johnnybenceP1

I built my current system about 18 months ago, a then-top-spec Athlon 1.2GHz TBird on a Abit KT7a motherboard with 256mb PC133 sdram. I've also got a Geforce 3 Ti-500 video card. I know benchmarks are not the word of god but 3D Mark 2001 SE gives me 4,500 at 1024x786 32MB colour, 2xAA, just to give you an idea.

The problem is that games seem to be getting a bit chuggy at high resolution/detail levels (UT2003 etc) and I want to get something faster.

Now. I can buy and build a 2.4GHz P4 on a Asus P4PE board with 256mb DDRAM for about £350, and keep the geforce 3 card - what do you reckon to that? Would it be plenty fast enough for current and near future games and then upgrade the video board much later next year?

Or...do I get something like a Radeon 9700 Pro which costs about £300 and keep my current system and could I expect to get great results, or would my system be a hindrence upon the video card?

Any advise from anyone whos had similar dilemmas would be greatly appreciated!

towzer

lob in more memory is the cheapest performance upgrade. depending on your AGP implementation the video card should dip into main memory if it needs it, therefore less memory for applications to run in.

A faster HDD will make a lot of difference as well.

Phil

swan

I'd go for the CPU/board upgrade, probably more bang for buck.