Upgrade Advice?

[Milo Malhame]

My System is currently an Athlon Barton 2800, win xp Pro sp2, Ati 9800 pro
128 mb, K7N2 Delta mobo and 2x256 mb ocz pc3200 dual channel ram. Nothing is
overclocked. Tried to oc once and system became very unstable. Question is:
is this system maxed out or is there a $200.00 or less upgrade that would
improve gaming performance?.We mostly play Ms flight sim 2004, which bogs
down to under 24 fps near busy airports, and Need for speed Ug. Future Shop
has an Ati x800xl agp on sale for $249.00 cad. Is my Barton 2800 powerful
enough to push it past the 9800 pro performance? Or should I get more ram?
Ncix has 2 x 512 ocz gold vx pc 3200 on sale for $175.00 cad. Should I leave
well enough alone, or bother upgrading?
Thanks for any advice/opinions.
Milo

 

[johns]

You definately need to go to 1 gig ddr400. About any brand will do just

fine. I upgraded to 2 gig, and I can tell a difference. Also, stay with
your
9800. I'm testing a bunch of new cards like the nVidia 6800s, and they
are unstable as the dickens. They will not top your 9800 in games like
Far Cry, but they will run a little better in CoD2. However, your 9800
will run CoD2 just fine if you use Dx7 option. Right now, you can get
a gig of Kingston ram at mwave.com for just over $100, and that will
give you quite a boost in games. As far as the Xseries, I think I'm
done with them. They are buggy, and need work. Maybe next year.

johns

 

[John Edmister]

I have an Athlon Barton core 2500 on a K7N2 Delta ILSR mobo with 1gb of
PC3200 dual channel ram with an ATI 9800 pro.
What kind of heatsink/fan combo do you have? I tried OCing with stock cooler
and was very disappointed, heat heat heat. I bought a thermaltake volcano 12
and now I can run my 2500 @3200 <190-195 fsb> rock steady!!!!
In my opinion, NO your system is not maxed out or outdated. You just need a
good solid copper core heatsink. I paid $45 for mine. My CPU temp is between
110 and 129 depending on my gaming load.
STAY away from the X8XXX cards, they are a night mare! I have had nothing
but bad luck trying different video cards and have ate 2 restocking fee's so
far. Once with a 6600gt and once with an X800 GTO <Tried both Nvidia and
ATI>
If you want a performance boost, get yourself a nice SATA drive I just
bought a 300gb SATA drive, installed XP pro and SP2 in under 30 minutes and
now my system is hyper! I'm sure it doesn't match an Athlon FX 55 or 57
chip, but, I'm getting about 70 fps in BF2 and D3 so, why spend the big $$
right now? I am very disappointed at the quality of the "new" parts that are
out right now. And with the way my system is running with a $125 upgrade for
my SATA HD, and $45 for a heatsink, why should I shell out $500- $1,000 for
upgrades for a few FPS more? I would suggest sticking with what you have,
getting a good heatsink, maybe upgrading to 1gb of ram <my next upgrade> and
waiting things out for a bit. Too much has changed too fast to really know
what is going to last, what is hot, and what will go. Just look at the BTX
form factor and all the guys that jumped on that band wagon!!!!!
This is a bad year for computers..... so many things being shoved down our
throats when current technology is working just fine... in my opinion.

John

 

[Gordon Scott]

My System is currently an Athlon Barton 2800, win xp Pro sp2, Ati 9800 pro
128 mb, K7N2 Delta mobo and 2x256 mb ocz pc3200 dual channel ram. Nothing is
overclocked. Tried to oc once and system became very unstable. Question is:
is this system maxed out or is there a $200.00 or less upgrade that would
improve gaming performance?.We mostly play Ms flight sim 2004, which bogs
down to under 24 fps near busy airports, and Need for speed Ug. Future Shop
has an Ati x800xl agp on sale for $249.00 cad. Is my Barton 2800 powerful
enough to push it past the 9800 pro performance? Or should I get more ram?
Ncix has 2 x 512 ocz gold vx pc 3200 on sale for $175.00 cad. Should I leave
well enough alone, or bother upgrading?
Thanks for any advice/opinions.
Milo

definately the best bang for your buck is more ram. You might as well get
2x1gig sticks.
Even a gig is a starting point these days.

 

[Mangyrat]

the only thing i would do to that sys is put 1 gig ram in it.

 

[Sylvester Jones]

I would spend the addition money on a ram upgrade, then download and install
the latest Omega drivers

 

[DDC]

Le Mon, 19 Dec 2005 19:46:45 -0500, "Mangyrat"

the only thing i would do to that sys is put 1 gig ram in it.

By experience going from 512mb to 1 gig is fine but adding 1 gig of
ram is wasting money on a old system...

i add a a7n8x-x with 512mb with a x700pro and in doom 3 i experience
little more stabililty in the game play with one gig of ram and it was
cool so i fugure it out that adding a third stick of mem would benefit
me in the game but it didn't....

Unless your getting a 2x512mb of dual channel ram for your next rig
this is non sens...

 

[JK]

Ditto for me. I have almost the exact same system but with a gig of ram.
Your best bang for the buck is to install 512 megs of ram to bring you up to
1 gig. That way your games will have the extra head room that they need.

JK