[GottaHaveFaith]

Hi All !!!

Ok ill get right to it. Like most everyone else in this forum, i want to build a new rig. The problem, however, is that due to financial problems, combined with a severe case of impatience, i would like to do it through a series of upgrades.

What im saying is i would like to take my old rig (described below) and turn it into a good gaming rig, by upgrading parts one or two at a time. I understand that i will be bottlenecking until the entire process is complete.

Is this even possible?

I have about 400 dollars for my first upgrade, what should i do?

You opinions are very much appreciated.

Thank you so much.

My old rig:

CPU - AMD Athlon XP, 1533 MHz (11.5 x 133) 1800+
Motherboard - Abit KR7A (-RAID) (6 PCI, 1 AGP, 4 DIMM)
Motherboard chipset - VIA VT8366A Apollo KT266A
Memory - 512 MB (DDR SDRAM)
Hard drive - MAXTOR 4K020H1 (20 GB, 5400 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
Video Card - NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 (64 MB)
Sound Card - Creative SB Live! Sound Card
Optical Drive - Samsung CD-ROM SC-148F (48x CD-ROM)
PSU - I have a few different one available to me, think im using a generic 400W right now.



Oh and in case interested, i use my comp mainly for 3D gaming, like all the newest MMORPG (I wish) and internet connectivity (Broadband) but will be attending school soon so will need to be able to do school work on it as well.

I am very determined and will end up with a very good rig, please steer me in the right direction.

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See you have very little there to transfer over.

The HD is very slow by todays standards and very very small, the ram you could take over but you wouldnt want to and you dont mention its speed, probably not DDR400 anyway.

The gfx card is AGP and its about as slow as you get, only thing you can really stand to keep is the optical drive and the sound card, and maybe the PSU as long as they are good quality ones that wont blow up when you add more power hungry hardware.

Upgrading is a good thing to do but you need to have a relativley up to date PC in order to do it.

A gaming pc youre gonna want an AMD cpu but you obviously cant keep that old mobo so youll need a new nforce 4 and a 939 cpu, and thatll be most of your budget gone allready, then you would need a new gfx card because the old one wouldnt be compatible in a new system, you would need another HDD probably some ram, and maybe a new PSU and a case.

If you try and do it that way now starting with that system youre going to end up with a serious of not that great systems, the best way to do it is to have a little patience and get a bit more cash (600 will get you a half decent rig no monitor or anything fancy though capable of gaming relativley well but youll need 800-1000 for something thats gonna be a proper gaming pc)

[warriorscot]

See you have very little there to transfer over.

The HD is very slow by todays standards and very very small, the ram you could take over but you wouldnt want to and you dont mention its speed, probably not DDR400 anyway.

The gfx card is AGP and its about as slow as you get, only thing you can really stand to keep is the optical drive and the sound card, and maybe the PSU as long as they are good quality ones that wont blow up when you add more power hungry hardware.

Upgrading is a good thing to do but you need to have a relativley up to date PC in order to do it.

A gaming pc youre gonna want an AMD cpu but you obviously cant keep that old mobo so youll need a new nforce 4 and a 939 cpu, and thatll be most of your budget gone allready, then you would need a new gfx card because the old one wouldnt be compatible in a new system, you would need another HDD probably some ram, and maybe a new PSU and a case.

If you try and do it that way now starting with that system youre going to end up with a serious of not that great systems, the best way to do it is to have a little patience and get a bit more cash (600 will get you a half decent rig no monitor or anything fancy though capable of gaming relativley well but youll need 800-1000 for something thats gonna be a proper gaming pc)

[jrm20]

Your not going to be able to upgrade that machine to todays pc standards...

You will have to buy a whole complete system, that is just the way it is..

The only thing you can use is really just the cd rom and the sound card which they are both older still.

The memory in it is probably pc 2100 or pc 2700 which isnt that fast. You should get pc 3200 the absolute minimum now if you plan to get a new pc..

You cant turn your old rig and turn it into a new one. It doesnt work that way because parts get faster and faster and they use different slots/sockets and standards with newer technology..

[GottaHaveFaith]

Thats disappointing. I had a feeling that it would be far more complicated than just upgrading until i had a better setup.

My problem is that im so darned impatient. Ill get like 500 dollars and want something to show for it NOW. I know it would be smart to just put it towards a better setup, and keep doing that until i have about 1000 and then build it. But its hard for me to spend that much on parts that i cant use until god knows when ill have the rest of the money.

Anyone else have this problem?

Wish i was one of those people who could just take a hundred outta each paycheck and "put it towards" something. It burns a hole in my pocket.

Perfect example:

Im getting about 600 dollars back from my taxes. If i was smart id put it away until i get together a few hundred more, then build a gaming pc. But instead im determined to find a way to spend the 600 and have something to show for it NOW.

Im hopeless.

[jrm20]

well since you burn a hole in your pocket.

You can buy a few parts/items at a time or either save your money lmao.

thats the only choices. I wouldnt just go and buy anything... Save up the money or either buy a few items at a time. Start with the cpu and motherboard first.. maybe memory also.. and your almost done from there basically..

[warriorscot]

Way it works you walk into your bank and say "hello ild like to start a high intrest savings account" they say "yes thats fine ill just do that for you now", and then you say "thanks ild like to move this $600 into it please" then next month you go and put your hundred in then the next week, and dont get a card for the account get a book instead, that way you actually have to go the bank to get your money yould be surpirsed how big a detterent that is.

[SuperSam]

AGP 8x is ok for gaming ATM. Most video cards in most games cannot take full advantages of the bandwidth of the PCI-E 16x. For it to take full advantage you'd need an expensive card, firstly, then afterwards find a game thats going to murder your computer. I suggest Half-Life2: Lost Coast. Lost coast is probably THE best in game graphics I have ever seen in my life!

My ATi Radeon 9800XT AGP8X can run that (all settings on high, HDR on full) at about 40FPS. Ok, not much, but its playable, if anybody would like screenshots I'd be happy to.

Depends what games you play too, though this Acer is pretty sufficient, though you could transfer the old ram, and scrape out some more cash for a good Radeon or GeForce: http://www.ebuyer.co...oduct_uid=95743

[GottaHaveFaith]

Someone on another board suggested a series of upgrades, the first of which was a board that supported both agp and pci-e, it only cost about 70 bucks, and throwing in an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ being the first upgrade.

Then praying that my ram will work with the new board. The next upgrade being new ram. Not DDR2 but two sticks of 1Gig 3200 DDR.

And so on and so forth, ending up with something along the lines of:


AMD Athlon 64 3800+
ASRock 939Dual-SATA2
Corsair XMS 2GB (2x1GB) DDR 400 (PC 3200)
XFX GeForce 7900GT 256MB
Enermax All in one Noisetaker series EG701AX-VE
Antec Performance I P180
Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10,000RPM
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 250GB
Sony Black IDE DVD-ROM Drive model DDU1615/B2s
Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music


Upgrading in that order, the CPU and MOBO first, then the RAM, then the Vid card, and so on.

So now i think that it can be done. The question then becomes, is the final result up tp par with modern day games? Will this rig run anything i throw at it?