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jarrodwesley

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#1 jarrodwesley
Member since 2002 • 420 Posts

Any more suggestions?

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jarrodwesley

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#2 jarrodwesley
Member since 2002 • 420 Posts

So, here is what I have in mind for an upgrade... keeping below $500. I will use the same case, keyboard, mouse, and monitor for now after the upgrade. One day I plan to rebuild the current PC and give it to my wife, and have them both on a home network. But for now I only have the money to upgrade the main PC, and save the componentsI am replacing for a later date.

AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz Socket AM3 95W Triple-Core Black Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103649

GIGABYTE GA-MA770T-UD3P AM3 AMD 770 ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128392

OCZ ModXStream Pro OCZ500MXSP 500W ATX12V V2.2 / EPS12V SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Modular Active PFC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341016

Crucial 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Desktop Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148221

GIGABYTE GV-R485ZL-512H Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125238

Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

Sony Optiarc 24X DVD/CD Rewritable Drive Black SATA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827118030

Windows XP SP3 32-bit [will upgrade to 64-bit Windows 7 in October with clean install]

I plan to install Windows XP again on the RAID drives with this upgrade, after backing up everything I want to keep to the new 640GB drive. I plan to get 2 sticks of memory for 4GB total in the new system.

What do you guys think? Is this a good upgrade for the money? Will it last me at least another 5 or 6 years and be able to play most new games reasonably well (ie, Dragon Age and SWTOR)? The motherboard is socket AM3 so it's good for upgrading in the future, and supports up to 16GB memory, and has built in 7.1 surround sound. It only has one PCI-E slot, but I'm not interested in a two video card system so that is all that I need.

Any help/suggestions/comments/etc would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for the help guys!

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jarrodwesley

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#4 jarrodwesley
Member since 2002 • 420 Posts

Hey all. I'm currently looking to upgrade my system that I built back in Christmas 2003. Here are the current specs...

Intel Pentium 4 2.4C Northwood 2.4GHz Socket 478 Single-Core Processor
ABIT IC7-MAX3 478 Intel 875P ATX Intel Motherboard
Antec TruePower TRUEBLUE 480 480W ATX12V Power Supply
Corsair DDR400 RAM - 2.5GB
ATI 100-713100 Radeon 9800PRO 128MB 256-bit DDR AGP 4X/8X All-In-Wonder Video Card
WD 36GB 10,000 RPM Raptor HDD (x2)in a RAID-0 array
Hercules FORTISSIMO III 7.1 Channels PCI Interface Sound Card
IDE CD Burner and IDE DVD-ROM
Windows XP SP3 32-bit

This thing was a beast back in late 2003, and has lasted me well until now. I want to upgrade to play Crysis, Dragon Age: Origins (this fall), and Star Wars: The Old Republic (whenever it comes out) in all their glory, as well as have a better all around PC with more power.

I'm limited in upgrading components to add to the current system, because the motherboard only allws up to 4GB of memory, and only has AGP Pro GPU support, and only holds socket 478 CPU. Basically, I could max out my machine with 4GB of memory, put a Sapphire Radeon 3850 AGP card in it, and upgrade the CPU from a P4 2.4ghz to a P4 3.0ghz. That doesn't really get me anywhere though, and it would be a waste of money to upgrade and max out an outdated system with outdated tech.

Next post with upgraded system.