" Have about 300 to spend on an upgrade and am unsure what to get... "
If I were you, I would sell some of your hardware at
www.eBay.co.uk , the
Barton 2500+, Radeon 9500, and all of your RAM (PC2700 and PC3200
seperately). Then buy an Athlon Mobile 2400+, 2x 512MB PC3700 DDR, a Radeon
x800 Pro, a ThermalRight SP-97 heatsink, some Arctic Silver 5, and a quiet
92mm fan (less than 25dBA). If you have room in your case, you should get a
120mm fan adaptor and a quiet 120mm fan instead of the 92mm fan.
So why have I suggested all of this?
If you were using just PC3200 DDR on your Barton 2500+, you could raise the
FSB from 166 to 200 and run at 3200+ speeds (2.2Ghz). However, the Athlon
Mobile's multiplier is unlocked, and with PC3700 RAM, an SP-97 and good
cooling, you can raise voltage and multiplier/FSB increments to allow clock
speeds somewhere between 2.4Ghz and 2.7Ghz. Hopefully you have a reasonable
PSU to support all of this, and since you were hinting at an Athlon64 set-up
I'm guessing that you already do.
With a KV8 Pro, Athlon64 3200+, and PC3200 RAM, you would have a system
running at 2.0Ghz, with no dual-channel support, not much overclocking
headroom, and little money for a better graphics card. I don't see any
benefit in paying more for an Athlon64 set-up at the moment, particularly
when you can have a faster CPU, dual-channel capability on a higher FSB, and
a better graphics card with the aforementioned.
Microsoft keep putting back their 64-bit operating-system, currently
standing at 'the first-half of 2005' (could end up being quarter 3 or 4).
You'll then have to wait for 64-bit games to be developed and released, and
it could easily be 18 to 24 months before we are properly on the
64-bit-gaming stage. Your PC3700 DDR and Radeon x800 Pro should fit nicely
into an Athlon64 set-up then.
