upgrade or build a new one?

[ericf70]

My current pc that I put together 2+ years ago ...

Antec TRUE CONTROL 550 ATX 550W
SAPPHIRE RADEON 9800PRO 128 R Radeon 9800PRO 128MB DDR AGP 4X/8X
AMD Mobile Athlon XP-M 2500+ (45W) Barton 1.867GHz Socket A
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100
2x Crucial Technology 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200)
ABIT NF7-S V2 Socket A (Socket 462) NVIDIA nForce2 SPP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

I'm playing alot more MMORPGs now and my setup is lacking. Harware lag is greatly slowing down game play.

So, can this rig be upgraded to something that will solve my problem or should I start over?

Thanks for your time

 

[turtile]

I would wait for early 2007 to build a new one.

If you do want to upgrade, replace the graphics card and the hard drive. Then add another 1GB of memory.

 

[ericf70]

Any recommendations on what to replace them with?

Thanks!

 

[raiden_nrl]

Aha, you could give us a budget..

 

[ericf70]

Well, I don't want to spend too much since I might be building a new one in the first quarter of '07.
$400-500 I guess for the graphics card, ram, and hd.

 

[jordo_99]

you probably can't upgrade the GPU w/o getting another new one when you build later on cuz it's AGP...you could get something to hold you over for $150 and under.

can't upgrade CPU or ram either cuz they won't work on a new mobo. (DDR2 has replaced DDR and Socket A is pretty much dead.)

you could upgrade the HD now but it won't help lag.

here's what i'd say to do to hold you over until then

1. OC the CPU until you build later
2. get a cheap AGP graphics card that will be good enough to hold you over (6800GT would do fine)

1gb of ram is enough to run a MMO game fine.

 

[jordo_99]

you should really get something new soon or else you'll have build/buy something in a year or maybe two anyways and it's kinda a waste of money.

a new build for $1000 would be like 3-4 times faster than that.

 

[turtile]

7900GS or X1900GT

Get a seagate 7200.10 w/ 16MB cache - 250GB

Add these:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145574

And sell your old RAM.

 

[luke87]

he has AGP turtile, so those videocards wont work.

If you want something pretty good for the time being the 7600gs is pretty good for about ~150 USD

 

[turtile]

he has AGP turtile, so those videocards wont work.

I forgot about that. There aren't many newer options for AGP.