"Budget" Upgrade Advice

[Zick Boy]

Hi all,

I am planning to upgrade my machine. I am a gamer though not so hardcore. The latest game that I have is Bioshock (I hgot it as a gift) but I don't play as often as I would like so that game can wait for now. Anyway, I wan to to upgrade my existing machine but I don't want the greates and the latest right now but I do want something with high potential to upgrade in the future. So I'm willing to pay more for a really good motherboard and get a cheaper video card or CPU.

Here's what I got on my list. I'm undecided on the motherboard I have here one with the nVidia 680i chipset but I would like one with a 780i.

Motherboard - MSI P6N Diamond LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel
Video card - GIGABYTE GV-NX88T256HV1 GeForce 8800GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 Conroe 3.0GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E6850
RAM - G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit
PSU - OCZ StealthXStream OCZ600SXS ATX12V / EPS12V 600W

Total: $649.95
My budget is around $750 so I got room for about $100 more. I have everything else, sound card, Hard drive(s), case, etc.

Thanks for reading!

[EzyStvy]

Food for thought-> make this upgrade a second machine.....No sense having a bunch of parts laying around....You could get a few bucks out of selling the current system.

[Katreat]

For processor look at the E8400. Newer technology and not much difference in price.

For MB I would go with a P35 board. If on a budget you probably wont use SLI, and it is really not needed unless you have a huge monitor anyway. The P35 supports the new C2Ds. I dont think the older 680i will support the newest chips. The 780i boards will run you an extra $75 or more above a comperable P35 board. I would recommend the P5K-E as a good choice.

Newer MB no longer support IDE natively, so if your old burner, HD, etc are IDE you might want to upgrade to SATA. There is a third party IDE controller, but you are limited on how many devices you can have and they can be problomatic.

Kat

[shadowpr]

I'll second Kat.