Barton 2600+ to 64 3500+...no improvement?

[wafflepunk]

OK so I just finished upgrading my systen to an A8V and AMD 64 3500+ from an A7N8X and Barton 2600+. So far, I haven't noticed much of a performance increase, and I'm wondering how much of this can be attributed to my other parts, not yet upgraded, that might be bottlenecking my system. Granted, XP installed in about 10 minutes (probably took 30+ on my Barton), and so far the only thing I really have as a benchmark is FarCry (I'm downloading Steam at the moment to see how Half Life 2 runs now), but I envisioned a pretty hefty performance jump with this new chip. Booting and loading doesn't seem to be any faster than before, and I've even noticed a few hiccups when selecting boxes during applications installs, where it takes the system a few seconds to acknowledge a mouse click or program switch.

So I've got two HDDs, both WD 7200rpm drives with the 8mb buffer, one 80gig and the other 120gig. I had gotten pretty bogged down before the upgrade with what I suspect was spyware and virii, as my machine had become relatively sluggish compared to the instant response I was used to after fresh installs and formats with that system. With the new chip, I only installed the 80gig drive as I plan on upgrading to dual 74gig WD 10,000rpm SATA drives in RAID in the next few weeks. Both HDDs are still physically installed in the machine, I just deleted the file system off the 120gig so it isn't recognized. When I formatted the 80gig, instead of using a system disk and doing a full format from DOS like I normally do, I used the Win XP disc and let it do a quick format. I'm wondering now if that might have any effect on my current performance as opposeed to a full reformat, if the disk had in fact been infected with performance degrading virii and such.

Also, when trying to play FarCry on maxed out video settings, the levels still take just as long to load as they did with the old chip, although the actual performance is definetly improved. At max settings prior to the 64 bit upgrade, I "lagged" so much it was unplayable. Now, it's playable, but still feels sluggish to some extent, and I even got a "loading" message with a game play pause a few times during levels. Is the bottleneck now in the video card? I'm using the same card as before, a Radeon 9700 Pro, with fresh Catalyst drivers downloaded today. Could my memory be holding me back? I'm using two sticks of Crucial PC2700 (512mb x2), and plan on upping to 512mb x2 Corsair XMS PC3200 soon.

How much of a difference are things like my video card, ram, and HDD speed having on my system? Will PC3200 make that much of a difference? How bout the SATA HDDs, whether or not in a RAID setup? Do I need a new video card?
I don't need the best, most tricked out system on the planet. But seeing as how I just shelled out $500 for a mobo and processor upgrade, I feel like I should be able to play any game so far out there at the peak of performance, in order to justify the expense. If I need a few more parts to make that happen, I'm willing to do it, but don't want to throw money around needlessly if something else is amiss that I just don't know about. I only upgrade every 2 years or so, so I want to make sure I do it completely and correctly.

Sorry for long post! Anyone who put up with this, thanks!

[Moose on the Loose]

Video card has a much greater performance impact in gaming. Also, the RAM that matches your FSB is PC3200 RAM, so the PC2700 is bottleneckign your system. In stead of the raptors, I'd reuse the 7200 RPM drives and get a better video card in stead, that will definately give the best performance increase.