ALCu Cooler
Gigabyte Geforce 6600GT 128MB - GVNX66T128VP