Newbie(kinda) with upgrading quesitons

[spiveslude]

First of all Hi. Now to the good stuff.

For $375 I recently purchased a used perfectly working pc:

Antec Sonata Case
Chaintech VNF4 Ultra Zenith (nForce4) Motherboard
Athlon 64 3000+
2GB Corsair DDR400 RAM
80GB SATA II IBM Hitachie Deskstar HD 7200rpm
ATI Radeon x800XL 256MB
NEC 16x DVD+/-RW DVD Burner
LG 16X DVD ROM
Chaintech 7.1 Sound Card

Pretty good price? Anyway I can see from my minimal pc building experience that the weakest points of the box are the processor and graphics card. I have about another 400 in my budget for the time being but constantly look out for hand me down parts. My question to you guys is where should I go from here?

PS I am hoping to be able to play Age of Conan or games that require similiar specs as this at some of the higher settings.

 

[veg1992]

Welcome To Tech Forums, Spiveslude!!!

question tho... is that motherboard socket 939?

 

[ModernTantalus]

Not bad. My main concern would be with the Motherboard. Looking at it though it looks like it should be able to fit the newest Athalons and some good harddrives. The video card is going to need to be majorly upgraded. I'd recommend a Radeon x1950 Pro. It gives great graphics quality for the price and it looks like your motherboard has a PCI Express slot. The harddrive is large enough for now, although I'd add a second eventually. Other than that it looks good to me.

 

[veg1992]

seeing HD's are so cheap nowadays, might wanna look into one, a good seagate barracuda 320gb costs 80$ get one of those, i would then recommend u get a new board and a new cpu if u need dual core (an x2 3600+ brisbane with a biostar tforce7025 [u need AM2 for the x2 but since u have an nforce4 its a safe assumption that u have a 939 socket)] might wanna get a 7900gs, that total is like (80+80+65) thats 225$ ish.... as for the vid card thats like an extra 120ish give or take... so.... 345$ about.. and u got a major upgrade

 

[spiveslude]

it is socket 939 and yes I have a PCI-e slot. That is what the current card is.

 

[ModernTantalus]

My guess is that you're on a budget. The best CPU you can fit in that motherboard is an Athalon 64 X2 for about $60. If you want anything better you need a new motherboard and if you do that... Well you may as well keep the ram and HDD and start over from scratch.

 

[veg1992]

it is socket 939 and yes I have a PCI-e slot. That is what the current card is.

well i knew about the PCI-e


but AM2 has replaced Socket939, so ur using an older socket... or u can do something else with ur cash instead of what i said above, i mean keep the HD's and such, but u buy a new mobo later on this year with a shiny new Phenom x4 (amd's new quad-core coming out)


edit flaw on my old plan, u would need new RAM for an am2

just get an opteron 165 with more hard drive space and a 7900gs

 

[ModernTantalus]

Oh yeah... You would need new RAM. Alright, if you get a new mobo just keep the HD. If you do that then all you really bought was an 80 Gig harddrive, in which case that's a horrible deal. If you install the Athalon X2 with the x1950 you'd be getting a decent deal for your buck. I'd advise the x1950 IceQ3 since it has a built in fan, but it'll take up 2 of your expansion slots.

 

[spiveslude]

What's wrong with my ram?(cue newb question). So far I like the opteron 165 with more hard drive space and a 7900gs plan. Looks like that cpu is esily overclockable which is a plus though I have little exp with that right now. Plus the price is right.

 

[ModernTantalus]

Certain motherboards will only support certain types of RAM and certain speeds. For example, my motherboard only takes DDR2 RAM and won't take a memory speed of more than 800MHz. Most dual core motherboards will only take DDR2 RAM at this point. I respectfully disagree with vernong on the most cost effective way to upgrade what you have, but if you do plan to replace the motherboard and insist on Athalon the advice on waiting for the new motherboards is great.