Upgrades - your thoughts and opinions? (two rigs to juggle)

daedal

Ok, I'll try and keep this brief. I've got a 1500$ budget and want to upgrade both my gaming, and backup systems a tad. My main rig needs two upgrades pretty badly which I have listed below and deducted from my budget.

- 36gb Raptor drive (185.00$ CDN w/tax)
- Creative Audigy 2 ZS sound card (140.00$ CDN w/tax)

1500.00$ (Budget)
- 185.00$ (Raptor drive)
- 140.00$ (Sound card)
========
1175.00$

With that 1200.00$, I want to swap over to and AMD setup but I'm not too sure what to pickup. I want to do this for several reasons and the backup rig desperatly needs a processor and mobo upgrade so getting myself a good AMD would allow me to place my P4 in there. Now I would buy one more gig of memory for the backup rig too, which would be Corsair value TwinX RAM retailaing at 150.00$ with all applicable taxes.

1175.00$ (budget)
- 150.00$ (Memory)
========
1025.00$

Now that leaves me with about a grand to dump into a new AMD processor, motherboard and possibly processor cooler. I could probably sell my Celeron + motherboard combo for 100.00$ or so and I could stretch the budget a bit more if needed by dipping into the Visa, but unless it makes a radical differrence, I would rather not.

Essentially, what I need is a quality AMD processor + motherboard combo for about 1200.00$ CDN but not over that. Any suggestions? Both rig specs are below.





What I've got/found so far:
Processor: AMD64 4200+ (Socket 939) - 780.00$
Motherboard: Asus A8V Deluxe (VIA K8T800Pro chipset) - 180.00$

780.00$ (processor)
+ 180.00$ (motherboard)
+ 145.00$ (taxes)
+ 30.00$ (shipping)
========
1135.00$




Sharkbyte
========================
My main gaming machine.

Motherboard: Asus P4P800E-DX (BIOS v1.006)
Processor: P4 Prescott (Socket 478) - 3.0Ghz @ 3.6Ghz w/ Zalman CNPS7000B-Cu cooler.
Memory: 4x512MB Corsair TwinX Value (two 1gig dual-channel kits)
Video: ATI X850XT AGP, stock cooling (I know.. AGP. I kick myself every day for that one.)
Monitor: 19" Hyundai L90D+ LCD (8ms, 1280x1024, 700:1)
Sound: On-board 7.1 (don't remember brand/make)
Case: Thermaltake Shark Black
Power: OCZ Modstream 520w
Fans/cooling: 4x120mm fans (1 front intake, 1 top exhaust, 1 rear exhaust, 1 side panel)




Buddy Rig
========================
My "spare parts" machine that my girlfriends and buddies use when they come over.

Motherboard: Asus P4R800-VM
Processor: Celeron D? (Socket 478) - 2.4ghz w/ P4 Prescott Cooler
Memory: 512mb 3200 Crucial (2x256 dual-channel) (mobo only takes single-sided DIMMS)
Video: Sapphire 9800 Pro 128mb w/ Vantec Iceberq 4 cooler.
Monitor: Sony 19" CRT
Sound: Creative Sound Blaster Live 5.1
Case: Antec SLQ2650-BQE
Power: 350w Antec Smartpower
Fans/cooling: 2x120mm fans (1 front instake, 1 rear exhaust)

Drakon

Oh relax, Eric. That card should carry you for a while. By the time u're ready to upgrade, there would probably be a new chipset out, so you'll have to upgrade the mobo. Anyway, the choices you picked seem pretty good. What's the price of the MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum? That's a nice board too...

daedal

Heh heh, I know. I just feel I made a bad buy. Live and learn.

CDsDontBurn

well, for your x850, sell your AGP version, and use that money to put towards a PCI-E version since you're making quite a bit of an upgrade here. I would at least.

daedal

Checked up on the MSI board, both K8N Neo2 and Neo4 are about 180.00$ but I haven't looked at both in detail but they seem nice although from their RAM compability sheet, if I were tu use all 4 slots, I would have to use singled-sided DIMMS or I would run at 300? [EDIT] Whoops, Neo4 is PCI-E.