Upgrade Suggestions

[Curtiss S]

First I must say this is the best resourse for PC questions and answers. I have been reading the

posts on this form for quite sometime and have learn alot.

Now for my first post. I have built two PC's, one for myself and one for my son who is into games.

My son wants to upgrade his PC and I am looking for any comments or suggestions he mainly plays

games.

His current setup as follows.

Enlight mid tower case 350 watt
Epox 8KHA+ with AMD Athlon XP 2200
Two sticks Crucial 256 Meg ddr 2100 memory
One Segate 40 gig ATA 100 HD
One Maxtor 60 gig ATA 133 HD
Liteon 48 X burner
DVD rom drive
Geforce Ti 4200 128 Meg video card
Turtle beach santa cruz sound card

I am look for some suggestions on the best way to upgrade. We were thinking of starting from

scratch and use one of the HD and the video card then add a new mobo memory and processor ect. The

mobos we are looking at are the MSI K7N2 Delta-L and the Asus A7N8X Deluex with a AMD Athlon XP

2800 Barton 333 FSB. For memory either Cosair TWINX512-2700LL or Crucial PC2700. We want two get

two identical sticks so can be run as dual channel. Also not shure on this but does it pay to get

PC3200 memory if only the FSB is running at 333 ??. And is there that big of difference over the

Crucial Vs the Cosair. I have used Crucial memory in the past and have had no problems.Also note

will not be doing any over clocking and will probaly spring for a new case and power supply.

If this was your PC how would you upgrade he has about 700-800 dollars to spend.

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions.

[Surge1243]

Welcome to PCMech!

You're on the right path. If it's mainly a gaming machine, concentrate more on the video card and less on the processor. The top of the line cards out now are the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro and the nVidia Geforce FX 5900 Ultra. If it were my machine I'd go with the Radeon but I just prefer ATI over nvidia. If you don't want to spend so much on those, a Radeon 9700 Pro is a great alternative. Both motherboards are great choices. I personally own the A7N8X Deluxe and couldn't be happier with it. It's a solid package and it's from Asus so you really can't beat it. The MSI board is top-notch as well. Processor looks good, but again you may even want to bump it down to a 2500+ Barton in order to get a better video card. Corsair and Crucial are great manufactures, however I've heard of problems when running Crucial memory in a dual-channel setup on the A7N8X. I think you'd be better off going with the Corsair modules. Getting PC3200 memory doesn't really offer too much if you've only got a 333 FSB processor and you don't plan on overclocking it. However, you may still want to get it so you don't have to worry about future upgrades that may include an AMD processor with a 400 MHz bus. The only other thing to consider would be a hard drive with an 8 MB cache like one of the Western Digital Special Edition drives or the new Maxtor drives. There is a significant improvement in performance with the 8 MB cache hard drive. Other than that, it looks pretty good.

[james8547]

When I was doing my research for my memory, I found out that Corsair and Crucial are one of the best out there...head to head. I went with Crucial purely becuase of the name..."Memory is Crucial to me" (WOW what a nice slogan can't believe I just came up with that). It's a good idea to see if the RAM is compatible with the mobo. Micron Crucial is a preferred vendor for my ASUS mobo.

[Karnevil9]

If he intends to spend the $800.00 dollars, why upgrade? Why not just build a completly new computer and sell the older one to someone or keep it for a spare? Another thought is to swap out the hard drives and DVD and CD burner from the old computer and invest the money in a top end video card and build an intel system using the newer 800 FSB? It sounds like he wants a kick butt gamer, so I am thinking in terms of a great video card and the fastest BUS speeds he can afford with what is left over.