It's time for another upgrade and this time it's a pretty serious upgrade.The only things I don't need to upgrade are the video card and the ram. I posted recently about a raptor drive but figured out that my issues that I thought were harddrive speed related were just hard drive going bad related. Things that I WOULD like to upgrade are the Harddrives, Sound Card, Motherboard and Processor

Here's what I got...
Athlon XP 64 bit 3700 Sandiego (2.2ghz) (939 slot)
2GB Crucial Gaming Ram with heatsink
Nvidia 7900GT 512mb GDDR3 SLI PCI EXPRESS
1 160gb WD harddrive (SATA) 7200rpm
1 250gb WD Harddrive (SATA) 7200rpm
Sound Card (built into motherboard)
Motherboard (Gigabyte something or other. Nothing special).
Speaker System is just a dinky base amp and 2 speakers.

So based off of that, what specific hardware would you suggest or currently use. I think the biggest upgrade will be the sound card and a speaker system. I'm really interested in being able to play games like doom3 and hearing creatures behind me scare the crap out of my girlfriend who likes to watch hehe.

2/7/2007 9:14:45 AM

ur ram is good enough and ur graphics card(s?) are still respectable. Not much hadd, get a raid going or something.

2/7/2007 9:44:13 AM

If you want to upgrade your motherboard and processor, then you're going to want to get a Core 2 Duo, which means you're going to be upgrading your RAM as well.

2/7/2007 9:51:19 AM

an audigy platinum (can be softmodded into an audigy2) and /maybe/ a 939 4400+ x2 with 1mb l2 cache per core if you can find one. I don't really see a need to upgrade the machine beyond that unless you want a 150gb raptor to boot your os and games off of. I've never been a fan of paying a lot of money for small shitty speakers with no receiver just because they're meant for a computer, so I couldn't really suggest anything besides a cheap 5.1 receiver and some bookshelf speakers connected to your computer over spdif

2/7/2007 10:16:29 AM

Why would the ram need to be upgraded for a Core Duo 2?

[Edited on February 7, 2007 at 10:35 AM. Reason : !]

2/7/2007 10:35:06 AM

most core 2 duo mother boards use DDR2 ram, if not all (don't know for sure)

i stand corrected, there are some. wouldn't want them though.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813135027

[Edited on February 7, 2007 at 11:02 AM. Reason : correction]

2/7/2007 10:59:02 AM

yeah id invest $ in getting dual core (mobo and proc...use the existing ram if possible) over sound but thats just me.

i think you can get 2gb of ddr2 ram for ~$130 if you need ram too

[Edited on February 7, 2007 at 11:36 AM. Reason : ]

2/7/2007 11:35:10 AM

i suggest going the dual core route too; however i am going to say go the AMD side of things rather than the Intel side. the reason due to prices have been slashed a lot on AMD X2 processors repeatedly in the past months as well as there being more variety of mobos to choose from for the AMD processor. in addition, you will have to upgrade your RAM to DDR2 like mentioned earlier and i suggest this: http://www.slickdeals.net/?nojs=1

2/7/2007 12:05:54 PM

Hmm I'll have to check. I'm honestly not sure if it's DDR or DDR2 and that's pretty sad. I purchased the motherboard to replace a bad one and bought ram at the same time. I'm pretty sure it's DDR2 that I got through slickdeals and since I really didn't pay attention to what the slots looked like in the new mobo since I went from AGP to PCIE, we'll have to see tonight.

I appreciate the info

2/7/2007 1:01:40 PM

if the cpu is socket 939 it's not ddr2

2/7/2007 2:36:03 PM

^ Thanks

2/7/2007 3:28:02 PM

If you're committed to seeing a speed increase, don't waste your money on an AMD.

2/7/2007 6:23:40 PM

A new intel mobo+cpu could use most of your existing components. That and new ram would give you the largest appreciable speed increase. Simply replacing your video card or hard drives (with a raptor or two) wouldn't see TOO much benefit since your system is limited by the slower CPU.

2/7/2007 8:22:41 PM

or just upgrade to an x2 for under 100 bucks...

2/8/2007 11:04:59 AM

anyone know if amd is planning to produce something closer in specs to the core 2 duos??

4mb cache etc..

2/8/2007 11:23:10 AM

read anandtech, they have realllly thorough reviews of core2duos, compared to lots of different processors. I hope you realize you're about to spend a shitload of money to go from 70fps to 80fps...have you considered the stock market instead.

2/9/2007 6:42:07 PM