Upgrade possibilities

[vsp]

Okay, now you guys've done it. You've got me thinking about what I should do with my Athlon, and now my head hurts.

Current system:

Athlon (T-Bird) 1300 / 256MB PC133 SDRAM / 60GB HD (mostly full) / ASUS A7V133 mboard / ASUS GeForce2 GTS 32MB / LG CED-8120B (12x8x32x) CD-RW / Win98 SE / SB Live! Value / (Verizon-provided) DSL modem / ethernet card

The three pieces I've been debating about upgrading are:

* an extra 256MB of RAM ($40 or so at my local shop)
* LG GCE-8520B (52x24x52x) CD-RW (faster, has buffer underrun prevention, even more compatible with CloneCD: $58 at local shop)
* bigger/second hard drive (a necessity; I'm in the burning-files-to-CDRs-to-make-room stage; prices vary wildly)

With an 80GB or bigger HD figured in, I'm looking at around $200 or so in upgrades here.

Point two is that ever since my wife discovered the wonders of peer-to-peer, computer time is at a premium whenever she's home. I'm debating if it'd be cost-effective to just build a second system around the above parts as a gaming rack, and use the 1300 as the DSL workhorse (side effect: finally burying my old P-133 Packard Bell monstrocity).

After doing some homework, if I'm building new, I see no reason not to go with an ASUS GeForce4 Ti4200 as the centerpiece (about $150 at local shop). That ought to be competitive for quite a while to come. If I'm upgrading my current system, I know enough to stay away from the GeForce MX lines. Are there any GeForce3 cards out there that'd be a measurable upgrade (i.e. pixel shading goodness), and are cheap enough to make them a reasonable purchase instead of shelling out the cash for the Ti4200?

Look at the regular Asus GeForce 3. It's like $70 nowadays and it's pretty okay. It'll certainly be leaps and bounds above your GF2, but... it's not really "current" either. Ti4200 is a good buy, but it's also not top of the line, obviously. But it'll run what you want it to run, I think.

As you know, you can put together a system stupidly cheap (witness Sycamore's computer). That's not as fast as you maybe want, but I dunno; if you just want a second computer, it might be perfect. Nothing wrong with the system we designed for him, except you'd want faster video. That also gets you awesome sound and built in ethernet. But it lacks USB 2.0.

I guess, let's talk more about exactly what you want, and then we can design around it. The sweet spot for good computers these days is about $1,000, meaning you don't really have to skimp on anything. Obviously you can build for any cost, but you'll have to give up certain things. You might want to take a look at the "New Gaming Box" thread (I think that's what it was titled); I was undergoing a similar (sorta) project last fall before the fire (and wound up with the current beast of a machine that cost about $3,400). I had a great gaming system priced out for about $1,200, if I recall correctly, and that included a $350 video card, fast P4, expensive case and a high-end motherboard. Prices have fallen, and you probably don't want all that, so...

[juju]

I think you should definitely build a second system. It prevents a lot of potential fights over computer time. Also, Windows 98 is a terrible operating system. You should really, really try to get a copy of Window 2000 or XP.

[vsp]

Originally posted by dave
I guess, let's talk more about exactly what you want, and then we can design around it. The sweet spot for good computers these days is about $1,000, meaning you don't really have to skimp on anything. Obviously you can build for any cost, but you'll have to give up certain things. You might want to take a look at the "New Gaming Box" thread (I think that's what it was titled); I was undergoing a similar (sorta) project last fall before the fire (and wound up with the current beast of a machine that cost about $3,400). I had a great gaming system priced out for about $1,200, if I recall correctly, and that included a $350 video card, fast P4, expensive case and a high-end motherboard. Prices have fallen, and you probably don't want all that, so...

Yep, I remember the thread well, and it was a case study in both how far PC prices have fallen and how expensive following the bleeding-edge can be. It's like buying audio systems; the connoisseur can tell the difference between a $1,200 stereo and a $3,400 stereo, but to the average Joe, the higher returns on the $3,400 model aren't different enough to justify getting it.

The video card is the most important part of the package, IMHO; if there's one thing I know, it's that a blah processor with a good video card will remain relevant far longer than a fast processor with a mediocre video card. That being said, I tend to shy away from buying THE fastest/best video card out there, for the obvious reason that early adopters pay a substantial price for being the first on their block. The inevitable is that six months down the road, there'll be something newer and something faster out there, and the prices will drop somewhat on no-longer-cutting-edge-but-still perfectly-good cards.

That's one reason I zeroed in on the Ti4200 -- it's targeted at the midrange crowd price-wise, but offers many of the features that pricier cards have and that true budget cards like the MXes don't. Same deal applied when I bought the G2 GTS -- that was an upgrade from the G2 MX that would've otherwise come with my system, but G3s were around $350-400 at that point.

I wasn't a 3D/FPS junkie at that time, nor am I now; I'll play them, but I'm not into online play (where framerate is more critical), nor do I mind dropping the resolution down when it's needed. But if I come across a game a year or two from now that's graphics-heavy that I _can_ get into in a big way, I wouldn't mind having enough power under the hood to at least run it reasonably well. I don't need Doom 3 at 60fps at 1600x1200, but being within at least the minimum specs when it comes out would be nice.

As far as the rest of the specs go, I'm not all that picky. I have yet to find a game or other program that really strains my 1300 right now, so I'm not sure that (let's say) an AthlonXP 2000+ would be noticeably inferior to an AthlonXP 2700+, and by the time that the difference would be noted, it would probably cost less to upgrade to a 2700+ than the extra $150 to buy it up front. Likewise for RAM (more is always nice, but I don't need a gig yet). I'm not up on my sound cards -- I'm not entirely impressed by the Live! Value, but is it worth it to upgrade to the Audigy?

The other thing is that I'm in the househunting market, so if I can kluge my 1300 upwards for cheap, that might be easier to justify in the short run than paying what a reasonable second system would cost (gotta have that down-payment cash available).

Or I could always say "screw it" and buy another pinball machine.

[arz]

These are great.

[vsp]

That's true, <a href="http://www.uni-mainz.de/~bauec002/B2Main.html">but I already have a Mac.</a> (Two, actually, if you count my old IIfx.)

[vsp]

One down: I snagged a GCE-8520B drive off of eBay for under $40 shipped.