the optimal upgrade is....

[dante01]

hey guys im new but im not comepletely computer illiterate. I would like your help on a decision that I am going to make in the near future. I would like to upgrade my compy so that it will beable to handle the next gen games and I would also like to really be able to crank up the settings in current games(Rome Total War, FEAR).

My comuter to date(made her myself about a year and a half ago): AMD Athalon 3200+(2.21 GHz), 1 gig DDR 400 ram, Geforce FX 5700 ultra 128 mb, asus K8N socket 757 nvidia nforce 3 250 ATX AMD motherboard.

I was thinking the following upgrades soon: 1 additional gig of DDR 400 ram, new graphics card like an nVidia 6600 GT 256mb, and a better heat sink and fan for my cpu for possible overl****ing. Is this the best cost to benifit ratio? I was looking for the best upgrades for my computer within a 250 dollar budget. Advice is greatly appreaciated.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: the optimal upgrade is....

Just get a new video card. A 6800GS or better would make a lot more sense than a 6600GT, which is barely an upgrade. That said, I can't see upgrading an AGP video card in a socket 754 system as a good choice because that will be about the last upgrade you can make. You could wait for Intel's new stuff to be available and jump on the low end of that, as well as get a new PCI-E video card. That would give you more upgrade room for both the CPU (although Intel has become infamous for chaning chipsets and sockets from processor to processor lately) and the GPU.