New PC?

[neoeva01]

I can feel it in my bones. The time I constantly dread is drawing near. I have not properly paid it attention for some time now and I am about to explode. I need to upgrade my gaming pc

Comments

[square721bt]

Since you need to replace your motherboard to get a graphics card, cheapest is going to be RAM. Remember that as a 32-bit OS, XP tops out at supportin 3.5GB of RAM. After that it's going to be a tossup between motherboard/graphics card and motherboard/processor, but I would go with the graphics card before the processor. There's not too much beyond physics that is CPU-bound, and as we go forward you'll see more of that shifted to either the Graphics card or relatively cheap physics accelerator cards. After that comes processor. Honestly, there are only a few games that take advantage of multi core right now, even just two core, so it's not a huge issue. However, at the BARE MINIMUM, get a socket such that you can leave an upgrade path. You'll thank yourself.

Remember that you can SLI graphics cards. Sometimes it is cheaper to get two mediocre cards rather than 1 very powerful card, and it's faster, too. However, if you want to do this, you'll need to spend more on mobo, and you'll need to have a beefy power supply.

[restless_coder]

I recently built several computers: three identical Intel dual-core Wolfdales with Abit IP35 Pro boards, and an Athlon X2. So far they are all solid. The Athlon X2 was insanely cheap ($70 for the CPU, another $70 for the board, $40 for the case, and $80 for the HD, plus a little more for the RAM, for a total of about $300).

You probably want to go with something more like the IP35 Pro though, which as Lucas suggests can SLI two video cards (though I got a single nVidia GeForce 8800 GTS). The result utterly kicks the Sims 2's ass, and yes it does seem to use both cores. It cost me a total of about $700 to build.

Reusing your case, power supply and HD is probably possible, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. Your power supply may not have the most recent power plugs for certain things, notably 24-pin mobo, SATA power cables, or 6-pin SLI video card power plugs. And your hard drive is probably IDE, which I would consider upgrading to SATA. Your case is probably OK, at least.

[neoeva01]

Hmm...well I think I'll postpone any purchasing until I return in any case. I need to be able to look at my components and such before many more decisions can be made.